Gloria Noviolet Bulawayo

It takes only 20 seconds of rhythmic rapture on “Samba” before a familiar melodic refrain emerges. Not long thereafter, Gloria Estefan’s distinct voice cuts through and reveals the self-referencing interpolation at play, a culture-blending revival of Miami Sound Machine’s 1985 smash “Conga”. Such boldness sets BRAZIL305, the 13th studio album of her decades-long career, off to a truly memorable start. With a titular portmanteau that perfectly encapsulates its contents, the project bridges São Paulo with Miami in riveting fashion. Fan favourites from her bilingual catalogue like “Get on Your Feet” and “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” transform here with fresh instrumentation that maintains the pop majesty of the original versions. Estefan doesn’t limit the reinterpretations to her own work, providing inventive takes on tracks like Maria Rita’s “O Homem Falou” in both English and Spanish.

Gloria Maria Milagrosa Fajardo Garcia de Estefan, known professionally as Gloria Estefan (born September 1, 1957) is a Cuban American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known as the "Queen Of Latin Pop", she is in the top 100 best selling music artists with over 100 million albums sold worldwide.

Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, and pianist Gloria Chien, a frequent performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, make their commercial recording debut as a duo on Here With You, an album (mostly) of early and late German Romantic masterworks they’ve treasured throughout their 15 years of mutual admiration and musical collaboration. It’s a project that embodies, in the artists’ words, a “shared expression of beauty and friendship.”

The 2006 release of The Essential Gloria Estefan satisfied a long unmet need for a career-spanning English-language retrospective, one that includes the singer's popular hits with Miami Sound Machine in the mid-'80s as well as her subsequent solo recordings. For years, Estefan fans had few best-of choices to choose from – the Spanish-language Exitos de Gloria Estefan (1990), the two-volume Greatest Hits series (1992, 2001), and the latter-day Amor y Suerte: Exitos Romanticos collection (2004) – with no alternatives, not even budget-line knockoffs. The long-overdue release of The Essential Gloria Estefan thankfully resolved this gripe, for it includes the highlights from all aspects of Estefan's varied output, spread generously across two jam-packed discs.