Saxophonist, clarinettist, composer and visual artist Marcel Barta entered the Czech jazz and improvisation scene while still a student and has since become one of it's core members. He is a founding member of the electro-jazz quintet MUFF, the cult jazz sextet Vertigo and the duo DoMa Ensemble. Besides collaborating with many foremost artists from different genres on the home and international scene, he has been dedicating himself to composition, writing scenic music for the theatre company Farma v jeskyni (Farm in the Cave), among otherprojects. He is the recipient of multiple Czech Music Academy Awards in the jazz category, having also been nominated for the same award on a number of occasions. While Episodes from the Spinning Ball is the first recording to feature Barta's work exclusively, the eponymous composition is his first piece for a large ensemble. As composer and arranger he has taken part in dozens of projects and recordings, many of which were released by the label Animal Music. The new album brings a recording of a concert performance featuring the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, which took place as part of the jazz-symphonic crossover series New Horizons in February 2025 in the DOX+Multifunction Hall in Prague. Composed on a commission from the orchestra, the work formally resembles a suite in three parts. It is performed, however, as a continuous flow of music. In the author's own words, the piece "is an attempt to evoke a story that reflects my own planetary experience. The rotating ball in the title is a geoid, the shape of our own planet." Combining composed music with improvisation, the piece bears traces of Barta's original style, known for example from his work for Vertigo or Muff. It is rooted in jazz and contemporary classical music and unfolds like an elaborate story in which densely composed soundscapes interweave with delicate melodies and fine-grained instrumentation and whereorder coexists with improvisation and melancholy passages alternate with psychedelia and humour. The jazz band in the recording features, alongside Marcel Barta himself, trombonist stepan Janousek, keyboardist and synth player Vojtech Prochazka, double bassist Milos Klapsteand drummer Jan Chalupa. The whole jazz-symphonic ensemble is conducted by Bastien Stil who has had ample experience leading crossover projects.
This is the first album in the discography of the National Wind Orchestra in Lubin, an ensemble founded in 2019. It features works by composers regarded among the most important contemporary creators of music for wind orchestra. Among them are also authors who write music for film, television, and advertising, which is reflected in numerous illustrative motifs that stimulate the imagination. The compositions reveal the immense sonic and expressive potential of the symphonic wind orchestra, transporting listeners into a fantastical world inspired by colors, the seasons, underwater life, and the magical scenery of the mountains. The music is aesthetically rooted in the tradition of sweeping film suites, where powerful brass fanfares intertwine with subtle woodwind motifs, enriched by the sound of harp and percussion instruments. Joyful, lively themes in Hounds of Springs, the dramatic chase in Ride, and the gentle, carefree mood of Whispers from Beyond together form a colorful kaleidoscope of emotions and impressions. Under the baton of Sebastian Perlowski, the National Wind Orchestra in Lubin captivates with it's sound, energy, technical virtuosity, and an excellent sense of style at the intersection of classical and film music.
1989: the wall falls – freedom at last! What could be more obvious than a German/ German jazz band. The musicians claim it as the first German/ German jazz band, as contact among them already existed before the wall came down. Not the form, but the musicians and their being are the quintessence - the form adapts. Every note, a statement. It's about creativity and improvisation. 1992 is the time. 30 years after the fall of the wall, much has changed in Germany. The mood is completely different. It is no longer a time of change and exploration, and now uncertainty and radicalization dominate. The music sounds different, but remains just as brilliant. Polyphonic melodies and rhythms characterize the sound. Jazz becomes even more of a home. The metamorphosis succeeds! The music fits into the new era.
Warshauer’s music is shot through with and inspired by mystical and spiritual matters that span a love and respect for Mother Earth and the Jewish faith.
A native of Wilmington, North Carolina, Meira Warshauer now lives in Columbia, South Carolina. She studied with William Thomas McKinley, Gordon Goodwin, Mario Davidovsky and Jacob Druckman.
This is not the first disc exclusively dedicated to her music. Streams in the Desert was an all-Warshauer CD of music for orchestra and chorus inspired by the Torah which appeared on the Albany label in 2007. There have been others.
Symphony No. 1 Living Breathing Earth is in four movements the first of which seethes with modernistic chaffing cicada noises and the rumbles of the jungle; the latter evocative of Villa-Lobos. By contrast the following movement (Tahuayo River at Night) has a great pervasive melodic calm. It’s a little like Mahler’s Adagietto meets Delius in a gentle drift downriver. The third movement has a chattering interplay of strings with butterflies and birds soaring above: Ravel’s Mère l’Oye blended with Villa-Lobos. The finale returns to a rangy melody but interpolates a gentle breathing pattern carried by the violins. Trumpets piercingly italicise the dramaturgy of the melody and drive the poignant message home amid flickers of wispy birdsong. The work serves as celebration and warning: a prayer for wisdom to heal our planet. The dedication is to the living breathing earth and her Creator.
