'Around the World With U' is the sophomore release by Ulysses Owens Jr. Produced by Owens for Cellar Music, 'Around the World With U' finds the Grammy Award-winning drummer, producer, and educator together again with his ensemble Generation Y. Following 2024's A New Beat, Owens and Generation y build, and in many ways move beyond their debut, aiming toward their proverbial North Star: The Jazz Messengers, Art Blakey's prodigious and ever-shifting ensemble who set a high bar in committing more than 100 albums - both live and studio productions - to tape. Although Generation y has only just begun to establish it's recording legacy, A New Beat put both the ambition and potential of Owens' ensemble on full display. And in the short time between their freshman and sophomore recordings, members of Gen y ascended to new levels. Around the World with U features Erena Terakubo on Alto Saxophone, Anthony Hervey on Trumpet and Tyler Bullock on piano (both former Juilliard students of Owens'); Yasushi Nakamura on bass, who was a student with Ulysses at Juilliard within the Inaugural first years of the jazz studies program. Lastly Nanami Haruta on trombone joins the quintet on the tunes "Road Life" and "Little Girl Power" who was a product of the Seiko Jazz Camp which was created by Ulysses Owens Jr., Takeshi Ohbayashi, and Tomoki Sassa in 2016 due to their previous relationships through the band New Century Jazz Quintet. 'Around the World with U' finds Owens' band brimming with confidence earned during long stretches of global touring. There's a new and singular synergy that's evident from the album's first notes. "Gen y now has some street credit," Owens says of the band's evident assuredness. Owens says the band was motivated to push their music forward, after two years in which the group released it's debut, toured the globe, and went viral with a cover of Nirvana's alt-rock masterpiece "Heart Shaped Box."

In celebration of John Joubert’s ninetieth birthday, Wells Cathedral Choir with their director Matthew Owens present a new recording of recent choral works from this prolific veteran composer. Featuring works commissioned for and first performed by the cathedral choir at Wells, this programme has at its heart the extended St. Mark Passion, a profound and heartfelt retelling of the well-known passion story. Completing the album are the expansive Missa Wellensis and Joubert’s vivid and powerful setting of Lucis iste. The Wells Cathedral Choir was hailed in 2011 by an international jury from Gramophone Magazine as the greatest choir with children in the world, and the sixth greatest overall. The choir celebrated its 1100th birthday in 2009: boys sang first at Wells Cathedral in 909 and the full choral tradition dates back over 800 years. In 1994 the choral foundation at Wells was enriched by the addition of girl choristers. Today the choir consists of 18 boy choristers, 18 girl choristers, and 12 Vicars Choral. The boys and girls usually sing separately with the Vicars Choral but occasionally come together for larger events and tours.

Bob Chilcott's Mighty Setting of Words from St John's Gospel Is a Dramatic Yet Optimistic Retelling of the Passiontide Story. The Work Combines 13th and 17th Century English Poetry with the King James Bible Text Settings and, As with Bach's Great Passion Settings, the Role of the Evangelist Is Taken By the Tenor Soloist, Who Provides a Melodious Narrative Throughout. Including 5 Well-Known Hymn Texts Set to New, Original Melodies, the Work Further Confirms Chilcott's Status As One of the World's Most Popular Active Choral Composers.

This release explores the works of British composer John Taverner (1944-2013). Taverner is particularly noted for his output of religious music. His "The Protecting Veil" was recorded by Steven Isserlis and became a best selling album, and his "Song for Athene" was performed at the funeral of Princess Diana. Matthew Owens is the Organist and Master of the Choristers of Wells Cathedral. Owens is responsible for the choral tradition of daily worship at Wells Cathedral, and has also toured widely and recorded extensively with the Choir. In 2011, the Choir was named by a Gramophone international jury as the best choir in the world with children, and the sixth best overall. This release features multiple world-premiere recordings, most of which were commissioned especially for the choir. Among these are the "Preces and Responses" as well as "They Are All Gone into the World of Light".

In a nearly unmatchable seven decades-plus of public exposure as a conductor of more than 150 orchestras that included nearly every major American orchestra, more than 5,000 concert appearances and 300 official recordings, Lorin Maazel can be said to have been one of the most important figures in 20th and early 21st c. music. His recordings of symphonic cycles of composer’s complete orchestral works include those of Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Richard Strauss, for which he won an astonishing ten Grands Prix du Disques. Another composer who figures prominently and importantly in his discography and concert performances is Gustav Mahler, to which this last of three issued sets of symphonies, recorded live with the Philharmonia Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall, concluding a much-lauded symphony cycle, sees release on Signum Classics. “... it’s wonderfully stylish: that hesitant Viennese-style playing-around and a lovely warm string sound ...” (BBC Radio 3) “This second volume, along with the first, is a treasured set on my shelves. I cannot wait for the final volume, Symphonies 7-9.” (ClassicalSource)

Also available on Blu-ray



ADAMS Doctor Atomic & • Lawrence Renes, cond; Gerald Finley ( Oppenheimer ); Jessica Rivera ( Kitty ); Eric Owens ( General Groves ); Richard Paul Fink ( Teller ); James Maddalena ( Hubbard ); Thomas Glenn ( Wilson ); Ellen Rabiner ( Pasqualita ); Netherlands PO & Op Ch • BBC/OPUS ARTE 998 (2 DVDs: 168:09)


& Illustrated synopsis; documentaries on opera, cast, composer, and director; interview with director


John Adams has already analyzed Nixon as he visited China and scrutinized terrorists and cruise ship passengers in extremis. Now, Doctor Atomic focuses on the final days of the Manhattan Project as J. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues struggle to produce the first atomic bomb. The moral dilemmas presented by that weapon drive the conflict, but though the effects of its future use are made starkly obvious and are central to the purpose of the creators, no conclusion is imposed. Rather, Doctor Atomic is an exploration of the extraordinarily gifted people who, for the cause of good, created a diabolical device that irrevocably changed them and the world that summer of 1945.


