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Our Favorite Things / Tony Bennett, Charlotte Church, Plácido Domingo, Vanessa Williams
Sony Masterworks · Oct 2001CD$11.98 -
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Jones: Missa Spes Nostra - Ludford: Ave Cujus Conceptio - Hunt: Stabat Mater
Blue Heron Renaissance Choir · Aug 2015CD$21.99 -
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SaleJoy to the World: An American Christmas / Christophers, Handel & Haydn Society
Coro · Sep 2013CD$20.99$10.49 -
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Holiday Harmonies - Songs of Christmas / Essential Voices USA
Sono Luminus
CD
$9.99
Oct 30, 2015
Judith Clurman conducts her acclaimed chorus, Essential Voices USA, in Holiday Harmonies: Sounds of Christmas, the ensemble’s third recording for Sono Luminus. This holiday disc includes premiere recordings of new vibrant arrangements of seasonal favorites and new works that were written for the disc by some of America’s finest composers. Mezzo Soprano Jamie Barton, Soprano Maureen McKay, Pianist Tedd Firth, and Harpist Stacey Shames are featured performers. Traditional repertoire includes: “Angels We Have Heard on High” (arr. David Chase), “O Holy Night” (arr. Ryan Nowlin), “Silent Night” (arr. Tedd Firth and Judith Clurman), “The Virgin’s Slumber Song” (Max Reger), and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (adaptation Judith Clurman). New works include: “Whispered and Revealed” (Nico Muhly), “Love Came Down” (Jennifer Higdon) and “Merry Christmas Wishing Well” (Gene and Lorraine Gilroy, arr. Michael Gilbertson).
Our Favorite Things / Tony Bennett, Charlotte Church, Plácido Domingo, Vanessa Williams
Sony Masterworks
CD
$11.98
Oct 16, 2001
Track Listing
1. Christmas Song, The - (with Tony Bennett)
2. O Holy Night - (with Charlotte Church/Plácido Domingo)
3. Do You Hear What I Hear - (with Vanessa Williams)
4. Jesus De Nazareth - (with Plácido Domingo)
5. Winter Wonderland - (with Tony Bennett/Vanessa Williams)
6. Silent Night - (with Charlotte Church)
7. My Favorite Things - (with Vanessa Williams/Tony Bennett/Plácido Domingo)
8. White Christmas - (with Tony Bennett/Vanessa Williams)
9. Hacia Belen Va Un Burro - (with Plácido Domingo)
10. Through The Eyes Of A Child - (with Vanessa Williams)
11. First Noel, The - (with Tony Bennett/Plácido Domingo)
12. Somewhere In My Memory - (with Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen Chorus)
13. I Saw Three Ships - (with Plácido Domingo/Vanessa Williams)
14. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - (with Tony Bennett)
15. Hijo De Dios - (with Plácido Domingo)
16. I'll Be Home For Christmas - (with Tony Bennett/Plácido Domingo)
17. Joy To The World - (with Plácido Domingo/Vanessa Williams)
18. Angels We Have Heard On High - (with Tony Bennett/Vanessa Williams/Plácido Domingo)
19. Silent Night
20. One More Year - (with Plácido Domingo/Vanessa Williams)
Musicians include: Tony Bennett, Charlotte Church, Placido Domingo, Vanessa Williams (vocals); Steven Mecurio (conductor); Ralph Sharon Quartet; Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen Children's Choir; Vienna Symphony.
Recorded live at the Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria in December 2000.
This stellar line-up, recorded live in Vienna, performs a program of quintessential Christmas songs in a rich variety of styles, from the light pop of "My Favorite Things" to traditional Spanish tunes such as "Hacia Belen Va Un Burro" and English equivalents like "Angels We Have Heard on High." Tony Bennett kicks the whole thing off with a typically warm rendition of "The Christmas Song." He's followed by a pretty straight reading of "O Holy Night" by the Welsh teen classical prodigy Charlotte Church and the inimitable Placido Domingo, and Vannessa Williams' gospel-tinged version of "Do You Hear What I Hear?"
It's an evening of familiar favorites, impeccably performed, with the added bonus of the Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen Children's Choir providing an appropriately child's-eye view of the holiday. OUR FAVORITE THINGS is a worthy addition to the bulging repertoire of Christmas collections, in a gimmick-free traditional setting.
1. Christmas Song, The - (with Tony Bennett)
2. O Holy Night - (with Charlotte Church/Plácido Domingo)
3. Do You Hear What I Hear - (with Vanessa Williams)
4. Jesus De Nazareth - (with Plácido Domingo)
5. Winter Wonderland - (with Tony Bennett/Vanessa Williams)
6. Silent Night - (with Charlotte Church)
7. My Favorite Things - (with Vanessa Williams/Tony Bennett/Plácido Domingo)
8. White Christmas - (with Tony Bennett/Vanessa Williams)
9. Hacia Belen Va Un Burro - (with Plácido Domingo)
10. Through The Eyes Of A Child - (with Vanessa Williams)
11. First Noel, The - (with Tony Bennett/Plácido Domingo)
12. Somewhere In My Memory - (with Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen Chorus)
13. I Saw Three Ships - (with Plácido Domingo/Vanessa Williams)
14. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - (with Tony Bennett)
15. Hijo De Dios - (with Plácido Domingo)
16. I'll Be Home For Christmas - (with Tony Bennett/Plácido Domingo)
17. Joy To The World - (with Plácido Domingo/Vanessa Williams)
18. Angels We Have Heard On High - (with Tony Bennett/Vanessa Williams/Plácido Domingo)
19. Silent Night
20. One More Year - (with Plácido Domingo/Vanessa Williams)
Musicians include: Tony Bennett, Charlotte Church, Placido Domingo, Vanessa Williams (vocals); Steven Mecurio (conductor); Ralph Sharon Quartet; Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen Children's Choir; Vienna Symphony.
Recorded live at the Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria in December 2000.
This stellar line-up, recorded live in Vienna, performs a program of quintessential Christmas songs in a rich variety of styles, from the light pop of "My Favorite Things" to traditional Spanish tunes such as "Hacia Belen Va Un Burro" and English equivalents like "Angels We Have Heard on High." Tony Bennett kicks the whole thing off with a typically warm rendition of "The Christmas Song." He's followed by a pretty straight reading of "O Holy Night" by the Welsh teen classical prodigy Charlotte Church and the inimitable Placido Domingo, and Vannessa Williams' gospel-tinged version of "Do You Hear What I Hear?"
It's an evening of familiar favorites, impeccably performed, with the added bonus of the Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen Children's Choir providing an appropriately child's-eye view of the holiday. OUR FAVORITE THINGS is a worthy addition to the bulging repertoire of Christmas collections, in a gimmick-free traditional setting.
Sing We Noël - Traditional Carols From St. John's Cathedral
Delos
CD
$18.99
Jan 01, 1992
1. Adeste fidelis (O Come All Ye Faithful) (arr. D. Willcocks)
2. What Child is This?
3. Ding Dong Merrily on High
4. Sing we to this merry company
5. The Sussex Mummers' Christmas Carol (arr. M. Allen)
6. The Little Road to Bethlehem
7. The Holly and the Ivy (arr. J. Rutter): The holy and the ivy
8. Carol of the Bells (arr. P. Wilhousky)
9. God rest you merry, gentlemen
10. The First Nowell
11. The Carol of the Angels
12. I saw three ships
13. Come, love we God
14. Torches, Op. 7a
15. Wexford Carol
16. Angels we have heard on high
17. Away in a manger (arr. J. Van)
18. Good King Wenceslas
19. Sussex Carol
20. A Merry Christmas
21. O Holy Night (Cantique de Noel) (arr. J. Rutter)
22. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
2. What Child is This?
3. Ding Dong Merrily on High
4. Sing we to this merry company
5. The Sussex Mummers' Christmas Carol (arr. M. Allen)
6. The Little Road to Bethlehem
7. The Holly and the Ivy (arr. J. Rutter): The holy and the ivy
8. Carol of the Bells (arr. P. Wilhousky)
9. God rest you merry, gentlemen
10. The First Nowell
11. The Carol of the Angels
12. I saw three ships
13. Come, love we God
14. Torches, Op. 7a
15. Wexford Carol
16. Angels we have heard on high
17. Away in a manger (arr. J. Van)
18. Good King Wenceslas
19. Sussex Carol
20. A Merry Christmas
21. O Holy Night (Cantique de Noel) (arr. J. Rutter)
22. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Whitacre: The Sacred Veil / Los Angeles Master Chorale
Signum Classics
CD
$19.99
Aug 28, 2020
The Sacred Veil - a project led by Eric Whitacre and Charles Anthony Silvestri - was created following the passing of Charles’ wife, Julia in 2005. It represents a journey towards the answer for many questions, including whether departed loved ones are truly gone, and how can we mourn those we have lost whilst still moving forward? In Charles’ own words, the project became “a significant part of my journey toward healing and wholeness after great loss.”
Poet, author, composer, and speaker Charles Anthony Silvestri has worked with other artists from all over the world to create texts tailor-made for their commissions and specific artistic needs. He enjoys the challenge of solving these creative problems and has provided custom choral texts, opera libretti, program notes and other writing for composers including Eric Whitacre, Ola Gjeilo, Kim Arnesen, and Dan Forrest, and for ensembles ranging from high schools to the Houston Grand Opera, from the King’s Singers to the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, from Westminster Choir College to Westminster Abbey.
Grammy® Award-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre is one of the world’s most performed living composers. His works have been programmed worldwide by millions of amateur and professional performers, while his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united singers from over 120 different countries. Eric, a graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, is presently Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, following five years as Composer in Residence at the University of Cambridge, UK.As conductor of the Eric Whitacre Singers, he has released such chart-topping albums including Light and Gold and Water Night. In high demand as guest conductor, he has drawn capacity audiences to concerts with the Netherlands Radio Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Flemish Radio Choir, and Minnesota Orchestra.
REVIEWS
The Sacred Veil is notable simply as one of the most deeply personal pieces of concert music heard in quite some time. Yet there is more to its profound effect than this. Whitacre responds to the texts with a sober language akin to but quite distinct from his usual style, something like the dark language cultivated by Renaissance composers for the requiem mass and other serious texts. The performances by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, under Whitacre's direction, are superb, and the sound, from California's Musco Center for the Arts, is exemplary.
– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)
Composer Eric Whitacre and poet Charles Anthony Silvestri, longtime collaborators and close friends, come together for their most personal and expansive work to date. Whitacre has created a powerful score for Silvestri’s heartfelt poetry in the 12-movement work The Sacred Veil. Silvestri’s wife, Julie, died of ovarian cancer at age 36 in 2005, leaving two young children. His texts, written collaboratively with Whitacre, and the intimate, compelling score tell a story of courtship, love, loss, and the search for solace. Whitacre leads the Los Angeles Master Chorale in the world-premiere recording.
