Peter Caydick

Ghana has been considered a land of storytellers for many centuries. But this great tradition does not necessarily have to be continued with words or the voice. Peter Somuah spins storytelling with his instrument: as a young trumpet player, he embarks on a fascinating search for identity between the highlife of his homeland, his idol Miles Davis and the cosmopolitan musical language of his new home Holland. This journey is his "Letter To The Universe".

One of the great piano duos of recent decades presents a new CD on GENUIN "in praise of God": musical works based on the "Laudate Dominum" that kept Johann Sebastian Bach preoccupied throughout his life. Volker and Hans-Peter Stenzl span four centuries, from the Baroque era to the present day. Bach's "Jesu bleibet meine Freude" can be found here as well as a rarity by Martin Gustav Nottebohm, Igor Stravinsky and Astor Piazzolla appear alongside each other, and György Kurtág and Michael Denhoff take a new look at today's visions of God – an exciting and original combination of moving music performed to the highest standard!

Peter Doherty has unveiled his new band The Puta Madres and announced details of their debut album, which is set for release later this year. The latest record from the Libertines frontman is described as “a devastatingly intimate portrait of love, loss and being lost” and was recorded in a French fishing village across four consecutive days last summer.

This autumn, Erased Tapes are set to release ‘Give It to the Sky: Arthur Russell’s Tower of Meaning Expanded’ by composer and producer Peter Broderick and French 12-piece group Ensemble 0; a complete re-recording of Russell’s epic minimalist orchestral composition originally released in 1983. ‘Give It to the Sky’ also includes unreleased tracks by Russell which have been restored and re-recorded, resulting in an 80-minute reanimation that threads several lost songs into a meticulous and gorgeous rendering. The album was recorded live as a group in a small theatre in the Southwest of France with minimal overdubs.

Peter Serkin, whose recorded output is dwarfed by his father's in sheer size but by no means in artistic distinction, is spotlighted in a new release playing Mozart: his complete RCA recordings of the composer. When his set of Piano Concertos Nos. 14-19 was released in 1973, High Fidelity's reviewer wrote: "I have heard no other pianist who seems to follow every pulse of this Mozartean vitality quite as beautifully as Peter Serkin, and the combined efforts of Serkin fils with Alexander Schneider and the English Chamber Orchestra on this RCA set form very simply one of the most important contributions to the Mozart discography." The new box also contains Serkin's distinguished mid-1970s recordings of the Clarinet Quintet and Piano-Wind Quintet K 452 with members of his distinguished ensemble TASHI.