Garritan Aria 2010

This is Djavan's first album as an interpreter in 34 years of career. There are classics and also compositions brought by his emotional memory. The album is unusual for its instrumental lineup, small and vigorous, but aesthetically liberating with Djavan's acoustic guitar, Torcuato Mariano's electric and acoustic guitar, the acoustic bass of André Vasconcellos, Marcos Suzano's rich percussion and also the participation of Marcos Lobo and Leonardo Reis. The result: formal jazzy recordings, loose melodies, as if they were flying over rhythmic and harmonious bases.

Emotions quietly stir and resonate in this deeply self-reflective album exploring the terrain between melodic electronic/ambient and modern minimalism. These six pieces utilize gentle melody, harmony and sonic tonality to poignantly reflect upon the passage of time, life lived, lives passed and a time of renewal: a sigh of the ages expressed in sound.
Sigh of Ages is the result of extended periods of solitude and personal reflection for acclaimed composer Roach. Resulting directly from dynamic personal and cultural events, these pieces developed over time and in the moment. After 10 months of early morning and late night sonic meditations, Roach collected these various pieces and found they portrayed a poetic theme of sonic interpretations from this experience…

Prolific ambient innovator Steve Roach teams with Ph.D. shamanic practitioner / musician Mark Seelig to create a long-form piece of space-opening sound magic. Like the many fragrant and beautiful night-blooming plants which are host to mind-altering qualities, this 70-minute experience slowly blooms outwards with Mark’s vocal harmonic and Tuva-style overtoning intertwining within Steve’s zones and “terra” grooves. A slow motion magical blend is created in this nocturnal mist-filled realm. The power of the human voice is drawn forth in a primordial understanding and finds a perfect fusion with subterranean heartbeats, drones and zones swelling from the harmonic soil, gently urging the Nightblooming to increase its potency and allure…

These strong, stylish, intelligently mapped-out, and excellently engineered interpretations of Brahms' complete solo-piano variation sets find pianist Garrick Ohlsson on peak technical and musical form. The impetuous fervor and tempo extremes that characterized his 1977 EMI release of the Handel and Paganini variation sets have given way to steadier, better integrated tempos and an altogether stronger linear awareness that yields greater textural diversity and color without sacrificing power and mass. What is more, ear-catching rubatos, voicings, and articulations are borne out of what's in the score.