Nana 2006

Violinist Arabella Steinbacher and pianist Peter von Wienhardt unite here on Violino Latino for truly a spectacular performance. Steinbacher's playing is, in a word, sexy. Though of German descent, her playing is filled with all of the hot-blooded passion, rhythmic vitality, and take-no-prisoners risk taking necessary to make these works truly memorable. Heard here on a new instrument (or rather, a much older instrument the 1736 "Muntz" Stradivarius) than what was on her previous recordings, the sound she achieves is quite memorable.

I'm afraid that understates the ethereal quality of Bell's extraction of living musical notes from his Stradivarius. The spiritual oneness that happens with a virtuoso and his/her instrument is what makes the connection between the listener and the player. The instrument becomes a unique voice that communicates the essence of music, which itself, is an extension of the writer.

Mizuki Nana (水樹奈々) is a Japanese pop singer and a popular anime seiyuu. She was the winner of "Best Musical Performance" in the first annual Seiyuu Awards.

John Patitucci's Line by Line is mostly a quiet and thoughtful affair. The performances often feature close interplay between the bassist and guitarist Adam Rogers, with stimulating support from drummer Brian Blade and occasional guest appearances by the great tenor Chris Potter. The music is adventurous but often lyrical, with Patitucci being a key soloist but not completely dominating the performances, giving his sidemen plenty of space of their own.

Estrella Morente (Estrella de la Aurora Morente Carbonell) was born on August 14, 1980 in Las Gabias, Granada. She is a Spanish flamenco singer and daughter of flamenco singer Enrique Morente and dancer Aurora Carbonell. She has been performing with her father since age 7 and recorded her first album in 2001, Mi Cante Y Un Poema (My Songs and A Poem). This was quickly followed by Calle del Aire in the same year, which was well received by critics and flamenco fans alike. On December 14, 2001 she married bullfighter Javier Conde in Nuestra Se¤ora de las Angustias basilica in Granada. She released her third album, Mujeres (Women) in 2006. Her father was the producer.

Festive baroque or sparkling virtuoso: the trumpet has many faces, and it is still an absolute exception to find a woman among the great virtuosos of this instrument. The young British trumpeter Alison Balsom is one of these exceptional phenomena. In 2006, Alison Balsom was crowned "Young British Classical Performer of the Year" by the quality watchdogs of classical music; the British Gramophone magazine also awarded her a Gramophone Award 2006. Their current album "Caprice" combines exotic and high virtuosity, lyrical and romantic.

Influential South American psychedelic rock sextet Som Imaginário (Imaginary Sound) formed in 1970 as the backing band behind legendary Minas Gerais singer/songwriter/composer Milton Nascimento. Like Nascimento, the collective shared a fondness for mainstream rock & roll acts like the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, crafting sonic freestyle tapestries that had as much to do with early Pink Floyd and Miles Davis as they did with the tropicalia and MPB movement. Matanca Do Porco (their debut recording) is a not so subtle blend of all three of those sounds, chock-full of humor, super-amplified decadence, and haunting melodies…

Lyle Mays waited a long, long time before straying from the Pat Metheny Group to issue his first solo album, but when he did, the results were at once removed but not totally untethered to the Metheny sound and feeling. On his own, Mays' synthesizer solos and textures are close in sound to what he was doing in the Metheny group, but the turns of phrases in his acoustic piano solos reflect the heavy shadow of Keith Jarrett.

The words sumptuous and ambitious both apply to this release by soprano Montserrat Figueras, accompanied by musicians from the orbit of early music miracle-maker Jordi Savall. Consider the hardbound, 170-page booklet, with no fewer than 44 reproductions of medieval Iberian artwork and music manuscript, many in full color. It's true that the 170 pages allow for the rendering of Figueras's notes into six languages: Catalan, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. Song texts, which are in various languages including Arabic, Hebrew, and Basque along with various Iberian forms of the Middle Ages, are also translated into these six languages.