– WFMT-FM (Lisa Flynn)
The Orphans & Poe
Sono Luminus
CD
$16.99
May 16, 2025
A transformation During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the world shut down and many lives were lost or changed forever, I experienced a serious transformation. A commitment to sobriety unleashed new creative forces. The world's new normal of quiet and introspection led me to return to a more formal branch of my musical upbringing: fully-inked acoustic music. Untethered from the backbeats and lead sheets of my career in jazz and pop music, I once again immersed myself in scores and music literature. An exciting new sense of freedom filled me with inspiration. I discovered a wellspring of patience and subsequent understanding and became obsessed with form. Hyper-focussed and pencil in hand, I wrote tirelessly from dawn until dusk. When I spoke about this newfound passion with one of the biggest supporters of my lifetime, my Dad, he told me it sounded like I had "seen the light" - a remarkable turn of events during an otherwise difficult time for us all. About the music... String Quartet No. 1 "The Orphans" (2023) The idea of writing a string quartet began to haunt me as this hallowed format can be intimidating. After what initially seemed like fruitless labor, I sidelined this ambition to work on some other music. Then one day while walking in a forest preserve in Chicago, a tune popped into my head which later developed into a promising base movement for a string quartet. Despite a failed attempt at a second movement, my confidence grew, and again inspired by nature, movements I, II and III were written with the base movement now as IV. Just when I thought the whole piece was done, the inspiration for another, shorter, livelier, and more cohesive movement came to me, and outdoors no less! Following my intuition I completely abandoned the germ of it all, the mother of this string quartet, for four of her offspring. It was an unpredictable process. Three Poe Excerpts (2022) While writing my first opera, The Bells of Fortunato, adapted from Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, I became transfixed by Poe's writing. I discovered more stories of his with moments full of life and beauty that seemed to be wonderful opportunities for songs. I ended up taking a break from Fortunato to work on the songs that became Three Poe Excerpts. "Even as it Was" came first followed by "A Feeling for Which I Have No Name." These both came fairly easily and with much joy, but I wasn't satisfied with just the two. Although initially skeptical of the music that became "To the Right and Left," something told me to stay the course, and I am happy with the result. I thought the three songs could use some sort of set up, and the image of a hand opening an oversized book like in the beginning of old fairytale movies came to mind. This inspired the foreword and afterword. The Thousand Injuries (2023) A section of one of my prior works, a fantasie called Outside Motion in Stillness, gave me the idea to try my hand at an opera. I read through many plays, poems, and stories until landing on the right one. I believe there have been at least a couple of operas based on The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe, but that didn't stop me from writing my own adaptation, The Bells of Fortunato. The Carnival scene was the perfect fit for the music I had brewing. Poe's writing is wonderfully succinct and illustrative, and I found myself so intrigued that the rest of the music came without much hesitation. After a musical introduction which includes a chorus singing "nemo me impune lacesset" ("no one attacks me with impunity"), we meet our protagonist Montresor, played by a soprano, who sings the only aria from the opera. "The Thousand Injuries" informs us of her contempt for the entitled Fortunato. The musicians and the studio... I can't speak highly enough of the musicians on this album. The dedication to great performance from each individual is heard in every moment. I am truly honored to have made this with you all. I'd like to express my deepest gratitude to Doyle for assembling this dream of a string quartet to help bring "The Orphans" to life with such finesse and conviction. Thanks to Steve of SHIRK studios for the hard work, perpetual coolness, and professional atmosphere that is consistently provided. Special thanks to Matt Reed, Stu Mindeman, Margaret Casey, and Tom Palmer. All my love to Al and Ray. In memory of Tom Doherty. Rest easy Thos.
On Christmas Night / Nethsingha, Choir of St. John's
Chandos
SACD
$21.99
Oct 25, 2011
This excellent and most enjoyable disc will be a high quality Christmas present for a musical friend - or to give to yourself!
It’s four years now since Andrew Nethsingha moved from Gloucester Cathedral, where he had been a distinguished Director of Music, to St. John’s College, where as part of his training he had once been the Organ Scholar, under George Guest. Having established himself securely with the college’s choir he’s begun recording with them for Chandos and the partnership has already produced some impressive results. These include a very fine Howells collection, an equally good mixed recital of church music and a disc of music by Lassus, which I haven’t heard but which impressed my colleague, Gavin Dixon. Their latest offering is of music for Advent and Christmas; in every respect it maintains the high standards set by their previous releases.
Before commenting on the music, can I commend Chandos for the quality of the booklet? This label is always strong on documentation but there must be a temptation for record companies to economise a little on such releases - “it’s only carols”. In fact, Chandos provide all the texts and, best of all, a really useful and thorough essay by Martin Ennis, which includes a separate and interesting paragraph on every one of the twenty-four items on the programme. The essay, in fact, is a model of its kind and the best I can recall seeing for a release of seasonal music.
The programme has been very carefully chosen and includes a welcome mix of the familiar, the unfamiliar and the familiar in slightly less-than-familiar guise. Into this latter category would come items such as the exuberant and effective arrangement by Philip Marshall, the former organist of Lincoln Cathedral, of I saw three ships. The version of Ding! dong! merrily on high would also fall into the exuberant, indeed flamboyant, category. It was made by the Music Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and requires two organists. The organ features strongly - and most effectively - in Stephen Jackson’s arrangement of Noël nouvelet. Indeed, the organ writing is a key element in giving the setting its pronounced French flavour. It’s good to see Andrew Nethsingha give a bow to one of his predecessors at St. John’s, Christopher Robinson. Instead of the usual - and excellent - Willcocks descant to Hark! the herald angels sing we hear Robinson’s descant and a jolly good one it is!
Moving to the unfamiliar elements in the programme we find Christopher Robinson there too. I’d not heard before his setting of Make we joy - a text more famously set by Walton. I like this Robinson setting very much indeed; it’s buoyant and strongly rhythmic. Also new to me was Michael Finnissy’s Telling. Written in 2008, this is a setting for unaccompanied choir of an anonymous sixteenth century text. Martin Ennis draws attention, rightly, to the “refined harmonic sensibility” of the piece. I think it’s a beautiful composition and, in an intelligent piece of programme ordering, we find that Kenneth Leighton’s fine Coventry Carol, which comes next in the running order, complements the Finnissy nicely. Mention should also be made of Matthew Martin’s Adam lay ybounden. This is very different from some other settings - one thinks of Boris Ord’s celebrated setting, for starters. Martin’s piece is slow and reflective and it’s good to have another slant on this well-known text. I also liked the item by James Burton, perhaps best known as Director of the Oxford Schola Cantorum. His Balulalow eschews trebles - the altos take the top line - giving an interesting, darker texture. Some of the harmonies are quite close and I think it’s a lovely piece.
And so to the familiar seasonal items. It’s right to include them to give the programme balance. Nethsingha and his singers pay these pieces - and their listeners - the important compliment of taking as much care over them as they have done over the less conventional fare. Harold Darke’s classic piece is given a lovely performance and lovely too is the choir’s account of Philip Ledger’s sympathetic arrangement of Silent Night - good planning, too, to place this immediately after his equally good arrangement of the Sussex Carol. Ledger’s predecessor at King’s College, Sir David Willcocks, is represented by his justly popular Tomorrow shall be my dancing day. O little town of Bethlehem, mainstay of innumerable carol services, makes an equally welcome appearance. It wouldn’t be a Christmas programme without John Rutter. When you hear his lovely What sweeter music, which, as Martin Ennis justly observes, contains “one of his most winning melodies”, you realise just why for so many people Rutter has become synonymous with Christmas music. The present performance is first class, with every little detail of Rutter’s music nicely observed.
The singing on this disc is very fine indeed. Solos are well taken and the choir as a group blends extremely well and sings with excellent tone and great clarity. Several of the pieces are accompanied by organ and the college’s Senior Organ Scholar, John Challenger, does a marvellous job. I relished especially his splendid contributions - very different from each other in character - to the Jackson and Mathias pieces.
It only remains to say that the Chandos sound is up to the label’s usual exalted standard - I listened to this hybrid SACD as a conventional CD. This most enjoyable disc will be a high quality Christmas present for a musical friend - or to give to yourself!
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International
It’s four years now since Andrew Nethsingha moved from Gloucester Cathedral, where he had been a distinguished Director of Music, to St. John’s College, where as part of his training he had once been the Organ Scholar, under George Guest. Having established himself securely with the college’s choir he’s begun recording with them for Chandos and the partnership has already produced some impressive results. These include a very fine Howells collection, an equally good mixed recital of church music and a disc of music by Lassus, which I haven’t heard but which impressed my colleague, Gavin Dixon. Their latest offering is of music for Advent and Christmas; in every respect it maintains the high standards set by their previous releases.
Before commenting on the music, can I commend Chandos for the quality of the booklet? This label is always strong on documentation but there must be a temptation for record companies to economise a little on such releases - “it’s only carols”. In fact, Chandos provide all the texts and, best of all, a really useful and thorough essay by Martin Ennis, which includes a separate and interesting paragraph on every one of the twenty-four items on the programme. The essay, in fact, is a model of its kind and the best I can recall seeing for a release of seasonal music.
The programme has been very carefully chosen and includes a welcome mix of the familiar, the unfamiliar and the familiar in slightly less-than-familiar guise. Into this latter category would come items such as the exuberant and effective arrangement by Philip Marshall, the former organist of Lincoln Cathedral, of I saw three ships. The version of Ding! dong! merrily on high would also fall into the exuberant, indeed flamboyant, category. It was made by the Music Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and requires two organists. The organ features strongly - and most effectively - in Stephen Jackson’s arrangement of Noël nouvelet. Indeed, the organ writing is a key element in giving the setting its pronounced French flavour. It’s good to see Andrew Nethsingha give a bow to one of his predecessors at St. John’s, Christopher Robinson. Instead of the usual - and excellent - Willcocks descant to Hark! the herald angels sing we hear Robinson’s descant and a jolly good one it is!
Moving to the unfamiliar elements in the programme we find Christopher Robinson there too. I’d not heard before his setting of Make we joy - a text more famously set by Walton. I like this Robinson setting very much indeed; it’s buoyant and strongly rhythmic. Also new to me was Michael Finnissy’s Telling. Written in 2008, this is a setting for unaccompanied choir of an anonymous sixteenth century text. Martin Ennis draws attention, rightly, to the “refined harmonic sensibility” of the piece. I think it’s a beautiful composition and, in an intelligent piece of programme ordering, we find that Kenneth Leighton’s fine Coventry Carol, which comes next in the running order, complements the Finnissy nicely. Mention should also be made of Matthew Martin’s Adam lay ybounden. This is very different from some other settings - one thinks of Boris Ord’s celebrated setting, for starters. Martin’s piece is slow and reflective and it’s good to have another slant on this well-known text. I also liked the item by James Burton, perhaps best known as Director of the Oxford Schola Cantorum. His Balulalow eschews trebles - the altos take the top line - giving an interesting, darker texture. Some of the harmonies are quite close and I think it’s a lovely piece.
