TIPPIN

HALLELUJAH, BABY! debuted on Broadway in 1967.
Book by Arthur Laurents, Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

Tracks:
1. Overture 4:12
2. My Own Morning 4:09
3. The Slice 3:10
4. Feet Do Yo' Stuff 2:07
5. Watch My Dust 2:01
6. Smile, Smile 2:59
7. Witches' Brew 2:03
8. Another Day 2:05
9. I Wanted To Change Him 2:20
10. Being Good 3:38
11. Act II: Talking To Yourself 4:16
12. Halleluja, Baby! 3:36
13. Not Mine 3:20
14. I Don't Know Where She Got It 3:40
15. Now's The Time

Principal cast: Ernestine Jackson (Ruth Younger); Ralph Carter (Travis Younger); Helen Martin (Mrs. Johnson); Joe Morton (Walter Lee Younger); Debbie Allen (Beneatha Younger); Virgina Capers (Mama Lena Younger); Robert Jackson (Joseph Asagai).
Recorded at Columbia Records 30th Street Studio, New York on October 27, 29 and November 2, 1973. Includes liner notes by Robert Brittan and Judd Woldin.
All songs written by Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan.
RAISIN opened at the 46th Street Theatre in New York on October 18, 1973 and ran for 847 performances, closing on December 8, 1975.

Track Listing
1. C Jam Blues
2. Solitude
3. Mood Indigo
4. It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
5. Lush Life
6. Just Squeeze Me (But Don't Tease Me)
7. Things Ain't What They Used to Be
8. Caravan
9. Take the "A" Train
10. Cotton Tail
11. Sophisticated Lady

Personnel: Harry Allen (tenor saxophone); Bill Charlap (piano); Peter Washington (bass); Kenny Washington (drums).
Recorded at Nola Recording Studios, New York, New York on July 28 & 29, 1999. Includes liner notes by Harry Allen.
Personnel: Harry Allen (tenor saxophone); Bill Charlap (piano); Kenny Washington (drums).
Liner Note Author: Harry Allen.
Recording information: Nola Recording Studios, New York, NY (07/28/1999/07/29/1999).
Photographer: Junichi Takahashi.
Allen's tenor sax sound is perfectly suited for the music of Duke Ellington. His literate, traditional approach and occasionally Stan Getz-ian breathy tones go to the heart of Duke's melodic and harmonic concepts. Pianist Bill Charlap is excellent through and through, while bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington are dutiful in attending to their swing. Several of these tracks are read pretty straight, as the ballad "Lush Life," the easy swinger "Just Squeeze Me," the Afro-Cuban to bop "Caravan," and the air-filled "Sophisticated Lady." But the band changes up the rest. At the least extreme, "Mood Indigo" is easy swing as opposed to balladic; "Take the A Train" is slowed way down with Allen and Charlap only, while the pianist plays the melody while Allen's tenor counter-swipes licks on "C Jam Blues." More adapted is the slow tick-tock to bossa of the usual wall-melting ballad "Solitude," and a low-down, lugubrious bluesy swing with Charlap loading up on the intro and melody of "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," with Allen's stacatto stopped accents. At their most energetic, the quartet charges hard and trade eights during the up-tempo workout "Cotton Tail," whereas Allen and bassist Washington in duet need no other instrumental accoutrements in order to rhythmically fire up "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing." This is most likely Allen's best batch yet, for he is a great interpreter rather than innovator. Duke did all the inventing necessary here, and this true collective quartet is hard to top.

Classical Music

Track Listing
1. Samba Cantina - Paul Desmond
2. Our Waltz - Gary Burton
3. I'll Take Romance - Dominique Eade
4. Isfahan - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
5. Sweet Lorraine - Coleman Hawkins/Henry "Red" Allen
6. Lazy River - Hoagy Carmichael
7. Petals Danse - Tom Harrell
8. My Ship - Sonny Rollins
9. Blues for Bessie - Bud Powell
10. After the Rain - Don Braden

