Lepa Sela

This is the debut album by young Polish Jazz trombonist/flugelhornist Szymon Klekowicki, recorded in a sextet setting with saxophonist Jakub Łępa and Marcin Dąbrowski, pianist Adam Jarzmik, bassist Tymon Trąbczyński and drummer Michał Dziewiński. The album presents seven original compositions, five by Klekowicki and two by Jarzmik.

This seven-CD box set features 95 tracks from legendary drummer Max Roach's small group, consisting of the 1956-1960 recordings for Emarcy and Mercury Records, as these noteworthy sessions also represent the drummer's post Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet output. In 1956 the jazz world witnessed the tragic and untimely deaths of the great trumpeter Clifford Brown and pianist Ritchie Powell. Within these seven CDs, we find Roach maintaining his assault on jazz along with trumpeter Kenny Dorham, pianist Ray Bryant, and the drummer's bandmates from the Clifford Brown years, tenor saxophone giant Sonny Rollins and bassist George Morrow.

In January 2017 Rufus Wainwright toured with the prestigious all string ensemble Amsterdam Sinfonietta through the Netherlands. Critics and audiences of the ten concerts were enraptured by the intimacy and intensity of the program curated by Wainwright. The concerts reflected the immense bandwidth of Wainwright’s musical influences and interests from Verdi Arias to Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, from Rameau pieces to the American songbook and French chanson and from Wainwright’s beloved Berlioz to his family’s and his own songs, some of them written for this program. Emotional center piece of the album is Wainwright’s almost 9 minute version of late Canadian singer songwriter Lhasa de Sela;s harrowing “I’m going in”, a song she wrote about her own death from cancer at the age of 37.