2019 release. The exciting, genre-defying American composer Gregory Hutter wrote this sequence of choral music between 2009 and 2014- his intention being economic, direct, and tuneful music. The settings range from the English Renaissance to American poems of the early 20th century; from Shakespeare to Carl Sandburg and Sara Teasdale. Hutter approaches the texts with lyricism and fluidity, attentive to the poetrys moments of melancholy, beauty or bucolic energy. In harmonically rich settings he draws on polyphony, chromaticism and lullaby alike to communicate and bring the listener closer to the core of the texts.

Vinyl LP pressing. 2024 release. Nonesuch Records releases Rectangles and Circumstance, an album of ten songs co-written and performed by Caroline Shaw and So Percussion. The album follows their 2021 Grammy Award-winning Nonesuch debut, Narrow Sea, and their first record as a band, 2021's Let the Soil Play It's Simple Part, with Shaw on vocals backed by So-Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting. Grammy-winning engineer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift) co-produced with them on both Let the Soil... and Rectangles and Circumstance. Sliwinski says. "For this album, Caroline, Eric, and I sourced a group of nineteenth-century poems that shaped it's expressive mode [and] ended up using verses by Christina Rosetti, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and William Blake... The lyrics on this album by members of the band contain wordplay that explores the same profound feelings explored by Blake and Dickinson."

After 13 years, internationally acclaimed saxophonist Jaleel Shaw returns with Painter of the Invisible - a deeply personal and emotionally resonant album that honors the heroes, places, and legacies that shaped him. With critical praise from The New York Times, DownBeat, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, Shaw is celebrated as a visionary voice in modern jazz. On this long-anticipated full-length release, he delivers a powerful suite of original compositions that merge expressive storytelling with exquisite musicianship. Backed by an all-star ensemble - Lawrence Fields (piano), Ben Street (bass), Joe Dyson (drums), Lage Lund (guitar), and Sasha Berliner (vibraphone) - Shaw weaves an unforgettable sonic narrative that explores themes of love, loss, ancestry, identity, and social justice. From the uplifting tribute "Good Morning" to the heartbreaking meditation "Tamir (for Tamir Rice)," each track paints a vivid portrait of those who remain invisible in life, yet unforgettable in memory. Shaw's virtuosic playing and soulful compositions reveal a singular jazz artist at the height of his powers - thoughtful, fearless, and uncompromising. Painter of the Invisible is not only a celebration of life and legacy, but a vital contribution to the evolving story of Black American music.

Double vinyl LP set pressed at 45rpm. The legendary album by IN+OUT from 1989, remastered from the original recordings in a 45rpm 2 LP Audiophile Deluxe Edition. This album, recorded during a month-long European tour in 1987, captures Woody in peak form playing with a spirit and a sense of adventure that identify him as a jazz giant. Woody calls the trumpet "the prince of all the horns". Woody is the king of all the trumpet players. Nobody around plays with such a big, round, ravishing sound - a sound which could easily fool you into thinking that you are listening to a flugelhorn. Woody's musical asociates on this album are Alex Deutsch, a young drummer from Austria who has worked in Europe with many American jazz stars and who, at the time of writing, is studying at the Berklee School in Boston; Neil Swainson, a highly gifted bassist from Toronto who has worked with Pat La Barbera and Peter Leitch but is perhaps best known for his superb collaboration with George Shearing; and Fred Henke, a pianist from Montreal whose credits include backing Clifford Jordan, Steve Grossman and Junior Cock.

Track Listing
1. Overture
2. Ladies Who Lunch, The
3. He Tossed a Coin
4. Two by Two
5. I Want to Be Happy
6. Coffee in a Cardboard Cup
7. Lucky to Be Me
8. Send in the Clowns
9. I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
10. Over Here!
11. What I Did For Love
12. Mack the Knife
13. Tomorrow
14. Fifty Per Cent
15. Come Follow the Band
16. Folies Bergere

Harris Goldsmith writes in his note: "This 1948 version is almost completely without mishap. Indeed, there is ample reason to consider it the finest of the Maestro's achievements with this monumental Masterpiece [the Requiem]. The pacing resembles that of the November 23rd, 1940 performance in it's nobility and unhurried breadth.