Personnel: Dominique Eade, Hoagy Carmichael (vocals); Romero Lubambo (guitar, acoustic guitar); Everett Barksdale, Jim Hall, Peter Leitch (guitar); Joe Venuti, Regina Carter (violin); Ron Lawrence (viola); Akua Dixon (cello); Greg Tardy, Jimmy Dorsey, Buster Bailey (clarinet); Johnny Hodges (saxophone, alto saxophone); Don Braden (saxophone, tenor saxophone); Paul Desmond (alto saxophone); Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Benny Golson (tenor saxophone); Tom Harrell (trumpet, flugelhorn); Henry "Red" Allen (trumpet); Tommy Dorsey (trombone); Duke Ellington, George Colligan, Herbie Hancock, Marty Napoleon, Bud Powell (piano); Gary Burton (vibraphone); Dwayne Burno, George Duvivier (acoustic bass); Connie Kay, Cozy Cole, Joe Morello, Matt Wilson , Roy McCurdy, Art Taylor (drums).

Recording information: New York, NY (11/30/1930-??/??/1997).

Arranger: Dominique Eade.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Learning by doing: In the eighties Stefan Winter volunteered for a record company to learn autodidactically the profession as music producer. At the time a demo tape of the young Steve Coleman arrived, nobody showed any interest. During Stefan Winter's first stay in New York City (1984) he jumped at the opportunity and offered Steve Coleman a record deal. This was the hour of birth of the debut recording with the core musicians of the later named "M-Base Collective" and at the same time of the label JMT (Jazz Music Today). Right after the first record Winter started working with Greg Osby, Cassandra Wilson, Robin Eubanks, Gary Thomas, Gery Allen and many others like Kelvin Bell, Kevin Bruce Harris, Marvin "Smitty" Smith and Terri Lyne Carrington. It is historical certainty that these works were recorded mainly in the eighties, but as a listener one can hardly believe it. Each album offers a new inspiring approach to making music which is still characteristic today. Listen to the "M-Base" not to rest on tradition, but to see these artists experience as a sound basis for the future. This compilation is the second release in the Winter & Winter Jubilee Edition, celebrating the labels' 30th anniversary.

On Mindgames, Osby's second album, spherical ballads, funk and modern jazz-rock alternate with each other in an exciting succession. Mindgames is an album of unusual moods. It almost strikes one as being mysterious, when Osby is clustering acoustic and electronic sounds of when he is bringing together complex rhythms with his almost abstract melodies.

Recorded live on SACD in the sumptuous acoustic of Grieghallen in Bergen, this mind-blowing interpretation of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder involves 350 performers: large choral forces, six exceptional soloists, and the legendary Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra- extended for the occasion- all conducted by Edward Gardner. Marking the pinnacle of the Orchestra’s 250th anniversary celebrations, the same forces offered two evening concerts that met with unanimous acclaim in the press, including a five-star review from The Daily Telegraph praising the ‘sweep of Gardner’s conducting, by turns luminous and incisive.’ It added, ‘He unleashed the piece’s volcanic passions while never becoming mired in its high-calorific density, and somehow avoided drowning the singers’, and also congratulated the ‘heroic’ Stuart Skelton, ‘warm’ Alwyn Mellor, ‘ethereal’ Anna Larsson, and ‘powerful’ Thomas Allen.

This breathtaking DVD and aural meditation on Antarctica, with original score, was produced by photographer/videographer Brooks de Wetter-Smith.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Composing over 150 works for piano and voice over a period of 44 years, the songs of Francis Poulenc remain consistently popular to concert audiences the world over. Varying in their individual style and character, Poulenc set music to a wide range of different French poetry – both ancient and modern, and from the serious to the surreal. The final disc in Signum’s series of The Complete Songs of Francis Poulenc features a cast of the finest singers of our generation, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau as well as additional instrumental soloists for Poulenc’s larger-ensemble settings of his songs.

