Isabel Otero

ALMA ESPAÑOLA presents GRAMMY Award-winning singer Isabel Leonard and GRAMMY Award-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin in an all-Spanish recording for voice and guitar, including twelve arrangements by Ms. Isbin in their premiere recordings. Duos by Federico García Lorca, Manuel de Falla, Xavier Montsalvatge, Agustín Lara and Joaquín Rodrigo, with guitar solos by Granados and Tárrega, are heard in performances that evoke the rich and magnificent tradition of Spain. The Philadelphia Inquirer described Leonard & Isbin's performance as “Feasts of beautifully sculpted phrases… glimpses of heaven", and The New York Times referred to the “Soulful depth" of their interpretations. The collaboration of Isabel Leonard and Sharon Isbin brings together one of today's brightest vocal stars, heard on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, and Paris Opera, with a guitar virtuoso acclaimed as “the pre-eminent guitarist of our time."

SOAKED IN COLOUR is a collection of music from different eras and genres, interpreted by the special line-up of four cellists and one singer. Early music meets jazz, art song meets pop song. The collective wanders through different epochs and styles of music history and each piece is specially orchestrated. SOAKED IN COLOUR takes you through a colourful mix of sounds, dives into the depths, surges once more into the air, and refreshes the senses.

The choice of repertoire is more or less predictable. There are no lesser known arias, and Gott sei Dank they have been grouped by opera but, within the operas, not in the order of appearance. The ordering of the operas seems haphazard, too. "What an ungrateful nit-picker!" I can hear readers mumble. "Of course they have decided the order to achieve as much variety as possible". But I am not so sure. Why, in that case, start the recital, after the Zauberflöte overture with two arias in a row sung by Russell Braun?

Yes, there was another Cleopatra! She was married to Tigranes the Great, King of Armenia, and together they created an Armenia that reached from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The resplendent and regal voice of soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is perfectly suited to the role of Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian shines in arias from three rarely heard operas about King Tigranes and his queen. Bayrakdarians multi-hued voice relates the passion, drama, and fervor of the love story of Tigranes and Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian sparkles in five arias from Il Tigrane by Baroque master Johann Adolph Hasse, famous in his day as one of the foremost composers of opera. Arias by Vivaldi and Gluck add further excitement to the album.Bayrakdarian is supported by the Grammy-nominated team of Constantine Orbelian the singers dream collaborator (Opera News) and his marvellous Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra.

Acclaimed American composer Mark Abel’s sixth album for Delos extends his growing command of chamber writing while also delivering three major new vocal works. Celebrated sopranos Isabel Bayrakdarian (four times a Juno Award winner) and Hila Plitmann (a pair of Grammys and a longtime Abel collaborator) are joined by mezzo Kindra Scharich in presenting the song cycles Trois Femmes du Cinema and 1966, and debuting Two Scenes from “The Book of Esther,” a provocative excerpt from an opera in development. The album’s impressive array of instrumentalists includes pianist Carol Rosenberger (making the final recording of her epic career); fellow pianists Dominic Cheli, Sean Kennard and Jeffrey LaDeur; Alexander String Quartet violist David Samuel; Pacific Symphony concertmaster Dennis Kim and young cello star Jonah Kim.

Recent scholarship on Luis Misón (Mataró, 1727–Madrid, 1766) demonstrates the growing interest among the musicological community in studying the life and work of one who is an essential composer in the history of Spanish music. Musical historiography has extolled Misón's contribution to the genre of the tonadilla escénica, a genre widely appreciated in his time and which must have had a notable influence on his instrumental music, about which less is known.

Navona Records is proud to present CHORINHO, the new album by violist Georgina Rossi and pianist Silvie Cheng. Saturated with Brazil’s rich musical heritage, CHORINHO presents a slew of under-recognized works for viola, including world-premiere recordings of works by João de Souza Lima, Lindembergue Cardoso, and Ernani Aguiar. A solo piano interlude honors Heitor Villa-Lobos, the titan of Brazil’s 20th century musical scene. The concluding track, an arrangement of Chiquinha Gonzaga’s song Lua Branca by the two soloists themselves, hangs over the collection like a light. Vibrant, soulful, and expressive, CHORINHO offers a spectacular glimpse into a little-known area of Brazilian contemporary music.

Silence is an indispensable condition for the appearance of sound, to make the verb habitable. When language could not express the deepest human abysses, music emerged as a privileged way to put us in contact with the mystical, with the transcendent element of reality. The musical rite then emerged, where word and melody go hand in hand to access a space where spirits and gods are honoured, where the unknown and even the forbidden are invoked. The rite is a sacred and protected ceremonial, a symbolic place where human beings congregate to access the unmanifest, that which likes to hide. Music is the heart of the rite, the beat that gives life and illuminates the rhythms of the ceremony. But if the rite is the map, it is so because it also indicates the limits, everything that is beyond our understanding. The rite is the entrance to the mysterious, and music, the vehicle that leads us to this terra incognita. For this reason, music eventually passes into the empire of silence, and in it its journey culminates. Music is a rite because it is the only language that brings us back to the condition of all that is possible. Music is rite because it is the only language that speaks to us of the impossible.