Variety – September 16, 2020

Celestial Love contains recordings made in September 1982 at New York's Variety Studios, which had hosted countless Sun Ra sessions since the late 1960s. This was one of the last extended sessions at Variety, and these recordings were the last studio works released on Sun Ra's own Saturn label (though the label did continue to press concert recordings, and new studio recordings did appear on other labels). Aside from their inclusion on Celestial Love, tracks from these sessions landed on the albums A Fireside Chat With Lucifer and Nuclear War. Since Nuclear War's contents overlapped with both Fireside Chat and Celestial Love, we have reconstituted the latter two as complete albums, thus covering all titles from these Variety dates.

Soul Jazz Records’ new album ‘Kaleidoscope – New Spirits Known and Unknown’ brings together many of the ground-breaking artists involved in the new jazz scene that has developed in the UK over the last few years. Featured artists include Matthew Halsall, Yazmin Lacey, Ill Considered, Tenderlonious, Theon Cross, Emma-Jean Thackray and many, many more in this ground-breaking release.

The first ever survey of the seminal British experimental music collective, Gentle Fire, Explorations (1970 - 1973) offers a remarkable and previously unavailable glimpse of their activities during the early 1970s, spanning their crucial interpretations of scores by Stockhausen, Brown, Cage, Ichiyanagi, and Wolff, as well as an incredible deep dive into their own works and "Group Compositions". Unapparelled and historically important work, stretching across the length of 3 CDs, from Paradigm Discs, meticulously culled from Hugh Davies' archive, it's among the most important missing links within the history of British experimental music to have emerged in living memory, and not to be missed.

Esther Phillips - Brand New Day: The Lenox Atlantic & Roulette Recordings 1962-1970 (2020) {5CD Set, Soul Music QSMCR-5194BX}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.76 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 801 Mb
Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 45 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1962-70, 2020 Soul Music Records | QSMCR-5194BX
Jazz / R&B / Jazz Blues / Soul

The late Esther Phillips (1935-1984) has often been considered one of the ‘unsung’ pioneers in the world of R&B, stretching back to the early ‘50s when as a child star working with famed bandleader Johnny Otis, she enjoyed a run of chart-topping singles at the age of 15, making her the youngest female artist to ever have an No. 1 R&B hit at the time. The Texas-born vocalist returned in 1962 with a soulful version of the country hit, ‘Release Me’ for Lenox Records, subsequently signing with Atlantic Records for whom she recorded a total of four full albums between 1964-1970 with a brief spell at Roulette Records in 1969.

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.

Antonio Vandini was born around 1690 in Bologna, the city where the cello knew its first glories as a solo instrument. He held several assignments in Bergamo, Venice and later Padua, where he developed a friendship with Giovanni Tartini. His virtuosity was brought to fame by Charles Burney who defined him the famous old Antonio Vandini on the violoncello who, the Italians say, plays and expresses a parlare, that is in such a manner as to make his instrument speak. Vandinis cello works are the apex of the instruments output of his time, for the persistent exploration of the high register, the frequent use of double stopping, arpeggios and chords even in unusual combinations, a variety of bowing techniques, and rapid passages.

For some years now, the South African recorder player Stefan Temmingh and the German soprano and early music specialist Dorothee Mields have been forming a successful artistic team. Especially their second CD, entitled "Birds" from 2015, has attracted worldwide attention. Now the two exceptional artists are focusing on the composer Georg Philipp Telemann who was one of the most famous composers of his time and wrote an incredible number of works in a wide variety of styles and genres. His collection "Harmonischer Gottesdienst" contains enchanting sacred cantatas for soprano with obbligato recorder, three of which are presented on this CD. Stefan Temmingh combines the cantatas with three virtuoso recorder sonatas from Telemann's oeuvre.