This posthumous anthology consisting of selections from 50 years of work by composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932?2004) includes six world premieres?that is to say, it took 50 years for this man?s lifetime output to be recognized. Perhaps that is not so shocking. After all, how easy was it for a black man in the 1950s to obtain a bachelor?s and master?s degree from Manhattan School of Music, and compose his first major work at the age of 22 within the confines of a segregated society? But Perkinson, the namesake of black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875?1912), didn?t consider himself generically a black composer. Whether or not he allowed himself to be typecast as an ethnic artist, Perkinson?s interpretation of white, WASP, and Western musical convention is spiked with vintage blues and jazz. His music is, therefore, in an uncanny and paradoxical way, the reverse of the cultural plundering associated with Gershwin?s and Dvo?ák?s musical appropriations. Consequently, if Perkinson?s music isn?t especially innovative, we shouldn?t be surprised that a victim of discrimination and ghettoization would not choose to further isolate himself by throwing 12-tone rows into the mix. After all, experimentation is the spawn of prosperity, not the privilege of the hardship.


Perkinson?s Sinfonietta No. 1 for strings, composed in 1955, might have been considered, if composed by a young Caucasian, the work of a wunderkind. The precocious piece is an homage to Bach, and throughout his life Perkinson returned to fugal writing as a religious rite of appreciation for the German master. Two years later, Perkinson began to infiltrate into his technique the echoes of his ancestor slaves. Quartet No. 1 , based on ?Calvary? (Negro Spiritual) weaves together the dualism of his segregated world into one lucid harmonious dream.


The next selection on the disc was composed 20 years later. One wonders what happened in the intervening years, though we know that Perkinson had the opportunity to work with Leonard Bernstein, Max Roach, Alvin Ailey, Jerome Robbins, Marvin Gaye, and Harry Belafonte. He also co-founded and conducted the Symphony of the New World. Blue/s Forms for solo violin (1972) is a deep reverie of black experience as seen through the filter of Paganiniesque writing. Sanford Allen plays it with tender feeling. Equally luscious is Lamentations, a black/folk song suite for solo cello, played by Tahirah Whittington.


Just before his death, Perkinson composed the last selection on the disc, Movement for String Trio. It is a profoundly sweet, sad, Barberesque self-requiem for a man who should have been heard, and one hopes will be heard now?though he won?t be here to enjoy the long overdue recognition.


FANFARE: David Wolman

Together with Johann Simon Mayr, Ferdinando Paër counts as one of the most important opera composers of his day, and he was unable to resist filling his oratorio on Christ’s Passion, Il Santo Sepolcro with expressive extremes. Pain and grief contrast with joy and hope, and scenes including the terrible hours of the crucifixion, frenzy of the crowd, resurrection and Last Judgment are given potently descriptive music. Originally a prelude to Haydn’s Seven Last Words, Mayr’s Invito is a call to hear Paër’s incomparable narrative.

This is a DVD-Audio disc. The DVD-Audio content can only be read by a DVD-Audio player. The Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS audio tracks provided on this disc will play on a standard DVD player.
In the early 1970s, the Manhattan Transfer made their mark on the American music scene by mixing an encyclopedic knowledge of pop styles from nearly all eras with jazz. With AMONG FRIENDS, one of the quartet, vocalist Cheryl Bentyne, steps into the solo spotlight for a looser, slightly less formal recital (accompanied by a jazz quartet, including the fine guitarist Grant Geissman) with this high-quality DVD-Audio release.
DVD Features:
Region 1
Keep Case
Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
24 Bit/96 Khz PCM Stereo - English
24 Bit/48 Khz Dolby Digital 5.1 - English

Diana Damrau and Angelika Kirchschlager star in the acclaimed 2008 production of Humperdinck’s famous fairytale opera, in the company of two of Britain’s most revered musical figures: Thomas Allen, playing the role of the Father, and the legendary conductor Colin Davis. Directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser combine their characteristic wit and a dash of deliciously dark comedy with the opera’s fairytale charm. Humperdinck’s music mixes catchy folk-like songs with sumptuous instrumental colour, making the result as tunefully approachable, musically memorable and visually delightful as opera gets. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in full Surround Sound.

Hansel: Angelika Kirchschlager
Gretel: Diana Damrau
Gertrud: Elizabeth Connell
Peter: Thomas Allen
Witch: Anja Silja
Sand man: Pumeza Matshikiza
Dew Fairy: Anita Watson

Tiffin Boys’ Choir and Children’s Chorus
The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Conductor: Colin Davis
Stage Directors: Moshe Leiser & Patrice Caurier

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, on 12th and 16th December 2008.

