Michel Thomas Start

THRU MY EYES is pianist Michel Camilo's take on his favorite standard tunes. With but a few exceptions, Camilo, being such an accomplished composer, has found little need in past efforts to resort to covering other artist's songs. Here, however, his keen musical taste has yielded a collection of 12 outstanding interpretations of some of the best Latin-flavored gems in the repertoire. With such high-class sidemen as Anthony Jackson, John Patitucci and percussion powerhouse Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez, Camilo has turned in yet another top-flight performance.

The operas of Grétry are seldom recorded, and even less often performed, today. The composer was for a time the personal director of music to Marie-Antoinette and there is a strong vein of pretty artificiality which can seem at best trivial in unsympathetic hands. The present recording is certainly not in such hands as Beecham had a particular liking for the music of Grétry and his contemporaries.

Meow Meow & Thomas Lauderdale - Hotel Amour (2019) {Heinz Records ‎HNZ035}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 197 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 89 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2019 Heinz Records ‎| HNZ035
Pop / Jazz / Chanson / Levenslied / Vocal

Hotel Amour is the musical love affair between Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale and the crowd-surfing post-modern diva Meow Meow, backed by members of Pink Martini. These two friends have performed and composed together across the globe for years, from the backstreet bars of Berlin to the glamorous stage of the Sydney Opera House, from London's legendary Royal Albert Hall to Mary's Club, Portland's legendary strip club. Hotel Amour features several sparkling originals alongside exquisite journeys into the French, German and Shanghainese canon of the 20th century, with alluring tastes of the 1920s and 30s, bittersweet tragedy, humor, politics, witty Weimar, and aching French torch song. And the album includes joyful duets with fabulous guests, including Rufus Wainwright, Barry Humphries (of Dame Edna fame), and The von Trapps, as well as a very special live recording with the legendary late French pianist and composer Michel Legrand.

If it were not for Michel Petrucciani's good taste, it is likely that his very impressive technique would dominate his solos. As it is, the pianist has been able to use his technique in surprising ways, avoiding the obvious and showing self-restraint while coming up with ingenious ideas in his improvisations. This solo album, his first for an American label, finds Petrucciani exploring pieces by Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, and Sonny Rollins, in addition to two of his own songs and a lengthy wandering medley that somehow incorporates "Someday My Prince Will Come," "All the Things You Are," "A Child Is Born," and Bill Evans' "Very Early" into a collage. A very impressive outing.

Michel Lambert was a court composer to King Louis XIV of France, and the father-in-law of Lully. He has been known, if at all, for his court airs setting common French poems of the day. He wrote two sets of Tenebrae Lessons, of which the one recorded here is the earlier. Reconstructing it sounds like a pretty speculative enterprise, which is probably why it hasn't been recorded before; contemporary descriptions mention a vocal trio, but here a single voice is used.

Michel Legrand, who has been loved around the world since his death in 2019, celebrates the 90th anniversary of his birth on February 25, 2022. Musician of many classic films such as "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," "The Girls of Rochefort," and "The Skin of the Donkey," Legrand was a music legend who broke down the boundaries between jazz, symphonic music, musical comedy, and popular music, and a three-time Academy Award winner who, over the decades He has left behind many works with themes that remain in people's memories. A tribute album to Legrand's music, "Legrand (Re)Imagined," will be released by Decca Records.

Night is falling. In this twilight of the reign of Louis XIV and at the end of his Grand Coucher, the king is at last free from protocol. He then orders the musicians of the Kings Chamber, to come to him; they are the most excellent in the kingdom. These Petits Concerts which were held in the evening before His Majesty enabled the king to hear his preferred repertoire from all that he had loved and even danced to. Here is the Sleep scene from Lullys Atys, the Sombres Deserts by Lambert, the Mutine by Visee, the Grande Piece Royale by Lalande, A Gigue by Marais, La Plainte by La Barre Thibaut Roussel has gathered around him the finest interpreters of the French baroque repertoire, to give us, as if in a walking dream, the intimate music of this Coucher du Roi. Let the night last, sings Le Camus, right up until Couperins Land of Dodo.

One of the great composing figures from the French Baroque, Michel-Richard de Lalande is starting to receive his just dues through modern recordings, and Glossa is happy to unveil a new release featuring Olivier Schneebeli directing Les Pages et Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles in three of Lalande’s sumptuous grands motets. Very much a favoured composer during the reign of Louis XIV, Lalande progressively assumed – from the 1680s onwards – more and more of the principal court offices, and was called upon to provide sacred music for the Chapelle Royale within the Château de Versailles.