And so to the familiar seasonal items. It’s right to include them to give the programme balance. Nethsingha and his singers pay these pieces - and their listeners - the important compliment of taking as much care over them as they have done over the less conventional fare. Harold Darke’s classic piece is given a lovely performance and lovely too is the choir’s account of Philip Ledger’s sympathetic arrangement of Silent Night - good planning, too, to place this immediately after his equally good arrangement of the Sussex Carol. Ledger’s predecessor at King’s College, Sir David Willcocks, is represented by his justly popular Tomorrow shall be my dancing day. O little town of Bethlehem, mainstay of innumerable carol services, makes an equally welcome appearance. It wouldn’t be a Christmas programme without John Rutter. When you hear his lovely What sweeter music, which, as Martin Ennis justly observes, contains “one of his most winning melodies”, you realise just why for so many people Rutter has become synonymous with Christmas music. The present performance is first class, with every little detail of Rutter’s music nicely observed.
The singing on this disc is very fine indeed. Solos are well taken and the choir as a group blends extremely well and sings with excellent tone and great clarity. Several of the pieces are accompanied by organ and the college’s Senior Organ Scholar, John Challenger, does a marvellous job. I relished especially his splendid contributions - very different from each other in character - to the Jackson and Mathias pieces.
It only remains to say that the Chandos sound is up to the label’s usual exalted standard - I listened to this hybrid SACD as a conventional CD. This most enjoyable disc will be a high quality Christmas present for a musical friend - or to give to yourself!
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International
STATE OF THE TENOR 1 (BLUE NOTE TONE POET SERIES)
BLUE NOTE RECORDS
Vinyl
$42.99
Aug 28, 2020
Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone, Ron Carter on bass, and Al Foster on drums captured live in 1985 playing at the peak of their respective powers at NYC's historic jazz shrine, The Village Vanguard. Alfred Lion, founder of Blue Note Records and it's sole producer until 1967, said upon hearing these sessions: "I think this is truly a classic album. What Joe plays is unbelievable. This is one of the most important albums that I have ever heard. It is definitely one of the best ever made on Blue Note. And I don't mean the new Blue Note. It's one of the best ever, including all of the records we did in the 50s and 60s."
Invocaciones / Duo Mexicano con Brio
Urtext
CD
$16.99
Apr 27, 2010
INVOCACIONES: Mexican Music for Flute and Piano • Evangelina Reyes (fl); Camelia Goila (pn) • URTEXT DIGITAL JBCC-188 (67:27)
ZYMAN Sonata for Flute and Piano. LAVISTA Dance of Degas’s Ballerinas. CORAL Not So Short Sonata for Flute and Piano. ARMENGOL Divertimento. ARANDA Mnemósine. Cadenza. LUNA Six Fantasies for Flute and Piano. E. TOUSSAINT Bop Study No.1 for Flute Solo
This is another one of those collections of miscellany that is so easily overlooked or dismissed—I would probably pass over it myself if I were just a reader of this magazine. But this recording offers fine performances of an extremely appealing recital program, with a repertoire that ranges from the truly superb to the merely pleasant. I will discuss the program in my own judgment of descending order of interest.
The most fully satisfying work is the 17-minute sonata by the Mexican-American composer Samuel Zyman, now in his late-50s, and a member of the Juilliard faculty for quite a few years. From my personal vantage point, Zyman’s music seems to have drawn little serious attention, but of nearly a dozen of his works that I’ve encountered over the years I haven’t heard one that failed to exhibit an irresistible sense of compelling creative urgency, vividly and expertly articulated within a general language of traditional modern neoclassicism. But unlike the neoclassical norm, often characterized by a cool detachment and lack of emotional commitment, Zyman’s music is always serious and expressive in tone, with a driving contrapuntal energy. I cannot imagine a flutist who wouldn’t relish a work like this, which grabs the listener intensely from the first moment and never lets go. The piece it most resembles is the perennially popular Sonata for Flute and Piano by the late Robert Muczynski, but Zyman’s 1993 sonata is somewhat more driven and edgy.
Also of considerable interest and appeal is the Dance of Degas’s Ballerinas , composed in 1992 by Mario Lavista. Born in 1943, Lavista seems to have the most cosmopolitan academic pedigree of the composers represented, having studied with a range of mentors from Nadia Boulanger and György Ligeti to Karlheinz Stockhausen. But the short piece that we hear here is a consistently absorbing abstract work in a modern traditionalist style. Some listeners may find their imaginations stimulated by the title, but I heard no convincing musical connection to the suggested images, yet had no problem connecting with the piece as pure music.
Leonardo Coral, born in 1962, is a prolific composer whose music has been performed widely throughout Mexico. His four-movement piece, whose title may be translated as Not So Short Sonata for Flute and Piano , dates from 2003. It is a pleasant piece with an occasional reminiscence of Poulenc—pretty, straightforward, but with no plumbing of expressive depths. Mario Ruiz Armengol (1914-2002) was a versatile figure in Mexican music, celebrated in the classical, light classical, and popular fields. His Divertimento in G (1979) for alto flute and piano is a gracious, warmly lyrical piece. Alexis Aranda, not yet 40 and the youngest composer represented here, has been hailed as a major talent within the Mexican music establishment. A student of Mario Lavista, noted above, he is represented here by two very short pieces. The first, Mnemósine , refers to the goddess of memory. Dating from 2002, it begins with striking dissonance, but quickly warms up to an appealingly tonal lyricism. The earlier Cadenza for unaccompanied flute is a rather late addition to a genre overflowing with mediocre pieces.
Armando Luna (b. 1964) received his graduate training under Leonardo Balada at Carnegie Mellon University, while his career has flourished actively in his native Mexico. The program notes accompanying his Six Fantasies of 1992 make all sorts of intriguingly colorful references, but the actual music does not bear them out and is rather ordinary if pleasant enough. Like many of the composers represented on this recital, Eugenio Toussaint (1954-2011) was active in Mexico’s popular, jazz, and classical worlds. His Bop Study No. 1 (1994) was originally written for recorder, but Evangelina Reyes transcribed it for flute. As it stands, the short piece exploits a wide range of flute effects, both familiar and unconventional, many of them suggestive of “bop”-style jazz. All the pieces are performed expertly by both Reyes and her accompanist Camelia Goila.
FANFARE: Walter Simmons
American Opera Classics - Adams: I Was Looking... / Simon
Naxos
CD
$29.99
Oct 18, 2005
In 1998, I reviewed the composer-led excerpts from John Adams’s collaboration with poet and activist June Jordon (1936–2002), I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky. The title is a quote from a survivor of the 1994 Northridge earthquake in southern California. Here we have the whole work. In the earlier review, I assumed what was missing was connecting dialogue, a mistake corrected by one of Fanfare’s many frighteningly alert readers. In fact, the entire work is sung, and here the designation is “song play,” which seems to describe the form quite accurately. The work has much in common with pieces like Brecht-Weill’s Das kleine Mahagony or, more recently, the Rice-Lloyd Webber collaborations, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, in that the songs operate more or less as commentary to the onstage action. Like the Brecht-based Weill works, there is a great deal of implied and explicit social criticism, something that five years into the Bush administration seems much less quaint now. The problems with the work remain. The cardboard characters and their largely clichéd interactions keep everything at arm’s length, something compounded by the tendency of the songs to comment on the action rather than embody it. In addition, for all of its cleverness, Adams’ pastiche score rarely rises to the kind of immediate melodic impact one finds in Weill, Sondheim, or LaChiusa.
The plot, taken from the John Adams Web site, is as follows: in mid-1990s Los Angeles, David, a preacher, sings about his many love affairs and his current girlfriend, Leila. Dewain is arrested by Mike, a homophobic cop, for stealing two bottles of beer while trying to reach his lover, Consuelo, who is afraid that her son has been arrested by the INS. Tiffany videotapes the arrest; she wonders why Mike is not more receptive to her advances. Dewain resists arrest and Mike has him charged with a felony, meaning he could go to jail for 45 years under the “Three Strikes” law. At his trial, David, his lawyer, tries to explain his client’s point of view. After questioning Tiffany, Rick begins to be attracted to her. David visits Dewain in jail, where Dewain tells him he’s decided to go to law school. Leila wonders if David will ever settle down. As act II opens, Leila and David are making out on the couch in David’s office in his church when an earthquake hits. Leila is knocked unconscious. Mike visits Tiffany’s house; she asks him why he hasn’t been more forward, and he has a crisis of sexual identity; Rick suddenly appears, and she asks him out instead. Dewain, in his cell, recounts how the walls split open and he could see the outside, but, realizing that he was better off working inside the system, he did not escape. Consuelo tells him she is going back to El Salvador to fight for political freedom; Dewain decides to stay in Los Angeles. Lying in David’s arms, Leila begins to recover.
At the time of the premiere, Peter Sellars, the original director, offered up the hope that the work would become the play of choice for high schools everywhere. That seems as unlikely now as it did then (should anyone care, the high school musical of choice, once the rights become available, will be William Finn’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), in part because of the sexual and sometimes heavy-handed political content as well as the sheer difficulty of the music. For all its flaws, the work gains enormously in stature when heard complete and, to set the show in context, it is a whole lot more interesting musically than Rent or any of the Andrew Lloyd Webber “rock operas.”
The performance is very fine. Darius de Haas, returning from the original cast, as David the preacher and Kimako Xavier Trotman as Dewain, the gang member, are the only Americans in the cast. It would be idle to pretend that anyone could replace Audra McDonald as Consuelo but Martina Mühlpointner is very good. If you listen closely, some of the singers have slight accents, occasionally making their words a fraction less distinct but, frankly, you have to listen for it and it makes no impact at all on the overall success of the enterprise. As before, the work is recorded like the musical that it is rather than in the defined space more commonly associated with classical music. Therefore, a discussion of recording quality is really beside the point. Extensive notes and a detailed synopsis cued to the individual numbers are included, but no text.
