This Old Man: All in Pieces

Film and orchestral music composer Eleni Karaindrou has made a beautiful and moving statement with THE WEEPING MEADOW. A native of Greece, Karaindrou's influences are decidedly European, and within the music, one can hear the stamp of impressionistic composers like Erik Satie, avant garde innovators like Bartok, as well as Greek and Balkan folk forms. Karaindrou's music also traffics in 20th-century minimalism, creating tense, atmospheric spaces that feel empty and dense at once (one of the composer's frequently used motifs involves "patterns" that recall the tingling, polyphonic gestures of Phillip Glass). Although several themes are reprised throughout the album, the combination of ambient textures, folk phrasing (accordions, guitars, and violins figure prominently into several pieces), and lush orchestral work keep the music consistently interesting. The pieces are often set in a minor key, so a somber, melancholic mood prevails yet never feels forced or melodramatic, and the spacious, tasteful arrangements are in keeping with the ECM aesthetic.

100 CDs provide you with the most exciting, most beautiful and most swinging recordings from this period. All-Star Swing groups with their most famous recordings. Mit Henry Allen, Roy Eldrige, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, Buck Clayton, Django Reinhardt, Jack Teagarden, Rex Stewart, Chu Berry, Charlie Christian, Louis Armstrong u.a. 100-CD-Box with original recordings.

Dancer, actor, and singer Fred Astaire worked steadily in various entertainment media during nine decades of the 20th century. The most celebrated dancer in the history of film, with appearances in 31 movie musicals between 1933 and 1968 (and a special Academy Award in recognition of his accomplishments in them), Astaire also danced on-stage and on television (garnering two Emmy Awards in the process), and he even treated listening audiences to his accomplished tap dancing on records and on his own radio series. He appeared in another eight non-musical feature films and on numerous television programs, resulting in an Academy Award nomination and a third Emmy Award as an actor. His light tenor voice and smooth, conversational phrasing made him an ideal interpreter for the major songwriters of his era, and he introduced dozens of pop standards, many of them written expressly for him, by such composers as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Vincent Youmans.

For the first time complete on CD: Charles Koechlin’s Music for Saxophone. Koechlin was an important composer and music theorist at the beginning of 20th century, living in Paris, the world’s hot spot for musical innovation. His music is inspired by the impressionistic style, which was much in vogue at that time, but it voices his unique personal language, in which oriental elements are fused. He was enchanted by the then new instrument of Adolphe Sax, the saxophone, and wrote extensively for this sonorous and seductive instrument.