Classical Music

Martin Jones and Adrian Farmer are widely acclaimed musicians, both performing on several Nimbus Records albums. Martin's is a prolific recording artist and has recorded most of the standard works for piano. This new release is the first of two volumes of original compositions and arrangements for piano duo and duet by Camille Saint-Saëns. His music was often described as "having wit and charm".

Although the word salon derives from a room in a domestic dwelling (In 1836, Robert Schumann referred to Salonmusik (a term he incidentally coined) as a 'combination of sentiment and piano passage'), it also came to refer to private gatherings of composers and well-to-do members of society congregated in order to appreciate musical performances of a shorter and more varied nature, as distinct from those of longer chamber works. By the 1830s, the musical salon emerged as a vehicle for virtuoso performers who encapsulated the romantic ideals of enhanced emotional subjectivity and greater artistic individuality, with the piano at the center of it all. The charming, off-the-cuff pieces that so delighted audiences up until relatively recently seem to have faded away with the last performers of the romantic tradition. This album serves to illuminate the brilliant music that many of these underrated yet highly talented 19th century composers gave us. '... played with a purity, profundity and sense of dramatic architecture that truly stops you in your tracks. Really, bravo.' (Gramophone, 'Editor's Choice' - VILSMAYR Partitas [FHR38])

Both Black Pentecost and Stone Litany share a symphonic scale and an Orkney setting. Premièred by Simon Rattle in 1982, Black Pentecost is an impassioned plea against environmental destruction, taking its words from Orcadian author George Mackay Brown’s novel Greenvoe, and cast in the form of a vocal symphony. Chamber-like restraint is matched by tense, dark writing that embraces threnody and cataclysm. Beautifully orchestrated and featuring elaborate melismas from the vocal soloist, Stone Litany, subtitled ‘Runes from a House of the Dead’, evokes the haunted landscape of a Neolithic burial mound plundered by Vikings.

2017 release. A rolling juggernaut of hard-edged northeastern funk and rock, punctuated by a tight horn section, this disc highlights the full throated voice and cocky attitude of lead singer, Miss Velvet. Coming straight out of a Janis Joplin/Chi Coltrane bag, Miss Velvet and the Blue Wolf have been blowing away audiences in the Northeast US for the past few years. Recorded at Detroit's legendary United Sound studios and produced by Constance Hauman, Bad Get Some at once gives a nod to hard-driving blues and rock bands of the past while forging a red-hot sound all it's own. This is gut bucket, funky rock and roll... total body music.

Old and New Worlds is the result of an international collaboration between Ars Veritas (Gothenburg, Sweden) and Schola Cantorum (Miami University, Oxford, Ohio). It features great choral works of the past and the present. Ensemble Ars Veritas started in 2010 at the University of Stage and Music in Gothenburg. Jakob Patriksson led the work on creating an ensemble focusing on early church music and the sacred music it later inspired. One of the hallmarks of Ars Veritas is the concerts that gradually illustrate the evolution of Western European church music: from the sacred unanimous Gregorian music to the first completely independent polyphonic works.

John Rutter's own recording of his beloved Requiem--with his Cambridge Singers on Collegium--already has been reissued on a CD that includes the Magnificat. That performance, in its setting for choir and orchestra, remains the Requiem of choice, although this new version--with Rutter as recording producer--offers a first-rate rendition of the composer's alternative chamber arrangement of the Requiem along with several rarely-heard--or never-before-recorded--choral and organ works. The Clare College Choir, with whom Rutter has a history both during his days as a music student and later as the choir's director, gives the kind of technically solid and interpretively meaningful performance that we would expect, considering the composer's hands-on involvement and well-known concern for accuracy, both musical and sonic. Like Caroline Ashton on Rutter's Collegium disc, Clare's Elin Manahan Thomas delivers the soprano solos with a clear, ringing, effortlessly natural quality, and the choir is a model of responsiveness and sensitivity in phrasing and dynamics, preserving ideal balance across registers and among vocal sections.


