Marie Flore Tout Dit

Much has been made of the fact that Lisa Marie Presley didn't start her professional singing career until she was in her mid-30s, but let's face facts – if you were the daughter of Elvis, you'd be in no rush to hear the criticisms and comparisons, either. To her credit, Lisa Marie doesn't shy away from her personal history on her 2003 debut album, To Whom It May Concern, sprinkling veiled and not-so-veiled references to her father and her marriages throughout the record, but where she really asserts her individuality is on the music.

The Change is the sixth album by Swedish pop singer and songwriter Marie Fredriksson, and her solo debut in English. Written and recorded during two years of medication and darkness after the removal of a brain tumour in September 2002…

Rene Marie's second CD for MaxJazz is, for the most part, a very enjoyable CD. This extremely gifted singer has a very appealing voice and is a talented arranger as well. Her playful arrangement of "Them There Eyes," with bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, is very refreshing, with some fine scat singing, too. Her unusually deliberate and rather sexy take of "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top" adds pianist Mulgrew Miller and also has some fine scat singing, too. Her Latin chart for "I Only Have Eyes for You" proves catchy, with some tasty guitar playing from John Hart. "It's All Right With Me" is slowed to a snail's pace with Chris Potter's noodling bass clarinet and Hurst's brooding bass backing her powerful vocal…

A baroque harp called arpa doppia (meaning double harp). It was an instrument that strongly fascinated people, coloring all kinds of music, including vocal, instrumental, religious, and secular music. Although much of its history is ambiguous, it was written by V. Galilei (father of astronomer Galilei and a music theorist). Shortly before 1580, his double-stringed harp (corresponding to the white and black keys on a keyboard) containing semitones arrived in Italy. It seems that it was conveyed. In the early 17th century, he devised an instrument with three strings (corresponding to white keys, black keys, and white keys). All six of his composers included here are from or have ties to Naples. Although they are rarely mentioned in the ``Harp'', they ushered in a new style of keyboard music and greatly expanded the possibilities of the harp.

Alpha Productions' Jean-Marie Leclair: Le Tombeau features the chamber group Les Folies Françoises under the direction of violinist Patrick Cohën-Akenine in a chamber overture from Op. 13, three sonatas from Op. 5, and the Concerto in G minor, Op. 10/6, by the ill-fated Leclair. In the concerto, Les Folies Françoises is filled out into a small orchestra whimsically referred to as the Orchestre des Folies Françoises, an appellation that can be translated as "the orchestra of French madmen," although that is probably not what they had in mind.

Marie Leonhardt, comme son mari Gustav, fait partie des artistes qui ont redonné vie à la musique baroque à partir des années 1950. Violoniste, elle a aussi animé durant des années l'Ensemble Baroque de Mateus, du nom du magnifique palais portugais où elle réunissait ses musiciens. Cet enregistrement, initialement paru en 1993, est le seul réalisé par cet ensemble. Il donne à entendre un programme composé de chaconnes et passacailles baroques, ces danses construites sur des structures répétitives qui connurent une fortune immense aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. A cette réédition s'ajoute un enregistrement inédit par Marie Leonhardt de la Chaconne pour violon seul de Bach, réalisé en 2003. Un très grand disque, au delà des modes.