Beautifully Ordinary

Philips's collection of major works that have propelled Gavin Bryars to New Music stardom is an effective overview of his music. The longest work is his Cello Concerto, handsomely played by Julian Lloyd Webber with a big, colorful tone and sustained intensity throughout its contemplative half-hour. A comparable mood pervades the bright tintinnabulating textures of the whimsically titled One Last Bar, Then Joe Can Sing. Similar as well, in their attractive serenity and suppressed sadness, are many of the other works here, prime among them the viola concerto in all but name, The North Shore, a tone painting of the rugged cliffs of northeast England. Adnan Songbook, settings of six poems by Lebanese poet Etel Adnan, are beautifully sung by soprano Valerie Anderson and delicately scored for a small ensemble. Bryars's biggest hits, The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, have inspired him to numerous reworkings and capsuled fragments. They're represented by Titanic Lament, depicting a hymn tune dissolving into gray, watery textures, and two very different four-minute versions of Jesus' Blood, both with Tom Waits.

On his 35th album as a leader, pianist and composer David Benoit changed up his game. Remarkably, 2 in Love is the very first time in his long career that he's worked with a vocalist on an entire album. His chosen collaborator is Jane Monheit, one of the most celebrated mainstream jazz singers. All but one of these ten songs are originals co-written with three different lyricists: Lorraine Feather, Mark Winkler, and Spencer Day. Produced by the pianist, 2 in Love was cut live in the studio – a daunting prospect for most contemporary vocalists. But Monheit is no ordinary singer. Check her delivery on the knotty, Latin-tinged opener "Barcelona Nights." She glides through the changes and imbues her canny phrasing with just a hint of samba, with each articulated syllable entrenched in the song's groove. The sultry passion in her utterance is complemented beautifully by Pat Kelly's nylon-string guitar in the bridge. The title track is a swinging bossa with charging piano and hand percussion. Monheit has demonstrated throughout her career that her grasp on the form is both expert and soulful.

Terry Callier - First Light: Chicago 1969-1971 (1998) {Premonition Records}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 399 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 152 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 136 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1969-71, 1998 Premonition Records | 6691 7 90740 2 3
R&B / Baroque Folk / Chicago Soul / Folk Jazz

Despite the lag between the 1965 recording of his debut album The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier and his 1972 sophomore effort Occasional Rain, Callier was far from inactive – in addition to regularly playing on the Chicago club circuit, he also cut a series of extraordinary demos which have finally surfaced almost three decades later as First Light. In the nine studio tracks which comprise the collection – a superb 1971 solo benefit date is also included – it's possible to hear the foundations of the aesthetic perfected on his classic Cadet recordings of the mid-1970s; on early renditions of songs like "Ordinary Joe" and "Alley Wind Song," all the pieces are already in place, as the haunted soulfulness of Callier's vocals blends perfectly with waves of acoustic folk guitar and subtle jazz textures.

There are two principal reasons to try this disc. The first is to hear an attempted reconstruction of Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, as a string quintet. Accomplished by Sebastian Brown in 1946, Brahms' rescored and recasted quintet makes a fine work for strings, it's heroic piano part gone but its loss compensated for by the smoothness of the sonority. The second is to hear a work that's never been recorded before – Joseph Miroslav Weber's String Quintet in D major from 1898.

Pedro de Escobar (c. 1465-c.1535) was a composer of the same renaissance generation as Josquin, Isaac, Mouton and De La Rue. He was born in Porto, Portugal but was of Castilian ancestry; his work was in great demand in his time and he spent part of his working life in Spain, much of this in the service of the Catholic Queen Isabella I. His best-known works today are a Requiem Mass (recorded twice so far), a Magnificat setting and a handful of motets, but this present CD brings us the first recording of a complete ordinary Mass setting, simply titled ‘Missa 4v.’

To mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Tallis, here are his biggest and best church compositions, performed in its customary high style by the Oxford Camerata under Jeremy Summerly (whose Fauré Requiem remains one of Naxos's all-time bestsellers). Tallis's youthful motet Salve intemerata is among the longest single-movement works of the 16th century, but it is Spem in alium, a work of Tallis's maturity, that overshadows any other English piece of the period, including those of his great contemporary, William Byrd. Scored for 40 independent voices, it is symphonic in proportion and resplendent in this surround-sound version.