The reason Rutter fans will have to have this is for the premieres and for the handful of rarely-heard organ works--and any listeners who believe this composer to be rather predictable and one-sided in style will find numerous surprises to jar their impressions. Two of the premieres--the anthems Arise, shine and Come down, O Love divine--show a more complex Rutter, whose harmonic style and concept of textual development takes us into richer and far more intellectually/musically challenging territory than we're used to, a nod both to Howells and to Britten. The organ pieces--both for solo (Toccata in seven) and duet (Variations on an Easter theme)--show a thorough command of the idiom and are laced with Rutter's usual catchy rhythms and inventive melodic twists. One of the highlights is the anthem for choir and flute, Musica Dei domum, with its beautiful instrumental solo and organlike choral utterances. The sound, from Berkshire, England's Douai Abbey, provides ideal space and resonance for these eminently singable--and listenable--pieces, works that belong in the collection of every true lover of choral music. [4/26/2003]
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Includes work(s) by Samuel Barber. Ensemble: Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Conductor: Marin Alsop.

W. Richard Davis, bass, Ronnie Bedford, drums + 1976.

This 1944 World Transcription recording finds the swingin' trumpet star joined by members of Cab Calloway's band for a sizzling set. Check 'em out on B.H. Boogie; Baby, Won't You Please Come Home; That's the Lick; 12th Street Rag; Stompin' at the Savoy, and more!

Blues pianist's solo album from 1962 contains 2 alternate takes & descriptive notes by Bob Koester.

DREAMS & STORIES

Vocalist Jones once again joins sidekick Houston Person on a selection of tunes that represent all the greats of Tin Pan Alley & Broadway, inc. Frank Loesser, Irving Berlin, Dietz & Schwartz, Anthony Newley & others

ALWAYS IN OUR HEARTS: ETTA JONES AS WE LOVED HER

Etta Jones could do it all. You could hear it in every note she sang. You heard it best on up-tempo tunes when she would swing with a joyful abandon and an almost godlike authority. But even when she sang the most tragic and heart wrenching of ballads Jones conveyed a resilient inner core. Those traits are here in abundance on this live concert recording of Etta and her long-time partner Houston Person at the 2000 Tri-C Jazz Festival. Etta's voice remained remarkably consistent throughout her career and she sounds particularly vibrant here on her featured tracks.

In 1968, at a Washington D.C. gig, Etta Jones teamed up with tenor saxophonist, Houston Person and his trio and decided to from a partnership that lasted over 30 years. Together they set a new gold standard by which all subsequent instrumental / vocal duos were judged. Etta received a Grammy nomination in 1980 and again in 2001 for ETTA JONES SINGS LADY DAY. Etta left US that year but through her HighNote legacy, her voice, talent and joie de vivre live on. This notable live recording finds her together with Houston and his organ trio in concert at NY's one-time jazz Mecca, Salt Peanuts. It contains a cache of previously unavailable treasures - vocals of course, but their is a liberal sprinkling of instrumentals by Houston and the organ trio as well. No one in the legion of Houston & Etta fans will want to miss this fine disc.

LEGEND OF E'BOI (THE HYPERVIGILANT EYE)

BOOK OF MAE'BUL: ANOTHER KIND OF SUNRISE

LE BEBE DE BRIGITTE (LOST IN TRANSLATION)

OVERSOUL MANUAL

DARKSEID RECITAL

COSMIC LIEDER

Two CDs. A thrilling, previously unissued live recording of Elvin Jones' quartet that captures the legendary drummer's emergence as a bandleader at a little-known NYC club where he had a weekly residency after leaving John Coltrane's band in the late 1960s. Featuring Joe Farrell on tenor saxophone, Billy Greene on piano, and Wilbur Little on bass, Revival: Live at Pookie's Pub was recorded between July 28-30, 1967, just two weeks after Coltrane passed on July 17.

Little Broken Hearts [Deluxe Edition 3 LP] - Norah Jones defied expectations with her 5th studio album Little Broken Hearts, a striking collaboration with Danger Mouse that arrived a decade after her debut Come Away With Me, prompting SPIN to call it "the 2nd essential record of Norah Jones' career." Deluxe Edition features an expanded 31-track set curated by Jones with rare bonus tracks, alternate versions, remixes, and a previously unreleased live version of the album recorded for Austin City Limits in 2012.

Norah Jones -"Little Broken Hearts" - Norah Jones defied expectations with her 5th studio album Little Broken Hearts, a striking collaboration with the producer Danger Mouse that arrived a decade after her debut Come Away With Me, prompting SPIN to call it "the second essential record of Norah Jones' career." Highlights include "Good Morning," the single "Happy Pills" and the high-energy groove of "Say Goodbye." Now available on a single vinyl disc