Following their acclaimed previous Wagner opera releases, Halle presents the remastered recording of their 2013 Prom performance, recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall. “Working with his orchestra, the Halle, Sir Mark Elder produced an account of this miraculous score which, for a combination of passion and precision, surpassed any other that I have ever heard.” (Michael Tanner, The Spectator, August 2013) Wagner’s last opera, Parsifal, which the composer declared to be his “farewell to the world” has been described as being in many ways the most “total” of all his “total art works.” His spiritual swansong unfurls as a slow-moving, ritualistic drama, and is arguably the best-suited of all his operas to the style of concert staging offered here. This release was recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall, London at the 2013 BBC Proms, featuring dramatic spatial placing of off-stage choruses and musicians. It was audio remastered by Halle’s award-winning engineer Stever Portnoi: the original multitrack recordings of both rehearsals and concert were edited to eliminate audience noise whilst retaining the sense of place and the staged nature of the performance. The edited multitrack was then remixed to achieve a sound in keeping with Halle label releases.

Double vinyl LP pressing. The original score for Ken Burns's 2024 two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI. The album features performances by the composer's longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, So Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score. LEONARDO da VINCI is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns's first non-American subject.

Woody Shaw is widely revered across the globe as the last major innovator to significantly revolutionize modern jazz trumpet playing. Shaw's innovations vastly extended the harmonic and technical vocabulary of the instrument and remain largely unparalleled in the world of music. Shaw is also remembered as one of the great, modern jazz composers to have developed a distinct musical sound and identity through his original compositions. Here is a program of Woody Shaw playing his own works with some of his favorite sidemen.

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."

Remastered, 180g Vinyl. Including an insert with newly written liner notes by Bob Blumenthal and Barney Fields with rare photograph by K. Abe. Originally released in 1976 on Muse Records, 'Love Dance' stands as one of Woody Shaw's most spiritual and forward-thinking sessions. This audiophile reissue restores the album's full tonal richness, capturing Shaw's soaring trumpet lines and the ensemble's dynamic interplay with unprecedented clarity. Shaw leads a powerhouse lineup - including Billy Harper, Steve Turre, Rene McLean, Cecil McBee and Joe Bonner - through five expansive tracks blending modal jazz, spiritual themes, and post-bop intensity. A landmark in Shaw's discography, 'Love Dance' is essential listening - now presented with the depth and detail it has always deserved. Remastered & Cut AAA directly from the original analog tapes by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab. Pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal Media and housed in Stoughton Old Style® Tip-On Jackets. Including an insert with newly written liner notes by Bob Blumenthal and Barney Fields with rare photograph by K. Abe.

The original score for Ken Burns's 2024 two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI. The album features performances by the composer's longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, So Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score. LEONARDO da VINCI is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns's first non-American subject.

Debut album by LA saxophonist / flautist co-produced by Carlos Nino documents a transformative recovery from major illness. By no means a secret, but certainly in the category of IYKYK, saxophonist/flautist Aaron Shaw is one of Los Angeles's brightest young jazz musicians. A player's player, and frequent fixture at The World Stage in Leimert Park, Shaw has collaborated with the likes of Anderson Paak, Dave Chapelle, Herbie Hancock, Mary J. Blige, and Shawn Mendes.

I have to confess, I seldom listen to these pieces. Not because everyone agrees that they aren't "great" Mozart, but because most performances usually fall into one of two equally loathsome categories, which for convenience we may call Flutezilla vs. The Antiques Road Show. First, there is Flutezilla--the ego-boosting display of some star soloist who simply must record these concertos because Mozart wrote them and, let's face it, no other great composer between the Baroque period and the 20th century cared enough about the flute to even attempt to compose anything similarly worth playing. These productions usually feature the soloist blasting away on an instrument over-miked to the point where, regarding balance with the orchestra, it offers the aural equivalent of Godzilla stomping on teeny tiny Tokyo--"Tokyo" in this case being represented by a bargain-basement ensemble (I Solisti di Fresno, perhaps?) usually bored out of its mind, led by a no-talent, no-name conductor for whom excitement means having everyone start and end more or less at the same time (never mind what happens along the way). More than a few great flutists have thus been defeated by these lovely, unassuming works when played and recorded in such a fashion.


