Lucille

Although Alberta Hunter, who had briefly come out of retirement, gets first billing on this CD reissue, in reality she shares the spotlight with two other veterans of the 1920s: Lucille Hegamin and Victoria Spivey. Each of the singers is featured on four songs apiece while backed by such top players as clarinetist Buster Bailey, trombonist J.C. Higginbottham, and Cliff Jackson or Willie "The Lion" Smith on piano. Hunter is in superior form on such numbers as "You Gotta Reap Just What You Sow" and "I Got a Mind to Ramble," although she would soon be out of music for another 15 years, continuing her work as a nurse. Hegamin (who had not recorded since 1932) was having a brief last hurrah, despite sounding good, and Spivey, reviving her "Black Snake Blues," would soon be launching her own Spivey label. This is a historic and enjoyable set recommended to both classic jazz and blues collectors.

Internationally renowned soloist Lucille Chung performs a programme of virtuosic and beguiling works by Franz Liszt. One of the first female students of the iconic Russian pianist Lazar Berman at the Accademia Pianistica in Imola, Italy, Chung has won numerous awards for her performances of Liszt’s music, including the B minor Sonata that features on this programme – although Lucille describes in her introduction to the programme how Berman “… for a time doubted that a diminutive lady with hands spanning a 9th (although I can now stretch a 10th on a good day) would ever succeed in playing Liszt well … Mr Berman came around.”