The Fila Epiphany

From entomologist Barrett Klein comes a buzz-worthy exploration of the many ways insects have affected human society, history, and culture

Baritone Thilo Dahlmann couples the innocence and beauty of Brahms' Volkslieder with the the despair and mourning of Glanzberg's Holocaust Lieder.

This is one of those occasions where beauty and artistry are reflected not only on the surface but right through to the core. This is a marvelous performance of Bach's six-cantata cycle that offers ravishing choral singing, sharply detailed orchestral playing, and superior contributions from the four solo vocalists, all presented in state-of-the-art sound.

This is one of those occasions where beauty and artistry are reflected not only on the surface but right through to the core. This is a marvelous performance of Bach's six-cantata cycle that offers ravishing choral singing, sharply detailed orchestral playing, and superior contributions from the four solo vocalists, all presented in state-of-the-art sound.

This is one of those occasions where beauty and artistry are reflected not only on the surface but right through to the core. This is a marvelous performance of Bach's six-cantata cycle that offers ravishing choral singing, sharply detailed orchestral playing, and superior contributions from the four solo vocalists, all presented in state-of-the-art sound.

Long associated with the music of Gabriel Jackson, in 2020 the Choir of Merton College, Oxford and their director Benjamin Nicholas won a BBC Music Magazine Award for their recording of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, a work which grounded its narrative of Christ’s suffering and humanity’s redemption in texts associated with the history of the College.The Christmas Story, again with a libretto assembled by the College’s chaplain the Revd Dr Simon Jones, takes the same approach to tell the story of Christ’s birth. Spanning the period from Advent to Candlemas, it mixes biblical narrative with liturgical texts and four specially commissioned poems by members of the College.The new poems are given to the College’s girl choristers (an independent part of its choral foundation since 2016), while the main body of the work is carried by the full choir and by an ensemble of flute, percussion, strings, saxophone and three trombones – the latter recalling the hieratic sonorities of the seventeenth-century works by Schütz and others which Jackson had in mind while composing The Christmas Story.

Fila Brazillia are set to release ‘Retrospective Redux 90 → 22’, an up-to-date collection that encompasses their wide ranging output. From pioneering psychedelic beats in the early 90s through to subaqueous house, downtempo deliciousness, rustic funk, and deranged disco in the current day; the neoteric duo’s healthy lack of reverence to scene and industry pressures has resulted in this enthrallingly fluid compendium of the past 30 years of electronic music.