Marie Auberger

Producer extraordinaire John Morales returns to BBE Music, celebrating the life and work of R&B / soul legend Teena Marie with a double album full of brand new remixes, lovingly crafted from the original studio tapes, entitled ‘Love Songs & Funky Beats’.

The Oriental Jazz Project presents its new album "Proche Orience". Here are four musicians of the new generation of European Jazz, who are not afraid to mix Arab-Andalusian, and world music with modern jazz, to offer us an organic and sophisticated universe, resolutely modern… Created by the belgian-moroccan pianist Marie Fikry, the oriental Jazz project offers a repertoire of original compositions that creates a dialogue between Europe and North Africa. The oriental percussion occupies a key place as a soloist, while the piano, echoes like a Oud instrument, which offer the Oriental touch to the project.

Buffy Sainte-Marie has always been a good deal more versatile as a musician than most people realize, roaming through folk, blues, country, pop, and even pioneering electronica on her various albums, always using her Cree ancestry as an anchor, and very few singers have dealt with cultural polemics as intelligently as she has. Perhaps because of her restless drive to try new forms, Sainte-Marie's albums are often woefully (but endearingly) erratic and inconsistent, but each contains hidden gems, and while her eerie, vibrato-laden singing style can sound affected at times, her drive to constantly pull her agenda into new musical territories is inspiring. Running for the Drum is her first new album in 17 years, and while it probably won't change anyone's attitudes about her work, it wonderfully spotlights all of the musical themes, forms, and concerns she's pursued in the past four decades. The album opens with a pair of Native American rockers, "No No Keshagesh" and "Cho Cho Fire," that draw on Native American drum rhythms, and both are fiery and invigorating. She revisits one of her finest early songs, the beautiful and haunting "Little Wheel Spin and Spin."

On this disc, Jean Guillou teams up with Edo DeWaart and the San Francisco Symphony for a lush performance of Camille Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3, popularly known as the Organ Symphony. This is a lush performance of the Organ Symphony with spot-on tempi, great orchestral balance, and unsurpassed balance between organ and orchestra. This symphony has one long melodic line after another, and DeWaart keeps a long view that prevents any sense of meandering. The organ is stunningly recorded. Brass blaze with glory. Strings are lush. Timpani are extremely well-defined. The clarity of the recording provides an excellent window into finer details. It is difficult to imagine how anything could have been improved upon. The disc is filled out with a strong performance of Widor's Allegro from his Symphony No. 6. This account of the Organ Symphony has everything going for it. There are no obvious weaknesses. If you have excellent subwoofers, they will get the workout of their life. Very Highly Recommended!