FANFARE: John Story
The plot, taken from the John Adams Web site, is as follows: in mid-1990s Los Angeles, David, a preacher, sings about his many love affairs and his current girlfriend, Leila. Dewain is arrested by Mike, a homophobic cop, for stealing two bottles of beer while trying to reach his lover, Consuelo, who is afraid that her son has been arrested by the INS. Tiffany videotapes the arrest; she wonders why Mike is not more receptive to her advances. Dewain resists arrest and Mike has him charged with a felony, meaning he could go to jail for 45 years under the “Three Strikes” law. At his trial, David, his lawyer, tries to explain his client’s point of view. After questioning Tiffany, Rick begins to be attracted to her. David visits Dewain in jail, where Dewain tells him he’s decided to go to law school. Leila wonders if David will ever settle down. As act II opens, Leila and David are making out on the couch in David’s office in his church when an earthquake hits. Leila is knocked unconscious. Mike visits Tiffany’s house; she asks him why he hasn’t been more forward, and he has a crisis of sexual identity; Rick suddenly appears, and she asks him out instead. Dewain, in his cell, recounts how the walls split open and he could see the outside, but, realizing that he was better off working inside the system, he did not escape. Consuelo tells him she is going back to El Salvador to fight for political freedom; Dewain decides to stay in Los Angeles. Lying in David’s arms, Leila begins to recover.
At the time of the premiere, Peter Sellars, the original director, offered up the hope that the work would become the play of choice for high schools everywhere. That seems as unlikely now as it did then (should anyone care, the high school musical of choice, once the rights become available, will be William Finn’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), in part because of the sexual and sometimes heavy-handed political content as well as the sheer difficulty of the music. For all its flaws, the work gains enormously in stature when heard complete and, to set the show in context, it is a whole lot more interesting musically than Rent or any of the Andrew Lloyd Webber “rock operas.”
The performance is very fine. Darius de Haas, returning from the original cast, as David the preacher and Kimako Xavier Trotman as Dewain, the gang member, are the only Americans in the cast. It would be idle to pretend that anyone could replace Audra McDonald as Consuelo but Martina Mühlpointner is very good. If you listen closely, some of the singers have slight accents, occasionally making their words a fraction less distinct but, frankly, you have to listen for it and it makes no impact at all on the overall success of the enterprise. As before, the work is recorded like the musical that it is rather than in the defined space more commonly associated with classical music. Therefore, a discussion of recording quality is really beside the point. Extensive notes and a detailed synopsis cued to the individual numbers are included, but no text.
FANFARE: John Story
Alma: Ibero-American Songs
SOMM Recordings
CD
$18.99
Jul 18, 2025
SOMM Recordings is excited to explore the fascinating and largely unknown repertoire of Ibero-American art songs. A shared passion for showcasing hidden jewels of Latin American song inspired the collaboration of Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano Rolong and Portuguese pianist Joao Araujo, who began their partnership while studying at the Royal College of Music. Julieth received the 2018 RCM President's Award presented by RCM President, HM King Charles III. She won the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Audience Prize in the 2023 Cardiff Singer of the World competition and was recently named one of Opera Wire's Top Ten Rising Stars. Joao was awarded best collaborative pianist prizes at the Concours Musical International de Montreal in Canada and the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at Wigmore Hall, and he has been nominated for the Gerald Moore Award. Their recital includes songs in Spanish and Portuguese from seven countries. Reflecting Argentina is "Dance of Two Brothers" by the Impressionistic composer Carlos Guastavino, and "Cancion de cuna India," a haunting lullaby by Gilardo Gilardi, inspired by Argentina's indigenous music. Maria Grever was the first Mexican female composer to gain international success. Her innate melodic gifts are evident in "My Soul" and "You Said 'I Love You'." "Uirapuru," by Brazilian composer Waldemar Henrique, describes the song of the so-named musician wren, while the evocative "Bluebird" by compatriot, Jayme Ovalle, was embraced by sopranos like Victoria de Los Angeles and Montserrat Caballe, and baritone Gerard Souzay. Ernani Braga's gift for transforming Afro-Brazilian musical elements is underscored in a song reflecting Brazilian folk religion and a sugar-mill workers' song. The simple originality of Spanish composer, Maria de Pablos Cerezo, who tragically spent her final decades in a mental institution, is heard here in "The Water Wheel." Ernesto Halffter's much-admired arrangement of a popular fado, "Oh, What a Beautiful Girl" is followed by two selections arranged by the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca: "The Moorish girls from Jaen" and "Sevillian Lullaby." Barcelona native Fernando Obradors conjures the Andalusian dance, "El vito," and from zarzuela composer, Joaquin "Quinito" Valverde Sanjuan, we have his sublime "Carnations." "Lullaby to Put Albertico to Bed" and "Rojo," a description of sunset, reflect the folkloric research by Venezuelan musicologist-composer, Modesta Bor. Colombia is represented by the haunting lullaby, "Promises So You Can Sleep" from Luis Carlos Figueroa Sierra; a loving picture of a country girl, "La campesina," by Jaime Leon Ferro; and "Four Questions" from a heartbroken lover by Pedro Morales Pino. The recital ends with two songs from Portugal. "The Willows" by Luis Costa is one of the gems of Portuguese art song. Finally, from Antonio Fragoso, a victim of the 1918 influenza epidemic, we have "Cradling the Little Boy."
Jones: Missa Spes Nostra - Ludford: Ave Cujus Conceptio - Hunt: Stabat Mater
Blue Heron Renaissance Choir
CD
$21.99
Aug 14, 2015
At their most fanatical, the radicalized Reformists of England’s Church sought to purify the Church of everything worldly—and for our purposes, that included music set to Latin texts or requiring professional performance. It didn’t need a mass uprising to achieve this cleansing, this destruction. Merely a few small gangs of determined individuals in a time and place when the rule of law was in abeyance was probably sufficient, though the appointment of several influential Puritans to high office certainly didn’t help matters. Much music is known to have been lost, though a justified level of fear encouraged forethought in a few instances. It wasn’t until 1926 that a servant at Peterhouse revealed a hidden cupboard behind the Perne library’s paneling, for instance, where three Caroline partbooks were hidden.
Still, some of the partbooks have gone missing over time; and given that a set, one voice to a part, is required for performance, any loss has proven sufficient to silence so much fine Tudor polyphony. The Henrician Peterhouse group—Peterhouse MSS 40, 41, 31 and 32, a total of 72 works, 39 of which are unica—furnish a sad example of this. Of its five partbooks, the tenor is missing, as well as several leaves removed at some point from the treble. Various scholars long asserted that the kind of florid style frequently found in these books was no longer being composed in the later years of Henry’s rule, and paid no attention to the partbooks because they were little known and their contents unperformable. It is thanks to musicologist Nick Sandon, who has supplied the tenor part (and when necessary, the treble), that we have a working edition of those compositions that can’t be found elsewhere.
This fourth volume of the series once again features a work by Nicholas Ludford (c. 1490–1557). He is easily the best-known composer on the disc, which, given that he was almost entirely unknown until the last half century, says much about England’s musical discontinuity. (As well as the importance of Peterhouse’s Henrician partbooks; for a fair amount of what they include isn’t unica by well-known composers, but by those who lived, worked, died, and were completely forgotten.) Though his Ave cujus conceptio is not the centerpiece of the album as the Missa Regnum mundi (Blue Heron 1003) and Missa Inclina cor meum (Blue Heron 1004) were of theirs, it is a brightly buoyant work without shadows, launching lengthy melismatic phrases like so many streamers.
The central work on the program is the Missa Spes nostra of Robert Jones (fl. 1520–1535). His is a cantus firmus Mass, and as was the custom in England at the time, there is no pre-composed, polyphonic Kyrie. (Blue Heron supplies a plainchant one from the Sarum use sung, as was this Mass, on Trinity Sunday.) Metcalfe points out in his excellent liner notes that Jones “plays with the idea of alternation between major and minor harmonizations of the third scale degree” throughout the Mass. This, along with some simpler homophonic statements among the wealth of imitation, gives it at times an almost folk-like quality, though upon other occasions Jones relishes the passing dissonances his juxtapositions invite. Sandon notes in his doctoral dissertation that Jones can be unpredictable, and that he “sometimes writes very neat motivically generated counterpoint, but at other times he can be quirky and wayward.” This Mass is a highly individualized work, and amply repays repeated listening.
The final composer on the program, Robert Hunt, is so obscure that he hasn’t even been further identified yet. Only two pieces of his survive, both in the Peterhouse partbooks: an Ave Maria mater dei, and the Stabat mater dolorosa heard here. It is the only work on the disc missing both its tenor and treble parts, which Sandon has supplied. In a manner that recalls the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, it invites the listener to partake in the successive emotions experienced at the foot of the Cross by Mary, and manages this brilliantly in a very free, intensely emotive fashion. It should be required listening of anyone who feels that imitative counterpoint can’t be expressive.
It is also a superb example of what Scott Metcalfe has achieved with Blue Heron: an ensemble that yields to none for intonation, blend, and clarity, yet also utilizes both overall and part-related dynamics as an expressive device in a way most other professional choirs of its quality do not. Metcalfe is alive to the lyricism that was a remarked-upon feature of 15th-century English music, and the beauty of Blue Heron’s phrasing displays this everywhere on this disc. That the choir isn’t better known is no doubt a result in part of its rarified repertoire, but also Metcalfe’s desire to retain control over all aspects of his recordings. So you won’t find Blue Heron on such labels as Hyperion or Harmonia Mundi, but you will find that the excellent engineering on this album provides a close, rich sound with just enough reverberation to give body to the voices.
Complete texts and translations are included. Really, the entire series to date is worth the purchase. And if you want to sample some of Blue Heron’s recordings, as well as buy them, the place to go is blueheronchoir.org. Strongly recommended.
Still, some of the partbooks have gone missing over time; and given that a set, one voice to a part, is required for performance, any loss has proven sufficient to silence so much fine Tudor polyphony. The Henrician Peterhouse group—Peterhouse MSS 40, 41, 31 and 32, a total of 72 works, 39 of which are unica—furnish a sad example of this. Of its five partbooks, the tenor is missing, as well as several leaves removed at some point from the treble. Various scholars long asserted that the kind of florid style frequently found in these books was no longer being composed in the later years of Henry’s rule, and paid no attention to the partbooks because they were little known and their contents unperformable. It is thanks to musicologist Nick Sandon, who has supplied the tenor part (and when necessary, the treble), that we have a working edition of those compositions that can’t be found elsewhere.
This fourth volume of the series once again features a work by Nicholas Ludford (c. 1490–1557). He is easily the best-known composer on the disc, which, given that he was almost entirely unknown until the last half century, says much about England’s musical discontinuity. (As well as the importance of Peterhouse’s Henrician partbooks; for a fair amount of what they include isn’t unica by well-known composers, but by those who lived, worked, died, and were completely forgotten.) Though his Ave cujus conceptio is not the centerpiece of the album as the Missa Regnum mundi (Blue Heron 1003) and Missa Inclina cor meum (Blue Heron 1004) were of theirs, it is a brightly buoyant work without shadows, launching lengthy melismatic phrases like so many streamers.
