Composer Niels Ronsholdt's (b. 1978) solo project Aftermath journeys the American highway, observing cities and landscapes in decay, and reflecting on a fractured modern society. The classic road -trip dream of freedom fades into bewildered loneliness and remorse, yet fragile hopes of spring and new generations glimmer. This exclusive vinyl edition includes a free mp3 download of the full album (14 tracks in total).

Milégé is a group of young talented musicians who derive inspiration from the diverse cultural musical traditions of the different tribes of Uganda, which they fuse with contemporary elements. The group writes: “We derive our name Milégé from the ankle rattle, a bell worn round the ankle to create rhythmic sounds that compliment dance performances. The rattle exists across the entire continent of Africa in different forms and in other parts of the world. Milégé is a symbol of unity, celebration and heritage. This album is very special to us, this will be our first album after nine years of the band’s existence amidst countless hurdles. It is for this reason that we chose the album name Afwoyo which means thank you in Thuphadola, a luo dialect from the Japhadola tribe of Eastern Uganda.We are thankful for the love and support from all those who have believed in our sound and have waited patiently for this authentic piece of work. We hope that this music will bring healing, hope and inspiration to the world!”

This recording by Donna Peña became a hit within 24 hours of its release at the NPM convention in Long Beach, California. One listen to her vibrant, soul-searching music will win you over. Marty Haugen liked her music so much he recorded two songs from this album on Tales of Wonder. This is a bilingual recording with most songs in English and in Spanish.

You'll definitely want to consider this one-act theater piece from the creative hand of Marty Haugen for your next choir performance production. Based on the structure of the Roman Liturgy, Agape utilizes music from many cultures and the prophetic voices of our day, to bring alive a story of struggle, hope, and celebration with parts for adult and children's choirs, soloists, and instrumentalists, and audience participation as well. In addition to Marty's own music and texts, "Halle, Halle, Halle" from the Iona Community and "On Holy Ground" by Donna Peña are also included, plus "Sing Our God Together," co-authored by Marty and David Haas.

Harvey Siders in his JazzTimes review (Dec. 2002) of the first release (“Match Point” SCCD 31517) of this group concluded his writing by remarking, “Here’s hoping this two-year-old combo stays together.” Ron McClure Quartet does stay together, performing in and around New York area and dedicates another superb album here “For those affected by the tragic events of the recent past, we dedicate our music and express our hopes for a long overdue Age of Peace on our Earth”.(Ron McClure)

Renowned critic Richard Cook wrote in JazzReview about George’s previous release Twins (SCCD 31485) “… one listens through the record in a kind of wonderment at his imagination. He never seems to take an obvious route….” And here again with his regular trio, George Colligan recorded an album that is full of excitement and stimulation.

Maciej Sledziecki and Marion Worle show just how exciting the world of the pipe organ is today as the ensemble gamut inc. The retro-futuristic duo uses self-programmed software to dock onto the MIDI consoles of church organs, control their stops in a manually impossible way and perform sound synthesis with surprising results. Their annual AGGREGATE festival in Berlin is a meeting place for the international "New Organ Movement" scene: electronic musicians, composers and organists from different backgrounds present various positions on the so-called hyper organ. With "AGGREGATE - New Works for Automated Pipe Organs", WERGO presents a selection from the 2021 and 2022 festival editions. The new works, fragments, improvisations, adaptations of existing pieces (such as the adaptations of Conlon Nancarrow's "Studies for Player Piano" for organ), interactions between organ and electronics as well as algorithmic playing instructions for performers thus show an intermediate state and at the same time provide a breathtaking outlook on new possibilities for the organ. The leading roles are played by the organs of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, the Auenkirche and the Chapel of Reconciliation.