Plus
Illustrated synopsis & animated cast gallery.
Interview with Colin Davis.
Fairytales feature.
Cinema trailer.

Reviews
‘Angelika Kirchschlager’s tousled, boyish Hänsel and Diana Damrau’s Gretel are dramatically convincing and vocally superb, while their parents, excellently sung and played by Elizabeth Connell and Thomas Allen, earn our sympathy as well as our censure. Pumeza Matshikiza’s goblin-like Sandman is truly magical and Anita Watson’s feather-dusting Dew Fairy another amusing creation. Colin Davis, unafraid to relish the icing on the cake, draws a warm, effulgent sound from the orchestra.’ Evening Standard

REGIONS: All Regions
PICTURE FORMAT: 16:9
LENGTH: 138 Mins
SOUND: 5.1 DTS SURROUND / PCM STEREO
SUBTITLES: ENGLISH/FRENCH/GERMAN/SPANIS/ITALIAN
LANGUAGE: German
NO OF DISCS: 2

Diana Damrau and Angelika Kirchschlager star in the acclaimed 2008 production of Humperdinck’s famous fairytale opera, in the company of two of Britain’s most revered musical figures: Thomas Allen, playing the role of the Father, and the legendary conductor Colin Davis. Directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser combine their characteristic wit and a dash of deliciously dark comedy with the opera’s fairytale charm. Humperdinck’s music mixes catchy folk-like songs with sumptuous instrumental colour, making the result as tunefully approachable, musically memorable and visually delightful as opera gets. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in full Surround Sound.

Hansel: Angelika Kirchschlager
Gretel: Diana Damrau
Gertrud: Elizabeth Connell
Peter: Thomas Allen
Witch: Anja Silja
Sand man: Pumeza Matshikiza
Dew Fairy: Anita Watson

Tiffin Boys’ Choir and Children’s Chorus
The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Conductor: Colin Davis
Stage Directors: Moshe Leiser & Patrice Caurier

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, on 12th and 16th December 2008.

Plus
Illustrated synopsis & animated cast gallery.
Interview with Colin Davis.
Fairytales feature.
Cinema trailer.

Reviews
‘Angelika Kirchschlager’s tousled, boyish Hänsel and Diana Damrau’s Gretel are dramatically convincing and vocally superb, while their parents, excellently sung and played by Elizabeth Connell and Thomas Allen, earn our sympathy as well as our censure. Pumeza Matshikiza’s goblin-like Sandman is truly magical and Anita Watson’s feather-dusting Dew Fairy another amusing creation. Colin Davis, unafraid to relish the icing on the cake, draws a warm, effulgent sound from the orchestra.’ Evening Standard

REGIONS: All Regions
LENGTH: 138 Minutes
FORMAT: PCM 2.0 PCM 5.1
LANGUAGE: German
SUBTITLES: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian

*** This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD or HD DVD players. ***



J. STRAUSS II Die Fledermaus • Vladimir Jurowski, cond; Pamela Armstrong ( Rosalinde ); Thomas Allen ( Eisenstein ); Håkan Hagegård ( Dr. Falke ); Pär Lindskog ( Alfred ); Malena Ernman ( Prince Orlovsky ); Lyubov Petrova ( Adele ); Ragnar Ulfung ( Dr. Blind ); Artur Korn ( Frank ); Udo Samel ( Frosch ); Reneé Schüttengruber ( Ida ); Glyndebourne Ch; London PO • BBC/OPUS ARTE 7004 (Blu-ray Disc: 198:00) Live: Glyndebourne 8/17/2003


& Cast & costume galleries. The Genesis of the Waltz. The Architect Returns. Interviews. Frosch interlude


This pretty-much-perfect production of Strauss’s pretty-much-perfect operetta is an ideal specimen to demonstrate the visual and sonic virtues of the Blu-ray medium. The Glyndebourne staging is a feast to watch: the sets and costumes are lavish, the dancing accomplished. Opus Arte’s 24-bit PCM sound is way better than anything you’ve ever heard on a traditional DVD, both the stereo version and the spacious multichannel that puts the listener in the middle of the appreciative audience who experienced the real thing in Sussex back in August of 2003.


