Adrian James

EARLY JAMES DOESN’T like it when his lyrics sound too straightforward. The Alabama singer-songwriter tends to approach things obliquely, adding an air of mystery and haziness that doesn’t just spell it all out. Sometimes he even does it to his detriment.

James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, series editor of the annual The Best American Mystery Stories, mined one hundred years of writing—1910–2010—to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories. From noir’s twenties-era infancy come gems like James M. Cain’s “Pastorale,” and its post-war heyday boasts giants like Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter. Packing an undeniable punch, diverse contemporary incarnations include Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, and William Gay, with many page-turners appearing in the last decade.

Before coming into contact with James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon, Handel was is dire straits in London. His pension of £200 a year for teaching the Royal princesses had stopped, as had the public taste for opera. London had plunged into a hedonistic, alcohol- and gambling-driven lifestyle, where the bawdier things were the better. Brydges, one of the most colourful and roguish figures of the day, had built himself a vast palace (from wealth plundered whilst he was Paymaster General during the Spanish Wars of Succession) to rival anything the King could boast of – Cannons House in north London, set up as a rival court to King George I, where he employed Handel to replace Johann Pepusch as Kapellmeister.

Two of the undisputed choral masterpieces from sixteenth-century England, by one of the greatest English composers: John Taverner’s Missa Mater Christi sanctissima and Western Wynde Mass. The five hundred years since the works’ genesis are but as a watch in the night in these sublime performances from Westminster Abbey Choir and James O’Donnell.

Two of the undisputed choral masterpieces from sixteenth-century England, by one of the greatest English composers: John Taverner’s Missa Mater Christi sanctissima and Western Wynde Mass. The five hundred years since the works’ genesis are but as a watch in the night in these sublime performances from Westminster Abbey Choir and James O’Donnell.