Limited edition of 2000 individually numbered copies on translucent blue coloured 180-gram audiophile vinyl. Agharta was recorded on the afternoon in 1975, at one of two concerts Miles Davis performed at the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan. He performed with his septet-flautist and saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, percussionist James Mtume, guitarist Reggie Lucas, and Pete Cosey, who played guitar, synthesizer, and percussion. Produced and recorded by Teo Macero, the album's four seemingly unstructured segments emphasize the playing of Davis' sidemen rather than his own trumpet. It eschews both melody and harmony in favor of a combination of riffs, crossing polyrhythms, and Funk-oriented grooves for soloists to improvise throughout. The album has received retrospective acclaim as an important and influential Jazz-Rock record. It's abrasive music and Cosey's innovative playing influenced a generation of young musicians, including those in the British Jazz scene.

2018 Gramophone Magazine Recital Album of the Year

Delphine Galou is renowned and admired for her musicality and her appealing timbre. She has taken part in many productions of Baroque music and recordings of operas (notably by Vivaldi), but this is her first recital. It is a programme of sacred music, motets, cantatas and excerpts from oratorios, which in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were influenced by the increasingly fashionable genre of opera. From the famous ‘Agitata infido flatu’ from Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha triumphans, here counterpointed by an aria from another setting of the story of Judith composed by Jommelli, to Stradella’s Lamentations and Porpora’s magnificent motet ‘In procella sine stella’, Delphine Galou covers a wide range of spiritual emotions. She is accompanied by the excellent Accademia Bizantina under its director and harpsichordist Ottavio Dantone. A concerto byGregori and a sinfonia by Caldara complete this release, which includes several world premiere recordings.

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REVIEW:

This is a treasure trove of rare music, and Galou is the perfect singer to introduce us to it, thanks to an agile and comfortable technique (hear the way she sails effortlessly through her full compass in a single phrase in the first aria of the Porpora). The orchestral playing is keen as mustard and filled with typically telling detail by director Ottavio Dantone. A lovely disc of discoveries.

– Gramophone

Three exceptionally rare Decca LPs of a much prized French pianist, newly remastered and released on CD for the first time. Rheumatism forced Agnelle Bundervoet to retire from the platform at the peak of her career in the late 1950s, though she continued to pass on to her students at the Conservatoire of Versailles the beautifully defined articulation, mastery of high expressive contrasts, and remarkable rhythmic drive that distinguish the recordings of Schumann, Brahms and Liszt on this collection, which will attract the attention of all pianophiles. One of those students was Frederic Gaussin, who contributes a personal memoir and authoritative survey of her life and career to this Eloquence collection. He remembers Bundervoet as a very demanding teacher: 'implacable but fair, generous, an acute psychologist, a spiritual person, dispensing pieces, studies and writing exercises with the knowledge and far-sightedness of a world-class physician'. Born in 1922, Bundervoet began to learn the piano at the age of four, and within three years she was enrolled at the conservatoire in Marseilles. She was accepted at the Paris Conservatoire by the age of ten, even though she was too young to undertake the formal program of study, but the pedagogue Lazare-Levy recognized her exceptional intellect, prodigious technique and innate musical gifts. She was awarded the conservatoire's Premier Prix for six years in succession, and her talents extended beyond the piano to singing, organ playing and choir directing. Her first album, a Bach recital, was awarded a Grand Prix du Disque, but she was dissatisfied with the engineering of the Ducretet-Thomson recording; the trio of Decca albums (recorded in 1955-57) enjoys a far wider dynamic range and a much richer timbral palette, more faithfully capturing the elegance and refinement of her playing in the flesh. They hardly reflect the breadth of her repertoire, which took in much new music, but they now count as a precious testament to a notable if now little-known inheritor of the French piano tradition.

Roy Agnew (1891-1944) - one of few early-twentieth-century Australian composers to gain international success - wove many external influences into a warmly Romantic personal style of striking variety and wide appeal, and his compositions, largely for the piano, are startlingly virtuosic, harmonically daring and charmingly sentimental by turn. Beautifully written by a natural pianist for his own instrument, they often recall the virtuosic textures of Liszt and Skryabin and occasionally show flashes of the Impressionist colours of Debussy. This is the fifth album that Stephanie McCallum - Associate Professor in piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music - has recorded for Toccata Classics. The four earlier ones all focused on French composers: Alkan, Boëly and Ropartz. Now she turns her considerable talents to rescue a forgotten composer from her native Australia.