Known for his velvety voice and sophisticated charm, Nat King Cole's music and persona exudes a timeless elegance resonating with audiences of all ages. Showcasing a different side of Nat, Live at the Blue Note Chicago creates a personal connection, taking the listener back to his Chicago Roots. Nat King Cole returns home to his beloved Bronzeville neighborhood in August of 1953, performing at least twice-a-day for a week at one of Chi-town's first integrated venues, the Blue Note. Clearly inspired by his hometown community, Nat dynamically incorporates the playful provocations and cultural camaraderie of the audience - inserting spontaneous wit, laughing at his unrestrained piano solos, and exchanging musical phrases with particularly enthusiastic and equally clever crowds -Nat allows the vibrance of this collective energy to elevate these intimate performances to extraordinary historic significance. Travel back to the Blue Note Chicago with these incredibly rare, never-before-heard, live recordings now available on Vinyl, CD and DSPs.

MANY MOODS OF BUDDY COLE: SEVEN CLASSIC ALBUMS

The works on this recording reflect the richness of the cello repertoire from the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Mozart's unfinished Sonata movement in Bb, is here, having been completed by Annette Isserlis. Works by his pupils include: J N Hummel's Variations alla Monférine Op.54 and Wölfl's Sonata in D Op. 31 are both beautifully crafted and make virtuoso demands on the performers. Together with the exquisite Mozart inspired sonata by Hélène Liebmann, this is a CD of exhillarating and unjustly neglected masterpieces. Cello Classics' founder Sebastian Comberti and fortepianist Maggie Cole play on instruments of the period bringing these works to light in all their true colours.

Housewives' Choice: Hits of the 50s

Joan Sutherland is known for her great recordings made during the sixties of Donizetti and Bellini alongside powerhouse Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti. Sutherland, however, had other remarkable stage partners. Among them was Alfedo Kraus. This live recording was made in San Francisco in 1966. The partnership of Alfredo Kraus and Joan Sutherland in this opera is a matchless experience, and makes listeners realize the formidable performing needs of the Italian Romantic Opera.

Suor Leonora d'Este (1515-1575), Lucrezia Borgia's daughter, was a princess, a nun, and a musician. She left little to illuminate her history, but an obscure book of motets may at least help us understand her musical life: the Musica quinque vocum motteta materna lingua vocata, published in Venice in 1543. The book is anonymous, but it contains clues to its origins that lead us to the door of Leonora d'Este's home, the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara, perhaps even suggesting that she was its unidentified composer. The music here is the earliest published polyphony for nuns. This recording by Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens allows it to be heard for the first time through carefully researched performances.

Philippe Gaubert: Couleurs

'It is not you who are under my influence, but I who am under yours,' wrote Shostakovich to Ustvolskaya. Certainly, though their music shares sorrow, grotesquerie and violence, Ustvolskaya has a vision all her own. The Octet appears to be an obsessive rite; violins worry over the same narrow range of notes, and cower before the relentless timpanic beating. Leiferkus’s speaking voice provides the only real music in the arid Symphony. Welcome to the Gulag. Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, spare as it is, arrives like a shower of delightful opulence.

-- Helen Wallace, BBC Music Magazine

“For me jazz music is without bounds, a sanctuary for creativity,” says the Cuban-born and New York-based pianist Fabian Almazan. This is apparent in all the exciting aspects of his double album: Almazan made use of the time during the SWR NEWJazz Meeting to create music that he cannot under conventional conditions. When in 2015 the jazz department of the broadcasting station SWR gave him a blank check for the SWR NEWJazz Meeting, he spontaneously assembled for the improvisation sound lab the band “Realm of Possibilities.” It is comprised of six ambitious performers who are the spearhead of the young New York scene but who worked together for the first time in the band: Anna Webber (tenor sax, flute), Ryan Ferreira (guitar), Chris Dingman (vibraphone), Linda Oh (bass) and Henry Cole (drums). All of them are strong creative personalities, with extremely different musical backgrounds.

Live Performances by the Great Black Harpsichordist [Black Swans Series]. "Amazingly inventive and fearless playing" - Kenneth Cooper; "She deserves a chance at a major career" - New York Times

This new release is the sixth volume in a series profiling the work of Augusta Read Thomas. Called “a true virtuoso composer” by The New Yorker, Augusta Read Thomas is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she has become one of the most recognized figures of American music. Performers on this album include the Parker Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, Spektral Quartet, violinist Nathan Giem, Aurora Orchestra, Nathan Cole, and Clair Booth.

