Marie Flore Tutto Passa

A forty-something singer who retired to raise a family in the Virginia-D.C. area, Marie is making a comeback, and it's a welcome egress. She has a strong individualistic, enjoyable voice which includes parts of Ella, Sarah, Dinah, Betty Carter, Nancy Wilson, and Teri Thornton – most closely Thornton. She's smooth but never slick, easy on the ears, with a good range and a deep, rich instrument that can easily belt when commanded. Pianist Mulgrew Miller, guitarist Marvin Sewell, and drummer Gerald Cleaver comprise the glue of these sessions, the ultimate musical accompanists and button pushers. Marie tackles some interesting re-arrangements, like the quick samba version of "What a Difference a Day Makes," atypical hard scattish bopping "God Bless the Child," and Sewell's Duane Allman-ish slide guitar during a bluesy swing take of "Tennessee Waltz" with Marie moaning, groaning, and yeah-ing on the bridge.

Olivier Greif was an outstanding composer and pianist who died before his time. His complex, charismatic personality made an impression on every artist who encountered him. A keen duty of remembrance has animated them ever since, now relayed by a young generation who have been captivated by his vibrant, tragic and yet radiant music. Olivier Greif was born in Paris on the 3 rd of January, 1950, to Jewish, Polish émigré parents. (His father, a pianist, and survivor of Auschwitz, became a neuropsychiatrist.) Olivier entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten. At the age of seventeen, he obtained his first prize for composition in Tony Aubin’s class, then going on to hone his skills in New York with Luciano Berio. From the age of eleven until he was thirty-one, he composed highly individualistic works (including Chants de l’Âme in 1979), outside current trends.

The track list on René Marie's latest release reads like an iPod in random shuffle mode gone haywire: a Temptations classic is followed by a Jefferson Airplane classic, which is followed by Dobie Gray's hit "Drift Away." There's Dave Brubeck's "Strange Meadow Lark" and the American folk standards "John Henry" and "O Shenandoah," and a sensuous Latin ballad, "Angelitos Negros."

One genius hides another. Behind Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were many talented composers who contributed to the development of the classical style, but who are still little known. Generation Mozart brings back into the limelight these forgotten masters. They dedicate their first volume to Joseph Martin Kraus. Mozart's exact contemporary, he was the first architect of the Swedish musical school, which earned him the nickname"Swedish Mozart". Génération Mozart and it's conductor Pejman Memarzadeh join forces with soprano Marie Perbost to put him in his rightful place, through an album mixing opera, arias and orchestral pieces.

Native American activist and singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie makes an incredible comeback on this recording after 16 years away from the studio. Busting all myths about dippy folkies, Sainte-Marie takes on the still-hot topic of Indian oppression while exploring sonic ground that is completely unexpected…