Released via T-Boy Records, Spookshow International Live is the first collection of live music from the horror music/film icon since 2007's Zombie Live. Recorded during Zombie and company's 2013 Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor tour, the 19-track set list, none of which has been tampered with (no overdubs, exaggerated crowd noise, etc.), includes fan favorites like "Living Dead Girl," "House of 1000 Corpses," "Dragula," and "Superbeast," as well as covers of The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" and Grand Funk Railroad's "We're an American Band".
In Great Scott, the Kansas-born mezzo-soprano, one of today’s best-loved classical singers, creates a role conceived specifically with her in mind. The character she plays, Arden Scott, just happens to be an opera star, and she is the lynchpin of what Fred Plotkin of WQXR, the USA’s leading classical music radio station, welcomed as a “deeply moving and musically brilliant work” that “should enter the standard repertory just as Heggie’s two previous masterpieces – Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick – already have”.
The title here is an ironic one. Hard Bossa is not "hard" at all. In fact, it is a low-key, gentle affair that has elements of breezy MPB, some Alcione-style samba, and some dreamy and jazzy bossa, and it flows from top to bottom. Joyce's softness and bounciness are everywhere present, and her guitar playing is as sharp as ever. Backed by a band that includes Tutty Moreno on drums and percussion, Lula Galvao on guitars, and upright bassist Jorge Helder, Joyce also employs the wonderful Ana Martins (who comes off sounding like a young Elis Regina) to sing lead on "Todos Os Santos," and vocalist Paulo César Pinheiro (who is her writing partner on most of these tracks), who sings lead on "Nome de Guerra." Joyce wrote or co-wrote everything on the set, and the romantic "Crianca," the shimmering "Juparana," the scattish title track, and the nostalgic "London Samba" are standouts…
Joyce DiDonato greets you with a song in her heart and twinkle in her eye. The American mezzo-soprano’s album Songplay unites world-class musicians from the varied worlds of opera, jazz and tango in the pure pleasure of improvisation, experimentation and exchange. Together they create their own musical language, surprising listeners with timeless melodies transformed and universal stories retold over centuries; songs in English, in Italian and – naturally – in the universal language of music.
This slick electric guitarist seemed to come out of nowhere in 1997, becoming The Gavin Report's artist of the year based on the enormous reception of her radio smash "South of Market" and her Heads Up debut Playing It Cool (pun intended). In reality, she had been (and still is) one of the Bay Area's premier club and festival performers, trading off between straight-ahead jazz, Brazilian rhythms, and the funky, lighthearted kind of perfection we find on her even better follow-up (pun still intended and not quite yet wearing thin). Her precise, crisp, and relaxed style serves melodies that are instantly catchy throughout; she and her keyboardist/partner have emerged from years of playing more free-form music in clubs and have the smooth jazz hook thing down pat. What makes this so much more fun than the average genre guitar release are the varied trappings that reflect a myriad of influences…
The American mezzo sings the title role of the scheming Roman matriarch in a starrily-cast recording of Handel's early opera with Il Pomo d'Oro, conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev.