Portici Quartet

The Juilliard String Quartet was one of the pioneering string quartet formations of the 20th century. Virtuosity in playing technique, sovereign creative power and precisely coordinated tonal balance with X-ray-quality intonation purity characterized the playing of the New York formation around founder and primarius Robert Mann. Indulging in tonal beauty was not their priority. In this way, they moved somewhat outside of what was customary in Central Europe at the time. Their complete recordings for the RCA label, for which they recorded in the short period from 1957 to 1960, appear for the first time bundled on 11 CDs.

Miniaturas lunares est une expérience acoustique qui établit des ponts entre les musiques populaires, classiques et contemporaines. Miniaturas lunares est une succession de fragments sonores très courts, des histoires minimales qui s’enchaînent. Ces miniatures alternent des poèmes, des chansons et des morceaux de musique instrumentale. J’ai imaginé une série de musiques extrêmement légères et éphémères. Des moments de vie très intimes où l’on s’attache au présent pour que le temps s’allonge et devienne élastique. Des instants de joie, de mélancolie, de surprises, détonants, d’humeur mais aussi des instants nostalgiques qui se succèdent vertigineusement.

I first heard the late string quartets of Beethoven in my teens, on a budget price LP on the French Musidisc label. I don’t remember much about the performances; one movement that sticks in my mind is the slow movement of Op. 127, which was played at an expansive tempo, and took around twenty minutes. However I do remember the liner-notes, which were obviously translated by someone for whom English was not their first language.

I first heard the late string quartets of Beethoven in my teens, on a budget price LP on the French Musidisc label. I don’t remember much about the performances; one movement that sticks in my mind is the slow movement of Op. 127, which was played at an expansive tempo, and took around twenty minutes. However I do remember the liner-notes, which were obviously translated by someone for whom English was not their first language.

The Oriental Jazz Project presents its new album "Proche Orience". Here are four musicians of the new generation of European Jazz, who are not afraid to mix Arab-Andalusian, and world music with modern jazz, to offer us an organic and sophisticated universe, resolutely modern… Created by the belgian-moroccan pianist Marie Fikry, the oriental Jazz project offers a repertoire of original compositions that creates a dialogue between Europe and North Africa. The oriental percussion occupies a key place as a soloist, while the piano, echoes like a Oud instrument, which offer the Oriental touch to the project.

Saxophonist and composer James Brandon Lewis possesses an inspiring energy. His deep curiosity and the thrill he gets from discovery are crucial facets of his personality, and qualities that guide his art. Over the last half-decade he’s emerged as one of the most exciting figures in jazz and improvised music, a voracious listener who rejects stylistic hierarchies and one that has feverishly explored new ideas and embraced fresh motivations with every new project. Inspired by molecular biology James Brandon develops a special system for a surprising and beautiful music with his Quartet with drummer Chad Taylor, pianist Aruán Ortiz, and bassist Brad Jones. He has taken the idea of a “Molecular Systematic Music” to heart in the formulation of the compositions featured on the stunning debut album by this quartet.

"After award-winning Langgaard recordings, the Nightingale String Quartet turns to one of the great unsung quartet cycles of the last century, that of Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996). Volume 1 in this new cycle takes in the composer’s first published quartet, his momentum momentum-fueled Quartet No. 3 and his taut Quartet No. 15 with its pathos-imbued Funeral march. These are fresh new performances that support the idea that the deeper you dig into Holmboe’s music, the more you find."