Stern September

If you prefer Bach on the piano served up in heaping Romantic portions, accompanied by dollops of creamy tone, tapered phrases and languishing tenutos, Edna Stern's ravishing pianism will turn your ears to jelly. …a disc that will cause unrepentant pianophiles to jump for joy while historically informed performance mavens duck for cover.

In her first large ensemble recording, pianist/composer Peggy Stern reflects a deeply harmonic, richly hued piano style into original written music, employing a sensitive and very talented horn section. Trumpeter Ron Horton, tenor saxophonist John McKenna, and trombonist Art Baron bring Stern's charts to life, and bassists Harvie Swartz and Art Kell, drummers Tony Moreno and Bernard Purdie, and percussionist Memo Acevedo lay out the rhythmic landscape that is the foundation for the inventive vistas the pianist conjures.
The CD is bookended by Afro-Cuban based pieces. The first, "Salsicle," is truly an outstanding piece of modern jazz, using heated up-beats and a stance completely contemporary, with attractive, modally saturated piano chords…

It’s been a decade since we last heard from Marnie Stern, and in her absence, the indie music world has become overrun with an army of anti-Marnies i.e. corporate clones making banal playlist rock lacking in the whimsy, creativity, and virtuosity that made Stern’s take on rock music such a singular sound in the late 2000s. But when Stern’s guitar bursts in like a shower of stardust on The Comeback Kid, her long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s The Chronicles of Marnia, it’s like no time has passed. Marnie Stern is back—and not a moment too soon.

The soprano Ania Vegry, the recipient of many prizes, was nominated by Opernwelt as the Young Artist of the Year in 2009 and has been an ensemble member at the State Opera of Lower Saxony in Hanover since 2007. The Online Musik Magazin certifies that »her soprano voice, most highly fluent in the coloraturas, possesses warmth and substance, expressive power, and flawless intonation« – which makes her the ideal choice for the rich affections of the arias of Florian Leopold Gassmann, an Austrian composer on the cusp between the Baroque and Early Classicism. After two years of study with Giovanni Battista Martini, Gassmann became an organist in Venice. In 1757 he composed his first opera, and through 1762 he composed an opera every year for the Carnival season In Venice.