Twelve Hats For Lena

Lena Horne had effectively retired in 2006 when Blue Note released Seasons of a Life, an album compiled for her by her musical director, Rodney Jones, and including unreleased performances recorded between 1994 and 2000. It's an effective capstone to her career, and shows that even at the age of 80, the former Cotton Club featured attraction had lost little of the verve and sophistication she exhibited throughout her career. The material comes from six different sessions, some live but most in a studio environment, including outtakes - most of which sound like outtakes - from her Blue Note albums of the '90s. Three of the performances come from the Blue Note project Classic Ellington, which allowed Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to pay tribute to Duke Ellington in a classical context…

Rhythm of Youth is the debut studio album by Canadian new wave and synth-pop band Men Without Hats, released in April 1982 by Statik Records in Europe and Canada and in 1983 by Backstreet Records in the US. It propelled them to fame with its second single, "The Safety Dance". It was released under the Statik Records label in Canada, distributed by Warner Music Canada (then called WEA Canada) where it achieved Platinum status for sales of 100,000 units.

Anders Jormin’s new Swedish-Japanese project returns the highly distinctive voice of Lena Willemark to ECM – it’s her first appearance on the label in more than a decade - and introduces koto player Karin Nakagawa. In this trio music the Japanese classical tradition and the stark, archaic sounds of the koto, allied to Jormin’s powerful and subtle bass playing, form a unique context for Lena’s sung poems, delivered in her native Älvdals-dialect. Traditions and non-idiomatic improvising are cross-referenced and new paths opened up in these compositions.