Director Stephen Lawless has moved the setting of Die Fledermaus ahead a few decades to around 1910, the Vienna of Sigmund Freud and Gustav Klimt. (Eisenstein’s dressing gown, in fact, is a facsimile of Klimt’s The Kiss .) This Fledermaus is clearly viewed as a play that happens to have awfully good music, and Lawless and Daniel Dooner have created new dialogue for the production. In the hands of an ensemble of terrific singing actors, the texts never impede the headlong momentum of this comic masterpiece.


What a cast! Pamela Armstrong, as Rosalinde, handles the part vocally quite well but is equally concerned with her character’s development: when she dresses up as someone else, Eisenstein’s wife discovers her “real self” (as the soprano puts it in one of the disc’s “extras”). Thomas Allen notes that the high tessitura of his role was a bit of a challenge—it sure doesn’t sound it—but his comic timing is impeccable and the man can actually dance. As Dr. Falke, Håkan Hagegård gives his character an edge: the practical joke that Eisenstein played on him months before the curtain rises for act I has deeply wounded him, and Falke is serious about getting revenge. Singing Alfred in an appropriately seductive manner is Swedish tenor Pär Lindskog who, like Allen, is obviously quite a versatile artist. You’d never know from this performance that the guy also sings Siegfried and Parsifal.


The kudos go on. Lyubov Petrova’s rendition of Adele’s big second-act aria is a showstopper and Malena Ernman is utterly convincing as the terminally bored and sexually ambiguous Orlovsky. It’s a surprise every time Ernman starts to sing and her voice jumps up an octave or two. The smaller parts—Dr. Blind, Frank, Ida, Frosch—are all covered quite well.


Vladimir Jurowski takes the music very seriously (as, the notes remind us, did Gustav Mahler) and his leadership of the LPO is spirited and knowingly inflected. To accompany the curtain calls, Jurowski conducts a rousing “Radetzky March.” Opus Arte provides subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, and Dutch. There’s a generous supply of extras, including cast and costume “galleries” and brief featurettes on the history of the waltz and the new (in 1994) opera house at Glyndebourne, as revisited by the architect who designed it. We also get observations on Fledermaus from Armstrong, Allen, Hagegård, Jurowski, and director Lawless and, to close, some shtick, mostly about champagne, by Udo Samel, the actor who has the speaking role of the jailer Frosch.


Yes, this one’s on my Want List.

FANFARE: Andrew Quint


Picture Format: 1080i High Definition, NTSC 16:9
Sound Format: 2.0 / 5.0 PCM Audio
Region Code: 0 (All Regions)
Menu Languages: English
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch
Running Time: 198 min

Includes sinfonia(s) by Leopold Mozart. Ensemble: New Zealand Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Donald Armstrong.

Classical Music

At last, they're back! La Section Rythmique, the fabulous group whose stars were always behind the scenes, namely David Blenkhorn, Guillaume Nouaux and Sebastien Girardot. Catapulted to the front of the stage with the release of their first album - it was Record of the Year for Jazz Magazine in 2015 - the group has played countless concerts and done many recordings since then with the likes of Cecile McLorin Salvant, Evan Christopher, Scott Hamilton, Lillian Boutté or Jason Marsalis among others. La Section Rythmique has moved away from the New Orleans material of their first recording and taken swing and bop directions. And since only musicians of this band's calibre could allow themselves guests like these, they've gone into the studio with two giants of the saxophone: American star Harry Allen and young Italian player Luigi Grasso. Only La Section Rythmique could provide such an amazing setting and rival the playing of their two guest soloists. Don't miss this album!

The psalms of David have been a source of inspiration to composers for centuries, each text forming a poetic shape the equivalent of a gothic arch, and expressing a broad range of timeless emotions. Recorded here for the first time in its complete form, John Rutter’s Psalmfest is a collection of nine settings for full orchestra as rich and varied as the original texts. The remaining psalm settings were written for special occasions, including the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011.