Scandinavian Star

Delightful, melodic drayvovy album came from Swedish rockers (not to be confused with the German team). He is so perfectly beautiful that it is just necessary to listen to it without any reviews.

Having already been released over the years as Machine Head Live in Japan and Scandinavian Nights in Europe, this live set from Deep Purple finally gets a more official release as part of the Official Deep Purple (Overseas) Live Series…

Denmark’s four leading composers – Poul Ruders (b. 1949), Per Nørgård (b. 1932), Bent Sørensen (b. 1958) and Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952) - have allowed the experimental trio Alpha to take their music behind the looking glass and let their works re-emerge in the trio’s very own sound world. Played and recorded entirely by heart, Alpha’s close encounter with the musical essences of seven different works seems to reveal the form and richness of each composer’s imagination in a new magical reflection.

That old discussion has broken out again: What is jazz? Who does it belong to? Where does it begin? The latter of these questions is at least not an issue for the Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala: "Johann Sebastian Bach and his music came into my life when I was six." So it comes as no surprise that Bach ties up his new ACT album "my history of jazz" - Rantala's personal history of the music that captivated him when he was 13 is embedded in the classically rendered aria: "Ever since then I always wanted to become an improviser, composer, stage performer and bandleader". A universal concept shown on the five greatly varied improvisations on the Goldberg Variations, upon which Rantala threads the album like a string of pearls.

Die Hamburger Jazzszene ihre Vielfalt und Lebendigkeit bringen so manchen Musikliebhaber zum Schwärmen. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg fanden sich in der Stadt an der Elbe hunderte spielhungriger Bands zusammen, für die bald auch unzählige Auftrittsorte entstanden. Der Cotton Club oder Dennis Swing Club wer kennt sie nicht? Für die Fans des Hamburger Jazz und alle, die mehr darüber erfahren möchten, entstand diese umfangreiche Kollektion. In Wort, Bild und Ton wird der Werdegang einer einmaligen Szene lebendig: von der Zeit, als die Hafenstadt in Trümmern lag, bis hin zum Sound von heute. Sie halten ein Set in Händen, das aus 18 CDs und einem 300 Seiten starken Buch besteht.