Andrew a Benington

Anyone familiar with Andrew Hill's music will find the cover to Andrew!!! a little bizarre, to say the least. Hill was one of the most intense and cerebral musicians on Blue Note's roster, incorporating avant-garde and modal techniques into his adventurous post-bop. The cover to Andrew!!! apparently is an attempt to humanize Hill - it's a soft-focus close-up of a smiling Andrew Hill, who looks more like a teen idol than a serious jazz musician, and the first-name title is adorned with no less than three exclamation marks and a subtitle, "The Music of Andrew Hill," which suggests that it's an album of romantic, easy-listening standards. It's not. Andrew!!! is just as adventurous and challenging as any of his other albums, which is to Hill's credit…

Andrew Blanch and Emily Granger are a pioneering guitar and harp duo. Both celebrated soloists in their own right, Andrew and Emily combine forces in this beguiling instrumental combination with a synchronicity and charm “enough to win any audience over” (The Advertiser). The pairing of guitar and harp is at once both fresh and familiar, each instrument like an enchanted reflection of the other. Between them, their 53 strings offer a unique richness of resonance and an expanded range of expressive possibilities.

Andrew Blanch and Emily Granger are a pioneering guitar and harp duo. Both celebrated soloists in their own right, Andrew and Emily combine forces in this beguiling instrumental combination with a synchronicity and charm “enough to win any audience over” (The Advertiser). The pairing of guitar and harp is at once both fresh and familiar, each instrument like an enchanted reflection of the other. Between them, their 53 strings offer a unique richness of resonance and an expanded range of expressive possibilities.

Andrew Blanch and Emily Granger are a pioneering guitar and harp duo. Both celebrated soloists in their own right, Andrew and Emily combine forces in this beguiling instrumental combination with a synchronicity and charm “enough to win any audience over” (The Advertiser). The pairing of guitar and harp is at once both fresh and familiar, each instrument like an enchanted reflection of the other. Between them, their 53 strings offer a unique richness of resonance and an expanded range of expressive possibilities.

Andrew Nethsingha and The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge release the second volume in the highly praised ‘Magnificat’ series, presenting nine settings of the Evening Canticles by celebrated Organist-Composers, written between 1932 and 1952 and non-church musicians from 1974-1989.

Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony “Lobgesang [Hymn of Praise]” is highly original from a conceptual point of view, with its combination of three instrumental movements, followed by a cantata with three soloists and chorus. The piece is a milestone in the history of the symphonic form, stretching the seams of the symphony genre even further than Beethoven had dared with his “Choral” Ninth. In his Lobgesang, Mendelssohn achieved nothing less than the artistic destruction of the conceptual opposition of vocal and instrumental music. Here they enter into a relationship of constructive, mutual support in the service of music. Moreover, the Biblical lyrics express Mendelssohn’s deeply-felt religiosity.