Victor Wowk

Victor Assis Brasil was the best Brazilian jazzman of his generation, having being praised by international critics. Brasil showed early evidence of talent for music, excelling at the harmonica and the drums. At age 12 he gave his first concert at the harmonica. In 1961, at age 16, he was presented with an alto saxophone. In 1965, while already a professional, Brasil recorded his first album, Desenhos, with highly favorable reviews, consolidating his pioneering role as a Brazilian jazz musician. His next conquests were the achievement of third place at the 1966 International Jazz Contest in Vienna, Austria, and of the Best Soloist award in the Berlin Jazz Festival, which granted him a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music (Boston, MA)…

A wonderful early album from Victor Assis Brasil - one of Brazil's greatest saxophone players of the 60s and 70s, and an artist with a keen post-Coltrane approach to his work! The album's awash in modally grooving numbers that would have made Coltrane proud - soulfully swinging tunes that bounce along on tight piano, bass, and percussion - as Victor spins out some lean and exploratory lines on alto sax. The album features some nice work by a young Claudio Roditi, and the lineup shifts a bit from track to track - but Brasil's incredible tone and solo work on the alto sax really holds the whole set together, and offers up a new surprise at each track!

Who is María? Horacio Ferrer,librettist of this unconventional operita , said that she was a representation of Buenos Aires, embodying the spirit of tango itself. María de Buenos Aires lies outside any known genre. According to Ferrer, its highly poetic libretto was written not to be understood, but to create emotion and atmosphere .Piazzolla's music, too, offers a charged mix of classical forms and Argentinian traditions milonga, tango and the sparring spoken word of the traditional payada. In this,the first major recording since the 1980s, Delphian stalwarts Mr McFall's Chamber are joined by their long-term collaborators Valentina Montoya Martínez and Nicholas Mulroy, narrator Juanjo Lopez Vidal, and internationally acclaimed tango musicians Victor Villena and Cyril Garac.

Written between 1820 and 1822 at a time when Beethoven was suffering from a variety of maladies including nearly total deafness, each of these three sonatas stands alone as a great artistic achievement. Heard together in Victor Rosenbaum's magisterial performances, these works remind us of what vast new territories of the imagination Beethoven explored. Pianist Victor Rosenbaum became a member of the piano faculty at the New England Conservatory in 1967, and went on to head both the piano and chamber music departments at NEC. In addition to his long tenure at NEC, Rosenbaum was Director and President of the Longy School of Music from 1985 to 2001, where he continues as a faculty member.

Victor Smolski's new album "Guitar Force" contains the best guitar work he has ever done, as it shows all his different playing styles in such a versatility. Victor Smolski considers "Guitar Force" as a kind of best-of album where he presents many song ideas from Rage, Almanac and Johann Sebastian Bach in new visions.
It is a powerful and aggressive album with a lot of dynamics in terms of sound and playing style. From heavy distorted guitars and crunchy fusion sound to classical concert guitar or crazy sitar sounds, you can find all guitar influences on this album. Beautiful melodies alternate with fast, technically mature parts and various great guest musicians bring different nuances to the arrangements, which makes this album something special.

"Clair Obscur (Alpha 727), dedicated to German lieder with orchestra, explored the antagonism between light and shadow. Reflet conjures up the nuances and transparencies of French melodies. There is in reflection the idea of an echo, the shadow of a disquieting double, of a plural, diffracted sparkle… A clash of deceptive mirages, a kaleidoscope of senses and flashes of light, it interweaves in strange parallels the score of our lives, adorned with gold and illusions", writes Sandrine Piau.