We are told that Tekeeyah is the first concerto ever written for shofar and orchestra; anyone know of any others?. Never less than sincerely ambitious this is Warshauer’s “call for an awakening to our true essence as human beings.” The shofar (which you may recall being used abstemiously in Elgar’s The Apostles) is the horn of a ram or other kosher animal. It is a call to humanity to rouse itself from “the slumber of complacency” and in this three movement work the music is also bound up in Jewish religious references. Here the soloist, with whom Warshauer collaborated during the writing process, plays the horn of an African antelope.
Tekeeyah has a similar stylistic glossary to that of the Symphony. Gentle consonant strings sigh in a starry glimmer amid impressionistically gauzy writing: part Messiaen and part Ravel. There are Delian harp scintillations, around the rolling growl and bray of the shofar. There’s a real bite to the solo writing in Breaking Walls (II). It’s very animated yet a soft glow is never far away. The finale sports a slipping-sighing sentimental melody. A touch here of RVW. Had he lived long enough not only might he have given us the Saxophone Concerto he seemed to promise but also a concerto for shofar. It’s almost odd that neither Hindemith nor Hovhaness were moved in that direction. In any event in this concluding movement we encounter a Milhaud-like chugging rumba: very positive and happy. The shofar brays in majesty at the end and the strings rise high with solo and string mass echoing each other in exalting pain. The trumpets again italicise the splendour.
The present Navona disc presents two recentish substantial works though not of epic duration. Warshauer’s music is shot through with and inspired by mystical and spiritual matters that span a love and respect for Mother Earth and the Jewish faith.
Trombonist Deb Scott makes her Parma debut with her new Navona release Playing Favorites, accompanied by pianist Ron Petti. She performs a variety of her favorite pieces that appeal to her background in jazz and to her considerable technical skill. She writes: “What I love about each one is its ability to engage a diverse audience making for enjoyable and exciting musical moments.” The central piece on the album is Stephen Lias’s River Runner, written in response to a paddling trip he took with Scott through Big Bend National Park’s Santa Elena Canyon. Across the piece, Lias explores nature landscapes and the excitement of adventure, culminating in the visceral and kinetic third and final movement “Rock Slide.” The album includes many additional pieces, as well. Derek Bourgeois’ crowd- pleasing Trombone Concerto, written for Christian Lindberg, appeals to pop, jazz, and classical audiences. William Goldstein’s emotional Colloquy for Solo Trombone uses elements of jazz to explore opposing feelings of positivity and angst against a backdrop of Americana. Finally, the album closes with Variations on "The Carnival of Venice" composed by Jean-Baptiste Arban. This arrangement by Donald Hunsberger was actually composed for trumpet and originally performed by Wynton Marsalis.
Because Avishai Cohen’s previous outing—a 2017 album titled 1970 (Sony)—was his most commercially successful release thus far, one wouldn’t blame him for revisiting a similar artistic wellspring. Instead, for his 17th leader date, the bassist went in another direction, recruiting an entirely different set of musicians for the deeply personal, nostalgia-fueled Arvoles. Half the program here consists of trio recordings with pianist Elchin Shirinov and drummer Noam David, and on the other half, the band expands to a quintet with trombonist Björn Samuelsson and flutist Anders Hagberg. - DownBeat Magazine Editors' Pick
Indiana Collectanea: The Music of Michael G. Cunningham / Various
Navona
CD
$8.49$16.99Save 50%Feb 14, 2020
Navona Live is proud to announce the release of INDIANA COLLECTANEA, which celebrates and preserves composer Michael G. Cunningham’s residency at Indiana University School of Music from 1969-1973. This live recording of Cunningham’s work comes on the heels of his acclaimed album ECUMENICAL SPIRIT from Navona Live earlier this year. This latest release captures a significant moment in time, when Cunningham’s work helped channel the talents of 30 burgeoning musicians. In INDIANA COLLECTANEA, Cunningham expands his palette beyond traditional tonality, painting with chromatic, timbral, and rhythmic nuances. The work opens with Prisms, a four-movement piece in which dense tone clusters shift and refract among the strings like a kaleidoscope. This is followed by Polyphonies, a wild-eyed percussion piece that manipulates instrumental timbres to an exhilarating effect. As the album progresses, each piece is a surprise to the listener’s ears, with its unique assortments of instruments and sounds jolting the audience into new appreciation. The frenetic horns at the start of Concertant are further evidence of this. The penultimate track, Scenario, is particularly inventive, opening with a prelude of ethereal bells. Each musician is assigned to multiple instruments, showcasing both their own skills and that of their composer. Lastly, the album ends with the dramatic Noetical Rounds, which concludes with a soft, descending glissando into oblivion. Despite the decades that have passed since the performances on INDIANA COLLECTANEA, each piece is as startlingly fresh as it was the day of its performance. Listen to hear this collection of talented musicians pushed to their utmost by the challenging and thoughtful compositions of Michael G. Cunningham.