Bass-baritone Jacob Will made his New York Philharmonic debut as a soloist in the American premiere of the “Messa per Rossini,” a performance televised live nationwide. An experienced concert artist, Mr. Will has appeared with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Vladamir Ashkenazy and with the Cabrillo Festival under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies. He has sung with the San Francisco Symphony in the “St. Matthew Passion,” with the international Bach Festival of Schaffhausen, Switzerland, in the “St. John Passion,” and with the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra in Frank Martin’s “Le mystere de la Nativite.” A native of Harstville, South Carolina, Mr. Will attended Furman University and graduated from the University of South Carolina and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He participated in the Merola and Adler Fellowship Programs of the San Francisco Opera and has been a prizewinner in various international singing competitions including the Munich Competition and the Queen Elizabeth Competition of Brussels. On this release, Mr. Will sings the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, as set to music by composers Judith Cloud, N. Lincoln Hanks, John Valerio, and Tayloe Harding.

Classical Music

Mendelssohn wrote his Second Symphony or Lobgesang ('Hymn of Praise') in 1840, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of movable type. This symphony-cantata, as the composer termed it, is duly permeated with a rich and often jubilant spirit, and patterned after Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in it's solo vocal and large choral forces. The rich orchestral palette is supplemented by thrilling and expressive vocal writing, which includes solos and duets of great beauty, and culminates in a blazing fugal ending.

PREACH SISTER, PREACH showcases award-winning Katherine Jolly's "agile, bright lyric soprano" voice (The New York Times) on a series of pieces that are distinctively individual in their inspiration while cohesively united by the passions of their composers. Collaborating with pianist Emily Yap Chua, Jolly evokes the passion and curiosity of Emily Dickinson's poetry in Evan Williams' Emily's House, a collection of ten poems in which she communicates the lyrics such that one could imagine the voice being that of the poet's herself. A keen observer, Dickinson used images from nature, religion, and science to probe universal themes: the wonders of the natural world, the identity of the self, death and immortality, and love. Together Jolly and Chua breathe incredible new life into these ideas, delivering a personal and profound performance while transporting modern audiences to another place and time. Jolly turns to inspiration of a more contemporary and crucial nature on Absent an Adjustment in which her voice, ominous and purposeful, floats above and around the strings, frequently in a dissonant duet with the clarinet, heightening the intense spirit of the piece. The acrobatic coloratura vocal line, use of repeated motives and text, combined with the highly rhythmic ensemble in Katherine Bodor's Absent an Adjustment, support it's message of urgency in the face of ecological disaster. Acclaimed composer Evan Mack was inspired by the energy of the first women's march to craft Preach Sister, Preach, a song cycle which explores and celebrates the voices of ten powerful women such as Lucille Ball, Mae West, Simone de Beauvoir, Tina Fey, and Ellen DeGeneres. The intricate collaboration of Jolly and Chua succinctly portrays the power of the quotes from these women and, in doing so, offers both musical and lyrical insights into the women themselves.

This program represents American orchestral music in all of it's verve and expressive variety. Following the sensational success of Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin's Concerto in F was his first foray away from jazz bands into the concert hall, recorded here for the first time in a new critical edition by Timothy Freeze based on the composer's own notation and performances. John Harbison's Remembering Gatsby is a foxtrot that evokes the sonorities of1920s dance bands, while Joan Tower's Sequoia reflects her fascination with these silent giants of the tree world. Walter Piston's contribution to the development of 20th-century American music cannot be underestimated, and his Fifth Symphony successfully blends twelve-tone modernity with reflective profundity and a finale that evokes a spirit of joy and optimism.

A Point Of View now returns 55 years later, fully authorized by the Estate of Bobby Cole. This new version presents the original release.

Very few artists stay at the top of their game for their entire career. However, Freddy Cole's velvet unhurried singing style remains every bit as cool and hip as it was when his first record was released in 1964. Pianist John di Martino, bassist Elias Bailey, guitarist Randy Napoleon and drummer Quentin Baxter, are trusted associates of Cole who respond to his inimitable sense of swing with now intuitive assurance. Guest saxophonist Joel Frahm displays a sympathetic style that puts him in league with such earlier illustrious Cole saxophone allies as Houston Person and David "Fathead" Newman. Time has been kind to Freddy Cole, who is currently singing with the vitality and zest of a man half his age. His seasoned voice is as affecting as ever, his understanding of a song's expressive anatomy never more incisive. His unimpeachable artistry, rather than longevity, is what positions him as today's vocal jazz master.