Then there's The Antiques Road Show. This more recent, second batch of vile recordings comes from those terribly earnest period-instrument folks. Here it's the flutist who's usually the one with no name and no talent, as well as no timbre and no intonation, playing some "authentically replicated copy" of an 18th-century wooden atrocity impressively designated as a "flauto traverso" or some such--as if it makes one iota of difference if the player blows the ghastly thing sideways, front-ways, backwards, upside down, or under water. Any way you slice it, the instrument sounds like a whistling tea-kettle in distress, with far more hiss of escaping air than musical tone. But in this case, the soloist has the backing of some "très à la mode" period-instrument pick-up band attacking the music with a sadistically ferocious ideological fervor more appropriate to the Manson family or the Symbionese Liberation Army than to a proper chamber orchestra. Naturally the soloist doesn't stand a chance, and given the appalling quality of the instrument in question, this probably is a good thing when all is said and done.


All of which is a long way of saying that I have no hesitation in declaring this to be the finest recording of Mozart's flute concertos currently available, and believe me, I've suffered through most of them. It has everything: a first rate soloist, a marvelous orchestra obviously mindful of period practice but playing modern instruments, an intelligently added harpsichord continuo (especially wonderful as a foil to the timbre of the harp), and boundless enthusiasm from all concerned. It's captured by Naxos in excellently balanced, warm, pellucidly clear sound. All it takes is about 10 seconds' listening to any single movement in any of these three works to make the outstanding quality of the musicianship self evident. The Swedish Chamber Orchestra launches the opening Allegro aperto of the Second Concerto (wisely placed first on the disc) with infectious rhythmic drive, and from the moment of Patrick Gallois' joyous, chirping entrance the performance flies by like a force of nature.


Listen to how characterfully the horn and oboe parts contribute to the opening tutti of the Concerto for Flute and Harp, and to the lively and luscious interplay between harpist Fabrice Pierre and Gallois throughout their many exchanges over the course of the movement. Taut rhythms and vivid accents keep the ear consistently engaged from first note to last. The long central Adagio of the First concerto is so beautiful that you easily could enjoy it for another nine minutes, and Gallois' cadenzas in all three works never outstay their welcome, being as fresh and pithy as Mozart's own music. No praise could be higher than to note how, in the same concerto's concluding Tempo di Menuetto, so often a dreary chore in other performances, Gallois & Cie manage to find a tempo both stately, as befits a minuet, but also energetically forward-moving, as befits a concerto finale. Really there's no reason to own any other version of this music, particularly given Naxos' budget price. As for the recording(s) already in your collection, they'll make a classy set of coasters. [11/15/2003]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The tragically short career of Shaw is fairly well documented on records; there is, however, a dearth of live material from him - here is the first installment in a series of live material recorded at the peak of his creative powers, feat. some safe, commercially recorded material, as well as cuts where Shaw stretches out and let's 'er rip on improvisational workouts

Woody Shaw & Louis Hayes: 'The Tour' Vol. 1 (Audio CD) "By no means is jazz dead-that's essentially why Louis Hayes and I formed this band. We really enjoy playing." So wrote Woody Shaw, presumably around the time of this historic concert from their 1976 European tour, in response to the then much-heralded death of jazz. It was people like Shaw, Hayes and others who proved that it was only our out-dated preconceptions of what jazz was which were dead and that jazz itself was alive and well. Here we have a real gem from Woody Shaw's greatest period - a very hip quintet session, recorded with drummer Louis Hayes, tenor man Junior Cook, Ronnie Matthews on piano and Stafford James on bass. Cook's Trane-tinged flurries, Shaw's boprish bursts, Mathews' ever-intensifying solos and Hayes' thunder-and-lightning drumming create an energy and esprit very much in the Blakey tradition but without ever losing track of the identity or sight of their collective goal. This Woody Shaw-Louis Hayes-Junior Cook quintet is now a part of history. The concentric circles they set in motion, emanating from the center of their work so long ago continue to expand and make their influence felt right up to the present day. Personnel: Woody Shaw, trumpet; Junior Cook, tenor sax; Ronnie Matthews, piano; Stafford James, bass; Louis Hayes, drums.