Who Face Dances

The music and personality of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have always been very close to my heart. I could not have predicted, however, that the late 18th century would become alive to me beyond his music and his life.

Longpigs were swept up in the whole Britpop movement, yet they were somehow always more intelligent, more classy than their counterparts.

If you like your Rameau big, strong, and in your face, this disc of the French Baroque composer's Piéces de clavecin en concerts performed by Baroque Nouveau recorded and released by Reference Recordings will be the disc for you. Sixteen movements from five of the composer's concerts are included here: dances such as the Second Concert's Minuet and the Third Concert's "Tambourin," character pieces such as the Fifth Concert's "La Cupis" and the Fourth Concert's "L'Indiscrète," and musical portraits like the Fifth's "La Forqueray" and "La Marais." Whatever its type, every movement here receives an extremely powerful performance from the West Coast-based Baroque Nouveau.

“So, during the boom days of the great Japanese New Rock gold rush, many, many exploitation albums were released. Major label bosses, stacks of yen gleaming in their eyes, would corral a well-known studio/jazz musician, sign him to a contract and tell him something like "Here, go and get a bunch of your weirdo hippy friends and record a rock album!…

The successful film Tous les matins du monde had the undisputed merit of bringing the world’s attention to the figure of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe and to the viola da gamba in general, since Sainte-Colombe provided substantial contributions to the repertoire of this instrument. Still, the film’s plot was explicitly (and fully legitimately) grounded on a fictional work, a novel telling the history of Sainte-Colombe with references to what was, by then, known about him. Fortunately, a virtuous circle was ignited by the film, prompting new and meticulous research on his figure and effectively bringing to light some hard facts about his life.