Ewa FABIAŃSKA-JELIŃSKA is one of the most active and recognized composers of her generation. Her oeuvre is regularly presented at national and international music festivals and appreciated by music authorities, which is confirmed by numerous awards she has received in prestigious composers’ competitions. The creative output of Fabiańska-Jelińska, despite her young age, includes over a hundred compositions (excluding incidental music and arrangements), written for diverse ensembles, and is constantly expanding. In her work, we can find pieces representing various genres, including songs, solo concertos, symphonic works, while nearly half of them are written for one to four instruments. The present album features compositions created in the years 2015–2019, most of which represent a sui generis specialization of Fabiańska-Jelińska in the genre of instrumental chamber music, including instrumental duos and quartets. The album is complemented with four songs for solo instruments. Together, the compositions constitute a showcase of Fabiańska-Jelińska’s musical language; its indicators include high formal discipline and attention to material coherence, important role of tone color and melody in shaping expression, often marked by the presence of lyrical element, and frequent use of viola and trombone.
A spectacular album by a superb brass quintet. -- American Record Guide
Baroque masters were already playing to the gallery with brass players’ fanfares; Mozart and Haydn com-posed wonderful concertos for trumpet or horn; then the Romantics Brahms and Dvorak did their bit, followed by orchestral wizards Berlioz and Richard Strauss who triumphantly ushered trumpet, horn and trombone into the symphony orchestra. Jazz brought the great liberation, and light entertainment contributed to the overdue recognition of their possibilities. The wide spectrum of the present album illustrates the boundless popularity of this musical genre. The composers of these works enjoy life, and are proof positive that brass ensembles are to be taken seriously – whether performed in venerable concert halls, the Music Hall or the circus. The Wien-Berlin Brass Quintett radiates a cheerful, vibrant atmosphere, offering musical fireworks, sparkling wit and humor along with quite unique and breathtaking virtuosity.
REVIEWS:
This disc is simply good, clean fun and a sheer delight. The Wien-Berlin Brass Quintett—Gábor Tarkővi and Guillaume Jehl, trumpets; Thomas Jöbstl, horn; Mark Gaal, trombone; Alexander von Puttkamer, tuba; Jöbstl and Gall are members of the Vienna Philharmonic, the other three men present or former members of the Berlin Philharmonic—here kicks back its collective heels to present five entertaining divertissements. All the music is unabashedly tonal and listener-friendly.
The virtuoso, spirited playing of this marvelous brass fivesome [is] captured in brilliant sound. A booklet provides basic notes. Cheerily recommended.
Dlugoszewski: Openings of the Eye / Hashtag Ensemble
DUX
CD
$21.99Mar 20, 2020
Lucia Dlugoszewski (June 16, 1925 – April 11, 2000) was a Polish-American composer, poet, choreographer, performer, and inventor. She created over a hundred musical instruments, including the timbre piano, a sort of prepared piano in which hammers and keys were replaced with bows and plectra. Dlugoszewski's compositions have been recorded for Nonesuch Records, Folkways, CRI, and other important contemporary music labels. Her 1975 piece Abyss and Caress, for trumpet and small orchestra, was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premièred by Pierre Boulez. In 1977, she became the first woman to win the Koussevitzky International Recording Award with Fire Fragile Flight, for 17 instruments – the work became a signature piece for the Philadelphia ensemble Orchestra of Our Time. The recordings for Nonesuch and CRI released in the 70s were reissued by CRI in 2002 as Disparate Stairway Radical Other along with new work for string quartet and timbre piano.
Loeb: The Lyric Trombone / Avitsur, Locker, Yajima
Centaur Records
CD
$18.99Mar 20, 2020
Contemporary American Composer David Loeb: "The choice of the trombone of pieces might engender some surprise, but the trombone has the necessary diversity of resources." These great works will make this point abundantly obvious. David Loeb was born in 1939 in New York into a family which took music and painting very seriously. He studied composition with Peter Pindar Stearns at the Mannes College of Music in New York, and then completed a master's degree at Yale. His catalog of compositions is unusually extensive and diverse. In addition to the expected assortment of works for orchestra, various chamber combinations, soloists, and voice, he has also written many pieces for Asian instruments (in addition to Japanese, some for Chinese, Korean, Thai, and Mongol) and for early Western instruments (in addition to viols, some for lute, harpsichord, and recorder). He has often brought these instruments together in unique combinations, such as four shakuhachi and four viols; flute, guitar, koto, and shakuhachi; and khaen, flute, guitar, cello, and percussion.
