Nicky Minay

The song cycles of Ralph Vaughan Williams recorded here, some of them including instruments other than the piano, are some of his most characteristic early works. One hears both his growing interest in folk song and his indebtedness to Ravel, put together with a piquant kind of youthful ambition. In the opening Four Hymns for tenor, piano, and viola, the generally agnostic or atheist Vaughan Williams composed some lovely examples in the rare genre of religious art song. The only really well-known set here is 1909's On Wenlock Edge, and the Britishness of the whole project is shown by the fact that the annotator does not feel it necessary to name the author of the texts. It is A.E. Housman, whose faux-simple verses are ideally suited to the natural voice of tenor Nicky Spence.

Those familiar with guitarist Raoul Bjorkenheim from his work with the harder-edged Krakatau and with guitarist Nicky Skopelitis from his work with the very soft-edged CyberOctave label may be surprised by what they hear on this duo album. Featuring the percussion talents of Bill Buchen and the spiritual oversight of bassist Bill Laswell (credited here with "sounds"), Revelator delivers mainly lush, exotic grooves that are consistently both easy on the ear and sonically challenging.

The Nicky Kay Orchestra (NKO) is the 2012 project from Dayton artist Nick Kizirnis. Nick has had a long & varied music career with past projects such as Nicky Kay and His Fabulous Kay-Tones, The Nick Kizirnis Band, The Mulchmen, The Obvious and as a member of Tobin Sprout's Eyes in Weasel. As with Nick's Mulchmen band.

La Nuova Musica and its artistic director David Bates present Henry Purcell's most widely admired work Dido and Aeneas. With Nathum Tate's libretto based on Virgil's Aeneid Book IV, Dido and Aeneas is a miniature opera, as well as the only all-sung opera Purcell ever composed.