Never Enough Jennifer

More than many, more-fêted stars, Jennifer Lopez seems emblematic of 00s pop: slick, blinged-up, powerful and ambitious enough to overcome such peasantish problems as a lack of innate aptitude for the form. And, for a while, her attitude worked to superb effect: she's the quintessential "more great songs than you initially assume" artist, with Love Don't Cost a Thing, Whatever You Wanna Do, If You Had My Love and – best of all – the Murder remixes of Ain't It Funny and I'm Real all high-water marks. But even her most passionate defenders couldn't have expected her to be relevant in 2011, with her most recent material seeming to indicate a decline of interest on both the public's part and her own…

Jennifer Higdon is a masterful colorist whose music is immediately appealing, full of energy and dash, but also with lyrical movements that grab you and hold your interest with their variety and melodic freshness. She can be brassy and bold like William Schuman and lushly Romantic like Samuel Barber, to mention just two American predecessors her music calls to mind. She also has a strong profile of her own, as we hear in City Scapes, a musical portrait of Atlanta that captures the bustle of a metropolis on the move. It's centerpiece, "river sings a song to trees," is wonderfully paced and engrossing. Concerto for Orchestra is a grand workout for a virtuoso band, teeming with solo turns that can tax all but the best musicians, and passages that spotlight sections of the orchestra with opportunities to strut their stuff. It's a brilliant piece brilliantly played by the Atlantans. Add Telarc's usual terrific sound and this disc becomes a must for fans of accessible modern music.

Challenging Kate Bush and Guns N' Roses for the title of "lengthiest gap between albums," Now Is the Hour is the first offering from American powerhouse Jennifer Rush since 1998's collaboration with the Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra, Classics, and her first set of new material since 1997's Credo. Having taken 12 years off to raise her daughter, Rush has assembled a crack team of established European-based hitmakers including Swede Jörgen Eloffson (Leona Lewis, Britney Spears), American country singer/songwriter Sharon Vaughn (Alcazar), and soul-pop songstress Natasha Bedingfield on a record that retains the epic power balladry of her mid-'80s heyday while also pursuing a previously unexplored dance-pop direction similar to Cher's fifty-something disco diva re-invention a decade earlier.