Peter Ciccotti

Invited by Deutsche Grammophon to reinterpret Bach’s six cello suites for their Recomposed series, cellist/composer Peter Gregson has come up with beautiful tributes to these 18th-century masterpieces. Following each movement’s natural harmonic curve and rhythm, Gregson explores different approaches, using electronic effects that ripple beneath Bach’s lines (the first movement of Suite No. 5) or taking single bars, transforming them into minimalist gems. Elsewhere, he plays alongside a small cello ensemble, creating playful dances and sumptuous textures. Sometimes, as with the Menuet from Suite No. 1 or the Sarabande from No. 5, Gregson barely touches Bach’s original notes—an homage to the music’s timelessness.

Splinter Group/Destiny Road is a remarkably good value for anyone interested in the comeback of Peter Green. Combining the self-titled debut of the Splinter Group along with Destiny Road, this two-fer offers a good snapshot of the man's return. He's not the guitar god he once was, which is only to be expected, really. And the band never sounds as inspired as old Fleetwood Mac. But Splinter Group is very serviceable, with both "Homework" and "The Stumble" comparing favorably against the originals – although it's not always easy to tell which guitar is Green and which is cohort Nigel Watson. Destiny Road, from 1999, showcases a more cohesive unit, and a more relaxed Green. His guitar work still doesn't have the sharpness, nor the unexpected turns of yore, but it's still very pleasant, especially "Madison Blues" and "Hiding in Shadows." In many ways the mere fact that Green was back recording is reward enough. And this time he doesn't sound as tortured by the blues as he was in his heyday.

It speaks well for the continued viability of their catalog (probably second only to Bob Dylan's among '60s folk artists) that this is only the sixth compilation ever done on Peter, Paul & Mary's music in four decades of musical activity - and since one of the others was a Readers' Digest mail-order release and two of the others were done for special markets outside of the United States, that low number is downright astonishing. This release effectively supplants the perennially popular Ten Years Together: The Best of Peter, Paul & Mary, from 1970, and also outdoes the 2003 WEA International Very Best Of, with more songs drawn from a much wider chunk of their history as well. The material at hand covers not only most of the key singles and a handful of important album tracks by the trio from the 1960s, but also acknowledges their less widely heard solo material from the 1970s…

As a two-CD overview of the career of Peter Bardens, Write My Name in the Dust: Anthology manages to fit in a lot of material and display his work in different contexts, but also suffers from some problems that might prevent it from being wholly satisfying to some fans of his music. Despite the 40-year time span of the title, it's not a chronologically balanced selection by any means; 23 of the 29 tracks predate 1972, only three postdate the mid-'70s, and those three are all from his 2002 album The Art of Levitation. Too, there are just three cuts from Camel, which to art rock listeners might be the most familiar of the groups in which Bardens played.

Peter Frampton Forgets The Words is the brand new 10-track instrumental album from the Peter Frampton Band. The album includes instrumental covers of tracks from Radiohead (“Reckoner”), David Bowie (“Loving The Alien”), Lenny Kravitz (“Are You Gonna Go My Way”), and 7 other stunning tracks.

Constantly in search of eclectic and meaningful programmes, the soprano Anna Prohaska here celebrates ‘life in death’. An ambitious programme, conceived with Robin Peter Müller and his ensemble La Folia, which takes us on a journey across the centuries and through many different countries, with French chansons of the Middle Ages (including one by Guillaume de Machaut), seventeenth-century Italian pieces by Luigi Rossi, Francesco Cavalli and Barbara Strozzi, German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Dietrich Buxtehude, Christoph Graupner, Franz Tunder) and the English luminaries Henry Purcell… plus John Lennon and Paul McCartney. A musical and spiritual quest that even takes in a detour to North America with a universally known song by Leonard Cohen.

Peter Doherty and Frédéric Lo release their new album The Fantasy Life of Poetry and Crime through Strap Originals. The Fantasy Life of Poetry and Crime is another piece de resistance from this constantly evolving and challenging artist, showcasing Peter’s proudly European poetry and comment on la bete humaine married to Frederick’s delicious francophone musical arrangements.

Peter Laughner was a singer songwriter from Cleveland like no other. Before his untimely death in 1977, he played in numerous bands, most notably Rocket From The Tombs and Pere Ubu, and also as a solo performer. He wrote for a variety of weekly newspapers and Creem, where he was a contemporary of Lester Bangs. He famously told Jane Scott of the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he wanted to do for Cleveland what “…Brian Wilson did for California and Lou Reed did for New York.” In many ways, Peter did in fact put the Cleveland underground on the map.