The central work on the program is the Missa Spes nostra of Robert Jones (fl. 1520–1535). His is a cantus firmus Mass, and as was the custom in England at the time, there is no pre-composed, polyphonic Kyrie. (Blue Heron supplies a plainchant one from the Sarum use sung, as was this Mass, on Trinity Sunday.) Metcalfe points out in his excellent liner notes that Jones “plays with the idea of alternation between major and minor harmonizations of the third scale degree” throughout the Mass. This, along with some simpler homophonic statements among the wealth of imitation, gives it at times an almost folk-like quality, though upon other occasions Jones relishes the passing dissonances his juxtapositions invite. Sandon notes in his doctoral dissertation that Jones can be unpredictable, and that he “sometimes writes very neat motivically generated counterpoint, but at other times he can be quirky and wayward.” This Mass is a highly individualized work, and amply repays repeated listening.
The final composer on the program, Robert Hunt, is so obscure that he hasn’t even been further identified yet. Only two pieces of his survive, both in the Peterhouse partbooks: an Ave Maria mater dei, and the Stabat mater dolorosa heard here. It is the only work on the disc missing both its tenor and treble parts, which Sandon has supplied. In a manner that recalls the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, it invites the listener to partake in the successive emotions experienced at the foot of the Cross by Mary, and manages this brilliantly in a very free, intensely emotive fashion. It should be required listening of anyone who feels that imitative counterpoint can’t be expressive.
It is also a superb example of what Scott Metcalfe has achieved with Blue Heron: an ensemble that yields to none for intonation, blend, and clarity, yet also utilizes both overall and part-related dynamics as an expressive device in a way most other professional choirs of its quality do not. Metcalfe is alive to the lyricism that was a remarked-upon feature of 15th-century English music, and the beauty of Blue Heron’s phrasing displays this everywhere on this disc. That the choir isn’t better known is no doubt a result in part of its rarified repertoire, but also Metcalfe’s desire to retain control over all aspects of his recordings. So you won’t find Blue Heron on such labels as Hyperion or Harmonia Mundi, but you will find that the excellent engineering on this album provides a close, rich sound with just enough reverberation to give body to the voices.
Complete texts and translations are included. Really, the entire series to date is worth the purchase. And if you want to sample some of Blue Heron’s recordings, as well as buy them, the place to go is blueheronchoir.org. Strongly recommended.
Joy to the World: An American Christmas / Christophers, Handel & Haydn Society
Coro
CD
$10.49
$20.99
Save 50%
Sep 30, 2013
Celebrate Christmas with America's oldest arts organisation, the Handel and Haydn Society, as they explore a fascinating and eclectic selection of festive music from traditional carols using American tunes to Christmas motets by Charles Ives and contemporary American composer, James Bassi. Also included are carols by the 'father of American choral music', Bostonian William Billings, and the captivating and instantly-recognisable Carol of the Bells by Mykola Leontovich.
REVIEWS:
There are some surprising and beautiful arrangements on the Boston-based Handel and Haydn Society’s Joy to the World – An American Christmas, conducted by their English artistic director, Harry Christophers. What Christophers has offered is an overview of the most popular carols sung in America (sometimes presenting them alongside their English counterparts), yielding not only the usual fare of Rutter and Howells, as well as a particularly accomplished performance of Morten Lauridsen’s O magnum mysterium, but some new works including Quem pastores laudavere, a wonderfully creative combination of traditional melodies and barbershop ideas by James Bassi.
-- Gramophone
This is not the brash affair that you might expect from the Christmas-card cover; even the pseudo-Handelian Joy to the World receives the most tasteful performance I’ve ever heard. It contains slightly more familiar material than the [comparable offerings from other labels]...there’s some material that isn’t specifically seasonal or familiar and the presence of Harry Christophers at the helm of the Handel and Haydn Society lends it distinction well above the run of the mill. Good recording and the inclusion of the booklet provide added incentives.
-- Brian Wilson
This Christmas collection consists of 19 numbers, many traditional and familiar. Included are two settings of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ and three of ‘In Dulci Jubilo’. The superlative musicianship and the almost perfect blending of voices make this one of the best Christmas recordings I’ve heard. If you like “different” arrangements, there are ‘Joy to the World’ and ‘Angels We Have Heard on High’ with harmonies slightly altered from the usual. If you prefer the traditional, you can hear perfectly sung renditions of ‘It Came upon the Midnight Clear’, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, and ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’. Other high points include gorgeous choral sound in Marten Lauridsen’s ‘O Magnum Mysterium’ and James Bassi’s ‘Quem Pastores Laudavere’.
My favorites come near the middle of the program. Harry Christophers, the director, has included two songs new to me: ‘The Shepherd’s Carol’ by Bob Chilcott and Charles Ives’s simply-titled ‘Christmas Carol’. Both are simple, beautiful texts set to lovely music and scrupulously performed. Just these two selections make this recording worth owning. There is also a fine solo on ‘I Wonder as I Wander’, a beautiful diminuendo to end Herbert Howells’s ‘A Spotless Rose’, and at the end as perfect a ‘Carol of the Bells’ as one is likely to hear.
The excellent booklet includes texts and background information on the music and the performers. An excellent addition to one’s Christmas collection!
-- American Record Guide
When the Handel and Haydn Society sing holiday standards, it’s as though carolers stopped by your house—and happened to be top-ofthe-line professionals. Starting with a single pure voice, an a cappella rendition of “I wonder as I wander,” with pristine tone and impeccable intonation, opens the recording. The singers bring a gentle lilt to various settings of “In dulci jubilo” and blend seamlessly in a reverent “O magnum mysterium,” drawing attention to its arresting harmonic shifts. The ensemble also performs an exuberant “Joy to the World,” with florid accompanimental lines and calland-response sections buffeting the familiar melody, as well as a “Carol of the Bells” that highlights the vocalists’ pinpoint precision.
-- NJ.com
Dreamers
Sony Masterworks
CD
$11.98
Sep 21, 2018
These days, when even the term "dreamers" is disputed territory, celebrating beauty is a political act. That is the beating heart of Dreamers, the collaboration between New York-based Mexican singer Magos Herrera and the string quartet Brooklyn Rider. The recording, released on September 21 on Sony Music Masterworks, includes gems of the Ibero-American songbook such as "Volver a los 17," (To Be 17 Again); "Coraçao Vagabundo," (Vagabond Heart); and "Balderrama," as well as pieces written to texts by Octavio Paz, Rubén Darío, and Federico García Lorca - all reimagined by a superb group of arrangers including Jaques Morelenbaum, Gonzalo Grau, Diego Schissi, Guillermo Klein and Brooklyn Rider's own Colin Jacobsen. The connecting thread is that the poets and songwriters featured on Dreamers came from places that have endured brutal state violence. Consider Violeta Parra, from Chile; Joao Gilberto, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, from Brazil; Gustavo "Cuchi" Leguizamón, from Argentina and García Lorca, Spain. Poet, essayist and Nobel Prize winner Paz even resigned as Mexico's ambassador to India in 1968 to protest his government's violent repression of student demonstrations. "It is, first of all, an album of incredible songs, beautiful songs," says Herrera. But it's beauty with a purpose. The creators featured here, "were affected in different ways, but what transcends is their work, and their work represents love, " she says. "Love for humanity, love for democracy and the inspiration to dream. It's important to remember that every big change in history happened because someone dared to dream about it. This work is to inspire people to keep dreaming. "In fact, for Colin Jacobsen, the quartet's violinist and resident composer and arranger, Dreamers is a reminder that "beauty can come out of terrible situations. This year the world is celebrating the centenary of Leonard Bernstein and I think he has one of the great quotes: 'This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before'. "Dreamers was produced by Brooklyn Rider's violinist Johnny Gandelsman, whose production credits also include Yo-Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble's Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home (2016), and music for the Ken Burns' documentary TV series The Vietnam War. Herrera, who after studying in Los Angeles and Boston settled in New York City in 2008, has proven to be an intrepid jazz singer, and her attitude and skill has led her to intriguing pursuits. In recent years - and these are only some broad brushstrokes - she followed a jazz album of original songs (Distancia, 2009) with a tribute to Mexican composers from the Golden Era of the 1930s and 40s (Mexico Azul, 2011) before pivoting to collaborate with flamenco producer and guitarist Javier Limón (Dawn, 2014). Brooklyn Rider - Johnny Gandelsman, violin; Colin Jacobsen, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; and Michael Nicolas, cello - also have made ignoring musical boundaries a defining element of their identity. They served notice with their debut recording Passport (2008), which included arrangements of Armenian folk songs, an arrangement of a song by Mexican rockers Café Tacuba and an original by Jacobsen, and have since continued to expand their repertoire to include music by composers as disparate as Philip Glass, Björk, Vijay Iyer and Elvis Costello. They have also explored collaborations with artists such as banjoist Béla Fleck, Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman, Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, and Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor. "This is my first experience recording with strings and this is not just a string quartet, this is Brooklyn Rider," says Herrera. "They have been together for years and have their own way of working. For me it was jumping into the unknown. " "Working with Magos was very collaborative," recalled Jacobsen. "We wanted this to be a project where there was really space for Magos's singing but also for our playing, so it wasn't a jazz album where you have strings just as background, but something that is very integrated. " Dreamers includes three texts set to music composed by Herrera, two of them by Octavio Paz: "Niña" (Girl) and "Dreams" - from "Cántaro Roto" (Broken Jug). "It's just a little fragment of one of his most amazing pieces, and it talks about dreaming," says Herrera. "I really wanted to sing this song in it's English version because that's the core of the album. I wanted everybody to understand it. " The third piece, "Tu y Yo,"(You and I) is based on a work by Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío. As for the choice of arrangers and matching them with specific songs, Jacobsen notes that "we wanted to have voices that really knew Magos, the singing tradition and the jazz vocabulary but also really knew string quartet vocabulary. "The title of the recording has many layers, but the main inspiration was obviously the current political scenario, and not only in the United States but around the world. As a Mexican woman artist, I wanted to change the narrative," says Herrera, who is a spokesperson for the United Nations campaign Unite to End Violence Against Women. "There's a narrative criminalizing immigrants and immigration. We wanted to express the dignity and beauty of these cultures. "For all the discussions about borders, walls, and the history and meaning of migration, perhaps there is no stronger argument on Dreamers about the power of music to transcend than Jacobsen's arrangement of "Balderrama. " Here's an Argentine folk song, made popular by singer Mercedes Sosa, that celebrates a peña, a restaurant-bar-cum-meeting-place for poets, writers and musicians in Salta, a province in the Northwest of Argentina. It seemingly couldn't be more of a local ditty - or, as it turns out, more universal. And Jacobsen also hears something else that speaks to the spirit of Dreamers. He first heard the song as part of the soundtrack for Steven Soderbergh´s Che, a biopic of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Ché" Guevara. "He uses it very poignantly as the closing theme. I heard it and it just touched a chord in me. I fell in love with it. So when I first spoke with Magos about this project and she mentioned "Balderrama" I said 'yes' immediately," he recalls. "I told her we needed to do this project just because that one song is so beautiful - and also because I really wanted to arrange it. " But, he soberly notes, "Encoded in that song there is something pertinent to the whole project. Here is a celebration of Balderrama, a place where musicians and poets come together and a fire burns through the night for beauty, and the song asks 'where would we go if Balderrama goes out?' which is to say, if that place wasn't there, if that creative fire dies, then all would fall apart. I feel like that's a beautiful image for the whole project.
