The Invitations

The singular record production “Ex tempore” is proposed to us by the instrumental ensemble “The Italian Consort”, with the collaboration of Andrea Inghisciano, an exceptional guest and international star of the Renaissance cornetto. The ancestral sounds of the consort of dulciane, accompanied by the lute of Gian Giacomo Pinardi and the organ of Cinzia Guarino, guide us to listen to a repertoire of both early music - represented by composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - and contemporary, thanks to the compositional contribution of Marco Betta and Giovanni Sollima. The particular timbres of the ancient instruments are the expressive key to intricate labyrinths of contrapuntal alchemies, intense relationships with sacred or poetic texts and implied invitations to dance, in a continuous search for imitation of the human voice that in the Renaissance was considered as the absolute reference for any musical instrument.

Music Director of Tafelmusik from 1981 to 2014, Jeanne Lamon was loved by audiences, and praised by critics in Europe and North America for her virtuosity as a violinist and her brilliant musical leadership. Under her direction, Tafelmusik achieved international stature with over 80 recordings to its name, and with tours to over 350 international cities including invitations to the most prestigious concert halls and festivals in the world.

Made in New York City and inspired by the intersections between the natural world and the human world, Green and Grey continues Julia Kent's solo career as a maker of highly personal music. Using looped and layered cello, electronics, and recordings of natural sounds, she explores in this new instrumental record the melding of the technological and the organic, the patterns and repetitions that exist in nature and are mirrored in human creations, and the complexity and fragility of our relationships with one another and with the natural world. Without collaborators–other than the insect, weather, and wind sounds that create a sort of exoskeleton for the music–she has created an intensely personal landscape that references the way nature, however subverted and endangered by our modern world, still retains its power.

On this double CD release we find Shakatak's Bill Sharpe teaming up with Don Grusin, Alex Acuna and Paulinho da Costa et al for a Latin Jazz album from 1999, which also features Jeffrey Osborne on vocals on Light On My Life. Coupled with a solo piano album from 2006 of Bill’s favourite Shakatak tracks from the band’s first 25 years.

Boogie Bill Webb fused the down-home country blues of his native Mississippi with the hothouse R&B of his adopted New Orleans to create an idiosyncratic sound unique in the annals of Southern music. Born March 24, 1924, in Jackson, MS, Webb received his first guitar a cigar box with strings made of screen wire at the age of eight; his style was most profoundly influenced by local bluesman Tommy Johnson, an entertainment fixture at the myriad fish-fry dinners organized by Webb's mother.