Vari

"VARI" is Varijashree Venugopal’s first original music album, produced by Grammy Award-winning artist Michael League, acclaimed for his work with Snarky Puppy. This album is an enriching exploration of the global soundscape, where Indian classical music meets a diverse array of musical traditions, all brought together by the rhythmic tapestry of Indian percussion. It is a sonic journey with a singular mission: to unite cultures through the universal language of music.

The daughter of Haitian immigrant parents, Leyla McCalla, whether by design or synchronicity, moved to New Orleans in 2010 after studying cello performance and chamber music at New York University, and once there, while busking and playing on the street corners and in the bars and clubs, she fell in love with Louisiana Creole culture, and coupled with her further explorations of Haiti's traditional Creole folk music, she developed a strong and grounded musical vision, part old and traditional and part bohemian intellectual.

Riitta Paakki Quartet's music is irresistibly effortless. The new album is inspired by nature, visual arts, music and places dear to composer Paakki. Her swinging and clear piano playing style meets Manuel Dunkel's powerful and nuanced saxophone sound, and the whole is completed by the bubbling rhythm section of Antti Lötjönen and Joonas Riippa. In the more up-tempo tunes you can hear echos of the bebop tradition, and the calmer compositions paint traditional Finnish landscapes.

"For this Album I choosed three different violins with bows to match have helped to maintain the performance authentic throughout the program."

"Inno alla Terra" is a contemporary and experimental piece, with tribal yet slightly classical overtones. The sound is the most important element of the entire piece: the harmony on which the entire composition is based, together with the melody, is deliberately dissonant in order to respect the ancestral intentionality of the sounds and the modernity of the sounds emitted in a mechanical and obstinate manner through the use of a prepared piano, that is, modifying the internal strings of the instrument by adding wooden or metal objects, alternating the natural sound in a rudimentary manner.

The programme offers a fascinating journey through the sacred and the secular, delving into the lives of two major figures of the musical milieu in Bologna in the mid-17th century: Maurizio Cazzati (1616- 1678) and Carlo Donato Cossoni (1623-1700).

Ispirato all’omonima raccolta di poesie di Cristina Campo, La tigre assenza è il ritorno di Letizia Cesarini, in arte Maria Antonietta, dopo 5 anni di assenza discografica. La cantautrice pesarese, dichiaratamente appassionata di poesia (soprattutto quella femminile) ritorna sulla sua passione dopo aver pubblicato nel 2019 il libro Sette ragazze imperdonabili. Un libro d’ore per Rizzoli. Fra memoria e dolore, l’assenza insegue i nostri fantasmi, è ingombrante, pronta all’attacco, proprio come una tigre.

Gatefold. On her new album Sun Without the Heat, McCalla brings more playfulness and joy than she has on previous records when she speaks to the concerns that have shaped her career, mainly including an ethos in which you must look back at lost and erased histories before you can embrace a forward vision of Afrofuturism and the importance of music making to heal and forge relationships across differences. Across Sun Without the Heat's ten tracks, she achieves this with music that combines jazz, Haitian Twoubadou, American blues, folk and Brazilian Tropicalismo.Born in New York City to Haitian emigrants and activists, McCalla possesses a stunning mastery of the cello, tenor banjo and guitar.