MONSTER IS JUST AN ANIMAL YOU HAVEN'T MET YET
INTAKT RECORDS
CD
$18.35
Apr 05, 2024
Two exceptional musicians - Angelica Sanchez and Chad Taylor - present their first duo album with A Monster is Just an Animal You Haven't Met Yet. And it's high time, given their long musical friendship, which has solidified over the years in various formations. It is therefore no exaggeration to describe pianist Angelica Sanchez and drummer Chad Taylor as two of the most important musical personalities in contemporary jazz. Both are virtuoso improvisers and unmistakable stylists and they celebrate a music that releases energy - pulsating vividly while at the same time withdrawing into intimacy. The gratification that Sanchez and Taylor feel in playing together is heard in every note, designating them a classic duo. A celebration of successful interplay and a tribute to the moment. Playing the music of our time, these two personalities who show respect for each other and give each other space. "We are eavesdropping upon an intimate exposition of dimensional theses. A privileged impropriety granted by no one, vaguely wanton, and luridly inviting. And so, it is...", writes Brandon Ross in the liner notes.
Lorraine at Emmanuel / Lieberson
Avie Records
CD
$9.99
$19.99
Save 50%
Apr 01, 2008
"When the Wigmore Hall Live label released an archival recording of a 1998 recital by the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson last year, it raised the hope of more such posthumous finds. And just as that hope had begun to fade, here comes another treasure, this one unearthed from the archives of Emmanuel Music in Boston.
As it happens, this release serves as tribute not only to Hunt Lieberson, who died in 2006, but also to her frequent close collaborator Craig Smith, the founder of Emmanuel Music, who died in November. And the material is choice: spacious arias from two Bach cantatas and extended excerpts from Handel’s oratorio “Hercules.”
The disc begins with a 1992 recording of the aria “Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder” from Bach’s Cantata No. 30: Something of a tease as the opening instrumental passage heightens the anticipation of Hunt Lieberson’s entrance, more than two minutes into the disc. But that glorious Voice, when it appears, meets every expectation.
The “Hercules” excerpts, from 1999, trace the travails of the hero’s wife, Dejanira, culminating in a harrowing mad scene.... Although Hunt Lieberson’s compelling stage presence added mightily to any performance, the voice alone amply conveys her characteristic intensity here....
Dare we hope for more?"
– James R. Oestreich, New York Times [8/10/2008]
The early death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson deprived the world of an exceptional artist and one, moreover, who left all too few commercial recordings. However, some archive recordings are now beginning to emerge and this new release, featuring previously unissued live recordings is one such. The CD also forms a tribute to one of her mentors, Craig Smith, Music Director at Emmanuel Church, Boston from 1970 until his death in November 2007 at the age of sixty.
Smith founded Emmanuel Music, which, besides fulfilling a liturgical function at the church, evolved also into a concert ensemble of no little distinction. Perhaps Smith’s greatest achievement was to inaugurate the practice whereby each Sunday between October and April, the main Sunday morning church service includes a cantata by Bach appropriate to the day. That tradition continues to this day and later this year the thirty-ninth consecutive season of liturgical cantatas will commence.
It was through Emmanuel Music that the then Lorraine Hunt took some of the first steps on her solo singing career and she maintained the connection, I believe, for the rest of her life, including appearances in the Sunday cantata series. This disc, therefore, takes us back to her singing roots.
The disc begins and ends with arias taken, I presume, from complete Sunday service performances of Bach cantatas. The aria "Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder" comes from the cantata Freue dich, erlöste schar, written for the feast of St. John the Baptist. Alfred Dürr writes thus of the cantata: "The underlying mood is joyful, relaxed and unproblematical, not only in the opening chorus but in the four arias, where a dance-like style is often clearly evident." Unfortunately, to judge by this aria at least, Craig Smith seems to have a different conception. Presumably with the agreement of his soloist, he sets and extremely slow tempo and the aria lasts 8:46.
This sent me scurrying to my shelves for comparisons. John Eliot Gardiner, in his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage performance takes a mere 5:27 but he is surely too fleet – at his pace the aria sounds like a gambol through the Elysian meadows. So that might seem to suggest that Smith is "simply" old fashioned in his conception. But turn to Fritz Werner’s 1971 performance and you find a tempo that seems to me to be just right – he takes 6:03. Beside Werner I’m afraid Smith sounds laboured. What saves the performance is the sheer beauty and inwardness of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s singing. On its own terms the performance is quite lovely and no admirer of the singer will be disappointed but I just think the basic conception is wrong.
Things are much more satisfactory in the other Bach aria, which is placed at the opposite end of the programme. This aria is from the cantata Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, which is for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. Again, Miss Hunt Lieberson’s singing is beautiful and communicative and this time the pace is much more sensible, I think. The conductor here is the composer, John Harbison, who has also had a long association with Emmanuel Music and who, in fact, is currently the Acting Artistic Director. He adopts a slow pace, but this aria can take it. Again comparisons were instructive. Eliot Gardiner’s tempo is almost identical and he takes exactly as long as does Harbison. Werner didn’t record this cantata but another celebrated Bach traditionalist, Karl Richter, did. In his 1976/7 recording he takes 9:34 but his soloist, Julia Hamari, sounds cool besides either of her rivals and she and Richter, whose direction is smooth and relaxed, convey no real sense of trepidation. Nathalie Stutzmann, for Eliot Gardiner, is perhaps a touch more inward than Hunt Lieberson but she’s equally involving and it’s only by the merest whisker that I come down in favour of this present, excellent performance.
The remainder of the disc is devoted to excerpts from Handel’s oratorio, Hercules and these excerpts contain all the music for Dejanira, the wife of the eponymous hero. I presume, though it’s not clear from the documentation, that these extracts are taken from a live account of the complete work.
The role of Dejanira is an exceptionally demanding one, both vocally and emotionally. She is, in Craig Smith’s words, a "monumental character." I can well imagine that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was a pretty formidable presence in the performance of the oratorio for these extracts show us a vivid character portrayal.
In her first aria, "The world when day’s career is run," she is fully the grief-stricken wife, yet she still retains dignity. Much of Dejanira’s music is in moderate or slow tempo but when swifter music arrives, in "Begone, my fears, fly, hence, away," Miss Hunt Lieberson excels in the passagework.
As her jealousy of the captive princess, Iole, begins to take hold and her certainty that Hercules has been unfaithful increases there’s great sadness in the aria ‘When beauty sorrow’s liv’ry wears’ and that is splendidly conveyed here. Particularly outstanding is the account of "Cease, ruler of the day, to rise," where the singing is particularly expressive. Writing of this disc elsewhere, but of another aria in the programme, the critic Michael Kennedy spoke of Miss Hunt Lieberson’s "power to humanise every note and bring the music to new life." How I agree and I’d say that this comment applies even more strongly to this deep aria.
The final excerpt is the Mad Scene. Here Miss Hunt Lieberson is intensely dramatic without ever going overboard. This is extremely demanding music and she performs it vividly and, once again, when the divisions arise she displays fine vocal agility. Hers is a tremendous performance of this recitative and aria and, unsurprisingly, it sparks an ovation from the audience who, otherwise, are commendably silent throughout.
These extracts contain some superb Handel singing. Frequently I was reminded of Dame Janet Baker’s assumption of Handelian roles and I can pay no higher compliment than that.
Despite my reservation over the one Bach item – a reservation that does not concern the singing per se – this is a superb disc that all admirers of this much-missed singer will want to have. And if you’ve not heard Lorraine Hunt Lieberson before, buy this disc and discover for yourself what all the fuss is about.
– John Quinn, MusicWeb International
As it happens, this release serves as tribute not only to Hunt Lieberson, who died in 2006, but also to her frequent close collaborator Craig Smith, the founder of Emmanuel Music, who died in November. And the material is choice: spacious arias from two Bach cantatas and extended excerpts from Handel’s oratorio “Hercules.”
The disc begins with a 1992 recording of the aria “Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder” from Bach’s Cantata No. 30: Something of a tease as the opening instrumental passage heightens the anticipation of Hunt Lieberson’s entrance, more than two minutes into the disc. But that glorious Voice, when it appears, meets every expectation.
The “Hercules” excerpts, from 1999, trace the travails of the hero’s wife, Dejanira, culminating in a harrowing mad scene.... Although Hunt Lieberson’s compelling stage presence added mightily to any performance, the voice alone amply conveys her characteristic intensity here....
Dare we hope for more?"
– James R. Oestreich, New York Times [8/10/2008]
The early death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson deprived the world of an exceptional artist and one, moreover, who left all too few commercial recordings. However, some archive recordings are now beginning to emerge and this new release, featuring previously unissued live recordings is one such. The CD also forms a tribute to one of her mentors, Craig Smith, Music Director at Emmanuel Church, Boston from 1970 until his death in November 2007 at the age of sixty.
Smith founded Emmanuel Music, which, besides fulfilling a liturgical function at the church, evolved also into a concert ensemble of no little distinction. Perhaps Smith’s greatest achievement was to inaugurate the practice whereby each Sunday between October and April, the main Sunday morning church service includes a cantata by Bach appropriate to the day. That tradition continues to this day and later this year the thirty-ninth consecutive season of liturgical cantatas will commence.
It was through Emmanuel Music that the then Lorraine Hunt took some of the first steps on her solo singing career and she maintained the connection, I believe, for the rest of her life, including appearances in the Sunday cantata series. This disc, therefore, takes us back to her singing roots.
The disc begins and ends with arias taken, I presume, from complete Sunday service performances of Bach cantatas. The aria "Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder" comes from the cantata Freue dich, erlöste schar, written for the feast of St. John the Baptist. Alfred Dürr writes thus of the cantata: "The underlying mood is joyful, relaxed and unproblematical, not only in the opening chorus but in the four arias, where a dance-like style is often clearly evident." Unfortunately, to judge by this aria at least, Craig Smith seems to have a different conception. Presumably with the agreement of his soloist, he sets and extremely slow tempo and the aria lasts 8:46.
This sent me scurrying to my shelves for comparisons. John Eliot Gardiner, in his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage performance takes a mere 5:27 but he is surely too fleet – at his pace the aria sounds like a gambol through the Elysian meadows. So that might seem to suggest that Smith is "simply" old fashioned in his conception. But turn to Fritz Werner’s 1971 performance and you find a tempo that seems to me to be just right – he takes 6:03. Beside Werner I’m afraid Smith sounds laboured. What saves the performance is the sheer beauty and inwardness of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s singing. On its own terms the performance is quite lovely and no admirer of the singer will be disappointed but I just think the basic conception is wrong.