Since its founding in 1985, the Dallas Wind Symphony, led by Artistic Director and Conductor Jerry Junkin, has become one of the world’s top professional wind ensembles, providing a standard against which other bands measure excellence. Soaring lyricism, especially in the solo trumpet part, characterizes each of the three richly scored lyrical sections of Fisher Tull’s Rhapsody for Trumpet and Band (1980), which surround two faster, more technically demanding portions of the work. Harry Begian (1921-2010) created the transcription of the first movement of Reinhold Glière’s Concerto for Coloratura Soprano for a 1983 University of Illinois Symphonic Band concert. The movement is characteristically Russian, full of long, brooding phrases juxtaposed against upwardly spinning melodies. Receiving its world premiere recording, Brett William Dietz’s Redshift is full of color, contrast and fast-paced drama. The work contains a great amount of interplay between the trumpet soloist and ensemble, and prominently features the percussion section. Two additional works, Rachmaninov’s Vocalise and a second by Fisher Tull (Concerto No. 2 for Trumpet and Band), round out this disc.

This is a disc of music for chamber ensembles and solo performers written by two of Britain's leading women composers, who also happen to be mother and daughter. Sparklingly presented by Okeanos, comprising several leading contemporary music performers.

This double set, originally released in 1994, contains the complete contents of three classic holiday albums from the Robert Shaw chorale:
Christmas Hymns & Carols, Volume I ("Living Stereo" LSC-2139) [1957]
Christmas Hyns & Carols, Volume II ("Orthophonic" LM-1711) [1952]
Britten: A Ceremony of Carols, Festival Te Deum & Rejoice in the Lamb ("Dynagroove" 2759) [1963]

This reissue was remastered directly from the original RCA Victor Red Seal Master tapes.

Artie Shaw was a unique personality in jazz, big band and swing music - as clarinetist, bandleader, composer, and arranger, he pursued his own often idiosyncratic, original and some might say perverse approach to his music and career, and along the way produced some of the most popular and memorable recordings of the swing era Huge hits ("Begin the Beguine"), songs he introduced into the jazz canon ("Frenesi"), original compositions ("Summit Ridge Drive") 43 prime cuts from a legendary big-band career, offered for a fabulous price by the Fabulous label! Other hits include "Star Dust," "Count Every Star," "My Little Nest of Heavenly Blue," "Concerto for Clarinet," "The Blues," "St. James Infirmary" and more. Fabulous.

The latest release in Hallé’s award winning series of recordings of works by Elgar couples his last great choral work with a fascinating collection of works which similarly remember the departed. Previous Elgar choral releases of The Dream of Gerontius, The Kingdom, and The Apostles were universally acclaimed, winning numerous awards, including a Gramophone Award for each release. The largely overlooked The Spirit of England is arguably Elgar’s last great choral work. Thematically linked to The Dream of Gerontius the work sets texts from WWI poets and was premiered in sections during 1916 and 1917. In tone it is close to the melancholy of the Cello Concerto and Britten referred to its music as displaying “a personal tenderness and grief” as well as “genuine splendour”. The melodrama (spoken words with musical accompaniment) of A Voice in the Wilderness movingly depicts the contrasting moods of the desolate and subdued Western Front by night and the soaring, aspiring lines given to a war-time Belgian peasant girl. The remaining two works on the album present works inspired by Irish literature. Grania and Diarmid was a play based on tales of Irish mythology. Elgar’s music for the play, a story of tragic entangled love, was described by playright W.B. Yeats as “wonderful in its heroic melancholy”. Bax’s rarely performed orchestral work In Memoriam is subtitled ‘An Irish Elegy’. It reflects the composer’s passionate interest in, and love for, Ireland, her literature and her tragic early twentieth century history – including the Easter Rising of April 1916 and the subsequent execution of some of its leaders which deeply shocked Bax. The resultant music contracts outbursts of anger with episodes featuring melody of profound sadness and lyricism.

Francis Shaw has become one of the most versatile British composers of this day, having written a wide range of music, most notably for film and television. As with many composers whose work has taken them into diverse musical fields, the range of his accomplishments has tended to draw attention away from what lies at the heart of his output - his serious music, less extensive than that of his more commercial work, but which - is of a quality and achievement manifestly deserving of far greater recognition than it has received hitherto.

This new release is the conclusion of a project exploring ways of transforming and developing the piano concerto. Pianist Kate Halsall developed these works centered around two pianos with varied electro-acoustical and chamber accompaniment. The pieces incorporate rock and jazz instruments, extended techniques, film, and pitched silences. The composers featured here are all part of the English new-music scene, and are developing reputations for innovation.

Shelter is the result of an unusual collaboration among Bang on a Can's founding composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. Scored for three sopranos and a 17-piece ensemble, the project explores what "shelter" means in different cultures. Ensemble Signal's debut recording, under music director Brad Lubman and producer Michael Riesman, was originally commissioned for the Next Wave Festival by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and premiered with Trio Mediaeval in Cologne, Germany in 2005.