Milica Djordjevic’s compositions are musical explorations, meticulous observations and dissections. Seven such investigations of sound are presented by the Serbian composer on her portrait album in the series EDITION ZEITGENÖSSISCHE MUSIK. Primarily, Djordjevic focuses on an extreme and exhaustive exploration of the musical material. In the booklet Barbara Eckle points out Djordjevic’s specific approach: "She develops a material component further and further in an increasingly large, loud and dense wave, distorting it, perverting it, multiplying it, squeezing out of it everything it has to give – until it implodes. The rupture is sudden and abrupt, as if the plug of an electronic appliance were ripped from a wall socket." Also essential for Djordjevic’s work is an interdisciplinary perspective, which is based on a diversified aesthetic socialisation, influencing her music in different ways. Each compositional process finally creates musical figures, which, at the same time, affect psyche and ratio. All pieces have been especially recorded at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne by internationally well-known interpreters such as Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Musikfabrik and Teodoro Anzellotti.
Hodie! Choral Works of Benjamin Britten & Daniel Pinkham / Dale Warland Singers
Gothic
CD
$20.99Nov 15, 2019
In this live recording- the second in The Dale Warland Live series- selected works of two 20th century composers, one British and the other American, are performed with exquisite choral acumen. The program consists of Benjamin Britten’s acclaimed ‘A Ceremony of Carols’ and Daniel Pinkham’s ‘Christmas Cantata’ with brass and organ. In addition, Pinkham’s rarely performed ‘Company at the Creche’ is included with four other Christmas works. The distinguished career of choral composer and conductor Dale Warland spans more than six decades and has made a profound contribution to the music of our time. As conductor, composer and founder of the Grammy-nominated Dale Warland Singers, he is one of only three choral conductors inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.
Bite the Bullet was inspired by the Venetian artist Carlo Marchiori’s painting of the same name. The painting depicts two Pulcinelli, Venetian clowns dressed as bakers, shooting at one another with guns, bullets meeting in the middle, creating a white-orange-pink cloudburst. I was in awe of the vibrant colored landscape and the Pulcinelli, providing the creative impetus for this work. In Bite the Bullet, I portray the intensity of the painting and use my own sonic color scheme through orchestration and instrumental color. You will hear the intensity of the brass and percussion sections portraying the gunshots by the Pulcinelli with the woodwind flourishes emulating the painter’s brush strokes.
Three leading Russian composers (Gubaidulina, Artyomov and Suslin) formed the Astraea ensemble in 1975 to research and perform music for eastern and Transcaucasian folk and traditional instruments (wind, string and percussion). After performing works by each of the members, the group decided to abandon notation and perform freely improvised and spontaneous pieces. This, their sole album, was originally issued in Russia only and now receives its global premiere. The three members of Astraea play on the first two tracks: Instruments include the duduk, salamuri, tar, kiamancha, chonguri, kanon, mandolin, and various types of drums and bells. The third piece, which is quasi-electronic, is also an improvisation, with a very small amount of set arrangement. It was made with the participation of leading American trombonist Miles Anderson, and is based on the text of a German love poem found in the diary of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Praetorius: Es ist ein Ros / Rademann, Dresdner Kammerchor
Accentus Music
CD
$27.99Nov 19, 2021
Advent is a time of heightened feelings: anticipation and tense expectation alternate with moments of reflection and proverbial contemplation. The Holy Night, finally, is both: a bright and radiant time, but also a darkness that invites to contemplation. Advent is also a time of contrasts: the king of the world is a child, the savior of the world lies in a manger among animals. It is these tensions, contrasts and manifold states of mind that are at the heart of the new album of the Dresdner Kammerchor with music for Advent and Christmas by Michael Praetorius (1571-1621). 2021 is the year of the 450th anniversary of the birth and 400th anniversary of the death of Michael Praetorius. He was a composer, organist, court kapellmeister and scholar in the transitional period from Renaissance to Baroque. He is one of the most important musicians in Europe around 1600. The program provides a selection of the most beautiful Advent music to accompany not only the Advent and Christmas season with his masterpieces, but also to let the listener discover the music of Michael Praetorius.
