Lawrence Snaders

Azar Lawrence is an American jazz saxophonist. By the time Azar Lawrence released "Bridge Into the New Age" in 1974 - his first recording as a bandleader - he had already built himself an enviable reputation as a saxophone player alongside the likes of McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw. Lawrence's vigorous and emotionally multifaceted playing shines on this album which was a truly forward-looking release in the mid-1970s, presented here as a remastered hi-res release to be enjoyed anew.

Azar Lawrence is an American jazz saxophonist. By the time Azar Lawrence released "Bridge Into the New Age" in 1974 - his first recording as a bandleader - he had already built himself an enviable reputation as a saxophone player alongside the likes of McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw. Lawrence's vigorous and emotionally multifaceted playing shines on this album which was a truly forward-looking release in the mid-1970s, presented here as a remastered hi-res release to be enjoyed anew.

Lawrence Power makes the second of his appearances in this month’s release lists, this time with his regular pianist partner Simon Crawford-Phillips in the chamber music of Shostakovich. The centrepiece is the Viola Sonata, Shostakovich’s last completed work, premiered posthumously, on what would have been the composer’s sixty-ninth birthday. Its ravishing slow finale reworks the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata—a tribute to a composer he revered. Shostakovich the film composer also takes a bow, in the form of The Gadfly, with its famous ‘Romance’ beloved of violinists everywhere. That this works just as compellingly on the viola is triumphantly displayed in the arrangement made by Vadim Borisovsky (founding violist of the Beethoven Quartet), one of the Five Pieces he recast from Shostakovich’s original. Shostakovich’s 24 Piano Preludes have also proved irresistible to transcribers and here we have the seven brilliantly reworked by a pupil of Borisovsky, Yevgeny Strakhov.