Things are much more satisfactory in the other Bach aria, which is placed at the opposite end of the programme. This aria is from the cantata Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, which is for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. Again, Miss Hunt Lieberson’s singing is beautiful and communicative and this time the pace is much more sensible, I think. The conductor here is the composer, John Harbison, who has also had a long association with Emmanuel Music and who, in fact, is currently the Acting Artistic Director. He adopts a slow pace, but this aria can take it. Again comparisons were instructive. Eliot Gardiner’s tempo is almost identical and he takes exactly as long as does Harbison. Werner didn’t record this cantata but another celebrated Bach traditionalist, Karl Richter, did. In his 1976/7 recording he takes 9:34 but his soloist, Julia Hamari, sounds cool besides either of her rivals and she and Richter, whose direction is smooth and relaxed, convey no real sense of trepidation. Nathalie Stutzmann, for Eliot Gardiner, is perhaps a touch more inward than Hunt Lieberson but she’s equally involving and it’s only by the merest whisker that I come down in favour of this present, excellent performance.
The remainder of the disc is devoted to excerpts from Handel’s oratorio, Hercules and these excerpts contain all the music for Dejanira, the wife of the eponymous hero. I presume, though it’s not clear from the documentation, that these extracts are taken from a live account of the complete work.
The role of Dejanira is an exceptionally demanding one, both vocally and emotionally. She is, in Craig Smith’s words, a "monumental character." I can well imagine that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was a pretty formidable presence in the performance of the oratorio for these extracts show us a vivid character portrayal.
In her first aria, "The world when day’s career is run," she is fully the grief-stricken wife, yet she still retains dignity. Much of Dejanira’s music is in moderate or slow tempo but when swifter music arrives, in "Begone, my fears, fly, hence, away," Miss Hunt Lieberson excels in the passagework.
As her jealousy of the captive princess, Iole, begins to take hold and her certainty that Hercules has been unfaithful increases there’s great sadness in the aria ‘When beauty sorrow’s liv’ry wears’ and that is splendidly conveyed here. Particularly outstanding is the account of "Cease, ruler of the day, to rise," where the singing is particularly expressive. Writing of this disc elsewhere, but of another aria in the programme, the critic Michael Kennedy spoke of Miss Hunt Lieberson’s "power to humanise every note and bring the music to new life." How I agree and I’d say that this comment applies even more strongly to this deep aria.
The final excerpt is the Mad Scene. Here Miss Hunt Lieberson is intensely dramatic without ever going overboard. This is extremely demanding music and she performs it vividly and, once again, when the divisions arise she displays fine vocal agility. Hers is a tremendous performance of this recitative and aria and, unsurprisingly, it sparks an ovation from the audience who, otherwise, are commendably silent throughout.
These extracts contain some superb Handel singing. Frequently I was reminded of Dame Janet Baker’s assumption of Handelian roles and I can pay no higher compliment than that.
Despite my reservation over the one Bach item – a reservation that does not concern the singing per se – this is a superb disc that all admirers of this much-missed singer will want to have. And if you’ve not heard Lorraine Hunt Lieberson before, buy this disc and discover for yourself what all the fuss is about.
– John Quinn, MusicWeb International
A Very Renmen Christmas, Live! / Perry, Renaissance Men
Navona
CD
$8.49
$16.99
Save 50%
Nov 13, 2020
The Renaissance Men are back with their latest release on Navona Records: A VERY RENMEN CHRISTMAS: LIVE! The album, which features lush choral arrangements of traditional hymns and holiday classics, captures the festive spirit of the RenMen’s annual Christmas galas for listeners everywhere. Following on the heels of their 2019 release, RENMEN LAMENTS, this newest collection offers timeless seasonal chamber music arranged for tenor, baritone, and bass voices.
The album opens with soloist Corey Dalton Hart intoning the verse of Some Children See Him; the sparkling clarity of each rounded note is soon multiplied by the rest of the choir, elevating the performance to spiritual heights. This is followed by Cantate Domino, an invigorating setting of Psalm 96. With its aggressive rhythmic action and sensitive dynamics, the Latin text is presented as an arresting and captivating musical piece. Riu Chiu is a traditional Spanish song, and the RenMen bring it to life with passionate energy against the chattering rhythm of a tambourine. The RenMen treat listeners to favorite classics, as well, but always with that signature sound and attention to detail they are known for. Their rendition of I’ll Be Home for Christmas is a treatment of the song made popular by Rascal Flatts. Blending the choral group’s influences, this number incorporates jazz, country, and popular stylings seamlessly with traditional choral techniques. Later, songs like Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman offer a lighthearted counterpoint to O Magnum Mysterium and Angels We Have Heard on High, making this a joyful and inviting holiday album for the whole family.
Steeped in time-honored western choral music and flavored with yuletide fun, A VERY RENMEN CHRISTMAS: LIVE! brings the merriment of the RenMen’s live performances to your living room. Pour some eggnog, don that favorite Christmas sweater, and enjoy this collection of ancient and modern classics.
The album opens with soloist Corey Dalton Hart intoning the verse of Some Children See Him; the sparkling clarity of each rounded note is soon multiplied by the rest of the choir, elevating the performance to spiritual heights. This is followed by Cantate Domino, an invigorating setting of Psalm 96. With its aggressive rhythmic action and sensitive dynamics, the Latin text is presented as an arresting and captivating musical piece. Riu Chiu is a traditional Spanish song, and the RenMen bring it to life with passionate energy against the chattering rhythm of a tambourine. The RenMen treat listeners to favorite classics, as well, but always with that signature sound and attention to detail they are known for. Their rendition of I’ll Be Home for Christmas is a treatment of the song made popular by Rascal Flatts. Blending the choral group’s influences, this number incorporates jazz, country, and popular stylings seamlessly with traditional choral techniques. Later, songs like Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman offer a lighthearted counterpoint to O Magnum Mysterium and Angels We Have Heard on High, making this a joyful and inviting holiday album for the whole family.
Steeped in time-honored western choral music and flavored with yuletide fun, A VERY RENMEN CHRISTMAS: LIVE! brings the merriment of the RenMen’s live performances to your living room. Pour some eggnog, don that favorite Christmas sweater, and enjoy this collection of ancient and modern classics.
American Stories / McGill, Pacifica Quartet
Cedille
CD
$19.99
Nov 11, 2022
Anthony McGill, New York Philharmonic principal clarinet and 2020 Avery Fisher Prize winner, and the multiple Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet join forces on an album illuminating the diversity of the American experience through works by Richard Danielpour, James Lee III, Ben Shirley (all three world-premiere recordings), and Valerie Coleman. McGill describes it as a project driven by the desire to “expand the capacity for art and music to change the world.” Clarinetist McGill and the Pacific Quartet’s previous collaboration on Cedille Records, Mozart & Brahms Clarinet Quintets, garnered widespread critical acclaim and continues to be a staple of classical radio programming. “The pure, gorgeous tone and expressive musicianship of the clarinetist Anthony McGill meshes with the talents of the excellent Pacifica Quartet for thoroughly enjoyable readings” (The New York Times).
REVIEWS:
The stories in question here are wide-ranging, often concerned with issues of social justice and racial intolerance which, however noble in concept, can’t really be expressed in absolute musical terms–never mind as works for clarinet and string quartet. Fortunately the music works perfectly well on its own, and it’s stunningly played and recorded, so you can either ignore the externals entirely or take them for what they’re worth.
Richard Danielpour is a composer whose ambition often exceeds his grasp, never mind his titles, but Four Angels is a sensitive, single-movement piece that would have been better had it simply been called “Elegy for Clarinet and String Quartet,” or words to that effect. James Lee III’s Quintet makes reference to Native American music and history in its four concise movements, which you may or may not notice and which makes little difference one way or the other. The music is fresh, appealing, and extremely well-crafted. Ben Shirley’s High Sierra Sonata does exactly what its title suggests: this is music about nature, wide-open spaces, and interior reflection. Heard in the context of the program as a whole, it constitutes a moment of relative repose, even though it has a central movement marked “Angry Secrets.”
Last, but certainly not least, Valerie Coleman’s “Shotgun Houses” is the first in a triptych of works inspired by the life and legacy of Muhammad Ali. Its third movement, “Rome 1960” features a musical boxing match, no less, and does it rather well. Again, it’s not really necessary to know any of this to enjoy the music, and Coleman deserves credit for avoiding any suggestion of parody or silliness. Of course, much of the credit for the success of this program belongs to the performers. McGill, with his colorful range of timbres and effortless virtuosity, brings his instrument to life in the most expressively direct way, while the Pacifica Quartet plays as well as any chamber group active today. Cedille’s sonics are positively luminous, and every work (Coleman’s aside) is a world premiere recording. In short, a remarkable achievement by all concerned.
-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)
Here is an interesting album of contemporary American music played by veteran clarinetist Anthony McGill, who has worked as a soloist with various American orchestras as well as being an active chamber musician. He is paired on this album by the well-known Pacifica Quartet.
First up is the best-known composer of the four, Richard Danielpour, who tends to write in a tonal, accessible style yet who always seems to include in that music elements of subtle yet advanced harmonies to make it interesting. Four Angels, composed specifically for McGill and the Catalyst Quartet, is no exception: a lyrical, melodic theme that suddenly morphs a couple of minutes into the piece as edgier harmonies and rhythms suddenly erupt. Yet the music always seems to return to its lyrical roots as it continues to develop.
I was not previously familiar with James Lee III (b. 1973), who studied both composition and conducting. Lee’s music is rather interesting, using unusual rhythmic and harmonic figures including a fair amount of syncopation (but not really jazz syncopation). It is a joyous work in the end, but in a quirky, irregular meter as if danced by someone with wobbly legs!
Shotgun Houses by Valerie Coleman, another composer I was not previously familiar with, is described as the first of “three installments that celebrate the life of Muhammad Ali. The three movements, titled “ShotGun Houses,” “Grand Ave.” and “Rome 1960” refer to places and incidents in his early life. Coleman’s music...struck me as some of the most creative in the entire album—creative in the sense that it sounded much more the product of inspiration and not merely working out themes in one’s mind. Coleman captures her moods as well as Danielpour and Lee, but the musical progression is more varied and unusual. It’s quite an inventive as well as a thrilling piece!
This, then, is a very nice album, the kind one can use to take a mental break from the more convoluted modern music out there. McGill has a rich, luscious tone and outstanding musicianship. The sound is also outstanding, giving a bit of natural room reverb to the instruments without having them wallowing in an echo.
-- The Art Music Lounge (Lynn René Bayley)
ZAUBERBERG
SHELTER PRESS
Vinyl
$31.49
Feb 27, 2026
Few years ago, an idea germinated while reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. An idea not driven by the narrativity of the book, but by the traces and the aura invoked in it. That was it: an audible auratic journey trough the memories of a place lost in the heights of the swiss mountains. A century after the events depicted in the book, we went where the story took place, trying to capture the remaining sounds that could have been heard at the time, and the ghosts who might have still wandered around. Zauberberg is based on these captures, on recordings of the music played by Hans Castorp (the novel's main character), on acoustic/electronic instrumentation and digital processing. The result is an evokation of time and duration, an exploration of what remains and what is lost, a meditation of the dissolution and persistence of the aura surrounding everything. - Kassel Jaeger, Nov. 19, 2015
SOUNDTRACK
HIGHNOTE
CD
$16.49
Mar 25, 2022
Jazz trumpeter, composer and author Jeremy Pelt has certainly never shied away from themed albums so one might expect something cinematic from the enigmatically-titled Soundtrack. However, as Pelt himself explains, "I've certainly done plenty of concept albums, but in this case there's nothing I'm on a soapbox about. It's been a tough time for all of us, so let's not worry about sending messages for a minute. Here we are, playing some songs and having some fun." Having fun the band may be but along the way they make some compelling jazz weaving a beguiling tapestry of kaleidoscopic colors with Pelt's sultry and communicative trumpet to the fore surrounded by Chien Chien Lu's hypnotic vibraphone and pianist Victor Gould's subtle splashes of the Fender Rhodes. The inclusion of Brittany Anjou on Moog synthesizer and the rarely-heard Mellotron may imply a real electronica aspect present on the recording but, quite to the contrary, Pelt uses them sparingly and incorporates them brilliantly into the group's tonal palette. Their appearance does occasionally bring a certain 70s independent jazz vibe to the proceedings but they far from define the sound of the group. Anne Drummond's silvery flute on two tracks adds yet another dimension to the already wide spectrum of colors on this latest album in the discography of the sometimes surprising but always inspired Jeremy Pelt.
American Ethos
Metier
CD
$25.99
May 22, 2026
In May 2026, Metier Records proudly presents American Ethos from acclaimed pianist Carolyn Enger, a stunning collection of works from a range of American composers, including Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Ned Rorem, William Grant Still, Florence Price, and many others. Released in time for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of America's Declaration of Independence, Carolyn Enger poses the question of how to characterise American composition over so many years and throughout times of such sharp division. How can a musical 'Ethos' be encompassed in all it's various styles, sentiments, and beliefs? "I wanted to have a broad feeling of Americana," Enger explains. "Voices that have been overlooked over the years then come to light because they influenced voices that we're very familiar with." Enger has long been a champion of the piano music of Ned Rorem, and American Ethos centers his work, The Wind Remains, alongside three selections from Soundpoints, each a brief moment of distilled emotion. Rorem then stands as a starting point for connecting Enger's vision of American composition threads. Contemporary composer Daron Hagen was Rorem's first student, and we hear his Five Nocturnes, telling of a family setting down for the night. Rorem's roots in American music go deep as well, having studied with composer Margaret Bonds, who was herself a student and friend of composer Florence Price. Enger presents the African-American sacred music traditions behind Florence Price's Adoration. Price influenced many American composers beyond Bonds and Rorem, including William Grant Still. Price's influence on Grant Still is easily heard in his evocation of the divine in Seven Traceries: A Suite for Solo Piano, of which Enger plays four. Perhaps one of the most famous of American voices is Leonard Bernstein, who spoke about the healing power of music as a response to violence, and several works in this collection connect to him. His Thirteen Anniversaries, by turn tender and whimsical, celebrates 13 family members, friends, and colleagues. One of these is composer Craig Urquhart, a former assistant, represented here by The Awakening, Urquhart's birthday offering to Bernstein, and Adieu, which followed the global pandemic and 2020 political upheavals. John Corigliano's An Anniversary for Lenny is an affectionate remembrance for a 2016 Bernstein centennial celebration, and Aaron Copland's 'Our Town' Three Piano Excerpts is similarly dedicated to Bernstein. Completing Enger's vision of a comprehensive, inclusive American ethos is 'The Vastland' from Under the Blue Dome by San Francisco-based composer of Native American descent JJ Hollingsworth, conjuring the Colorado plains, and Margaret Ruthven Lang's Twilight, the first woman to have a work performed by a major American orchestra. New York City-based writer and editor Steve Smith says in his excellent booklet notes: "What emerges in this collection of disparate yet interconnected lives and works is a patchwork quilt of individual voices, perspectives, and aspirations, woven together to form a more perfect union stronger than it's parts. The music they made, informed by shared stories and songs, brings to life the sky, stone, sinew, steel, and sentiment that make up this nation - an American ethos, expressed in sound". Internationally celebrated American pianist Carolyn Enger has gained critical acclaim for her exquisite lyrical playing and her deeply felt interpretations, with many performances across the United States and Europe. Her 2013 recording of Ned Rorem: Piano Album I was on The New York Times Best of Classical list that year, and her recent Metier recording Resonating Earth, an artistic response to the contemporary climate crisis, received glowing praise: "a thoughtful programme. Enthralling" (Nigel Simeone, International Piano). Ms Enger studied at the Manhattan School of Music and is a Steinway Performing and Recording Artist.
AAFJE HEYNIS EDITION
ELOQUENCE AUSTRALIA
CD
$97.49
Oct 10, 2025
A hymn to a sublime contralto: the complete Philips recordings of Aafje Heynis, remastered and compiled together, with original jackets, for the first time. Aafje Heynis grew up as a church singer, and her faith and modesty radiate from her performances, which began to capture the ears of Dutch audiences after the war. A momentous debut with the Concertgebouw and Eduard van Beinum produced an account of the Alto Rhapsody by Brahms - it hardly betrays her nerves on the occasion, despite her misgivings, and launched her international career. There followed a career path not dissimilar to her recent and eminent predecessor, Kathleen Ferrier, with Philips recording her in folk song and Lieder as well as sacred and spiritual repertoire. When Bernard Haitink made his first recording of the 'Resurrection' Symphony by Mahler, Heynis was the obvious choice to sing the pivotal 'Urlicht' movement, which she did with the grace, the nobility and gravity of expression she brought to all her performances. This Mahler Second has scarcely left the catalogue since it's first issue. Much less familiar now are Heynis's albums of Bach cantatas, and her contributions to Dutch-made recordings of the Dettingen Te Deum and Dixit Dominus of Handel. Rarer still are the short 'EP' albums of sacred arias, accompanied by the organists Pierre Palla and Simon C. Jansen, which were primarily issued for the local Dutch market. A Beethoven Ninth under Igor Markevitch, and a Lieder album with Irwin Gage, hint at what might have been, if Heynis had chosen to embrace the calling of a truly international career. Likewise, we have a single record of Heynis in opera, singing the role of Orpheus in excerpts from Gluck's opera, recorded in 1973. Compiled and remastered from rare sources, and issued as an Original Covers collection with extensive photographic illustration as well as a new and moving tribute to the life and art of Heynis by Jean-Charles Hoffele, this set will attract all collectors of great singers. Heynis could touch the heart of the listener like few others, and her voice, once heard, is never forgotten.
AMERICA'S GREATEST HITS 1951 / VARIOUS
ACROBAT
CD
$32.06
Jun 07, 2019
We continue our highly popular and successful America's Greatest Hits series as we work back through the 1950s, this time with an expanded 4-CD set edition to sit alongside the existing single CD 1951 edition (ACRCD177) originally released in 2006 before we introduced the 4-CD format in recent years. This great-value 105-track collection comprises every record which charted in the Top 15 of the Billboard Best Sellers and Cash Box chart during 1951, along with all those that made the Top 10 of the Juke Box and Disc Jockey charts (it omits certain records which peaked in 1952 and which have already appeared in our America's Greatest Hits 1952collection and some which were big hits in 1950, and had already peaked, so will appear in that collection). As with all these collections it features all the biggest hits of the year and all the biggest names in American pop of that era, so it very much captures the spirit of the times, but also includes a number of lesser known records which are not heard very often and which have not been readily available on CD. As always, it includes a substantial 15,000-word booklet with a commentary on every track, and it's a must for collectors of our completist chart-based anthologies.
ORPHANS
COLEMINE RECORDS
Vinyl
$25.36
May 29, 2026
One of the more defining features of Blues upstarts GA-20's approach to traditional Blues music is their unwavering dedication to playing the songs they love, or as bandleader Matthew Stubbs puts it, "we play the music we would want to hear." Those in the know have been captivated by the visceral energy the band brings to the heavy Blues arena, and the songs they choose to perform. With ORPHANS, the band has assembled a collection of Blues and Blues- adjacent tracks that fit handily within that parameter. The songs found on ORPHANS are just that - singular tunes heard only at live shows, singles released between albums, and simple favorites that the band (Stubbs, Cody Nilsen & Josh Kiggans) have been itching to lay down. And just as Blues is a tradition of borrowing, sharing and transformation, these melodies and words are similarly reinterpreted and reimagined, orphans and strays lovingly adopted and given new breath. The fan demand for a proper full length release of these songs, along with the mandate to showcase Nilsen's vocals and auxiliary guitar mastery, are realized here in physical form.
LIVE IN LOS ANGELES: 1978-1981 (BOX SET)
ORG MUSIC
Vinyl
$134.66
Jan 26, 2024
Live in Los Angeles is a four LP box set from Tribe Records co-founder Phil Ranelin, celebrating a trio of LA club performances from 1978-1981 which remain especially significant to the visionary trombonist. Backed by a young Billy Childs on piano, Ralph Penland on drums, and Tony Dumas on bass, Ranelin was in peak form as a player and bandleader during this period. This is particularly true of one specific outing at the now defunct Maiden Voyage in Los Angeles on July 19, 1981, which is presented in full within this set. The audio was restored from decades old cassette tapes which have never been heard until now. A master trombonist of the J.J. Johnson tradition, Ranelin's career has spanned over five decades with eleven records as a solo artist, four as a Freddie Hubbard sideman, session recordings for Motown, and work with artists ranging from Stevie Wonder and Ella Fitzgerald to Red Hot Chili Peppers and Telefon Tel Aviv. The box set is available everywhere on January 26th.
LIVE AT THE BLUE NOTE CHICAGO
ICONIC ARTISTS GROUP
Vinyl
$48.49
May 31, 2024
Stock limited to on hand inventory. Incredibly rare, never-before-heard, live performances from Nat's 1953 Blue Note Chicago Residency. Includes spectacular versions of "Unforgettable," "Paper Moon," and "Route 66". Meticulously restored audio from original tapes. This is Nat's small group combo. There has never been a live release featuring this group. The recording makes the listener feel like they are literally in the club back in 1953. We have created a deluxe version of this historic recording. The sound and in particular Nat's piano playing is truly incredible!