Long-time Adams collaborator Peter Sellars fashioned the libretto. Using historical sources throughout, he gives the work a strongly documentary flavor, allowing the viewer to piece together the events, personalities, and conflicts. However, it is Sellars’s use of poetry that is the most striking. Oppenheimer makes love to his wife Kitty with Baudelaire’s sensual verse, and quotes him again as the final countdown stretches time agonizingly. Kitty voices Muriel Rukeyser’s vision of peace in a world facing inescapable death. Pasqualita sings evocative Native American verse as a lullaby; and the atomic blast is anticipated with quotes from the Bhagavad Gita . In the finale to act I—a stunning piece of theater—Oppenheimer cries out his personal agony in the words of John Donne’s sonnet “Batter my heart,” as the enemy, the “Gadget,” hangs shrouded Ark-like behind him. That many of these poems and poets were significant to Oppenheimer—the Donne sonnet inspired the project’s code name “Trinity,” and he learned Sanskrit in order to read the Bhagavad Gita —adds yet another layer to this strikingly profound work.


The role of the intense and driven Oppenheimer was created by Gerald Finley, a singer who inhabits every part with his superb acting and his tightly focused, richly expressive baritone. Other excellent artists from the San Francisco Opera premiere include sonorous bass Richard Paul Fink, a Mephistophelian Edward Teller, cynical and provocative; lyric tenor Thomas Glenn, whose sensitively performed Robert Wilson is uneasy but likeable; baritone Eric Owens, a physically and vocally imposing General Leslie Groves, the no-nonsense military commander of the project; and baritone James Maddalena—Nixon in Adams’s earlier opera—a long-suffering meteorologist Jack Hubbard. New to this production are mezzo-soprano Jessica Rivera and contralto Ellen Rabiner. Rivera’s Cassandra-like Kitty Oppenheimer, the conscience of the work, is vocally vivid, though some of the acting seems posed. Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer’s Tewa Indian housekeeper, is the only fictional character. Rabiner sings her role with a rich, if not always steady, voice, balancing Kitty’s intensity with quiet compassion. The fine Netherlands Opera Chorus, playing scientists and project personnel, serves as Greek chorus, intoning the opening scientific credo, chanting the targets, crying out in fright at the vision of Vishnu and staring into the blast in stunned silence at the culminating moment.


Edgard Varèse and 1950s science-fiction movie scores are John Adams’s acknowledged inspirations, and the combination is winning. The ostinatos of traditional minimalism are used sparingly and are often disjointed and irregular, creating an undercurrent of disequilibrium. More often, Adams employs extended chords, late Romantic in their chromatic richness, punctuated with bells, shrieks of brass, snatches of melody, and electronic roars and rumbles. Above this, Adams’s lyrical vocal lines wheel, often fraught with tension. This compelling score is by far the richest and most complex Adams has created.


Not all is perfect. Well as it recreates the anxiety of the night of the test, with its portentous storm, the second act occasionally makes repetitious dramatic points and is in need of some tightening. More troubling, there are a number of visual distractions, especially the rather silly choreography, expressing heaven knows what, and the frenzied video editing with its constant cutting, panning, and zooming, and continual, often shaky, tight close-ups. The editing seems to highlight the mechanics of vocal production as much as the acting and often leaves one with no sense of what is happening on the stage as a whole. Peter Sellars was both stage and video director, so I have to assume these were important parts of his conception. There is much to admire in that vision, but sometimes less is more.


By this time, many interested readers will either have seen the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of this work in the movie theater or heard it on the radio. Despite the similarities in casting and the typically small audience for modern operas, I hope it appears on DVD. This powerful opera deserves the documentation of both directorial visions. This Netherlands Opera production, in any case, should not be overlooked. It presents Sellars’s original concept, more abstract than the Met’s, well sung, conducted, and played, and with several fine performances not reprised in the Met production. Give it a try.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames
CAST:
J. Robert Oppenheimer – Gerald Finley
Kitty Oppenheimer – Jessica Rivera
General Leslie Groves – Eric Owens
Edward Teller – Richard Paul Fink
Jack Hubbard – James Maddalena
Robert Wilson – Thomas Glenn
Captain James Nolan – Jay Hunter Morris
Pasqualita – Ellen Rabiner

Bonus:
- Interview with Peter Sellars
- Illustrated synopsis and cast gallery

Picture format: NTSC 16:9 anamorphic
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (All Regions)
Menu language: English
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch
Running time: 228 mins
Number of DVDs: 2

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Shostakovich’s two Piano Concertos span a period of almost thirty years. The youthful First Piano Concerto is a masterful example of eclecticism, its inscrutable humour and seriousness allied to virtuoso writing enhanced by the rôle for solo trumpet. Written as a birthday present for his son Maxim, the Second Piano Concerto is light-spirited with a hauntingly beautiful slow movement. With the permission of the composer’s family, Boris Giltburg has arranged the exceptionally dark, deeply personal and powerful String Quartet No. 8, thereby establishing a major Shostakovich solo piano composition.



REVIEWS:


We have no shortage of excellent versions of the two Shostakovich piano concertos, including Igoshina’s on CPO and Marc-André Hamelin’s on Hyperion. Here is another. These are big, bold, in-your-face performances that find a wider range of expression in both works than you might have believed possible. Much of the credit for this belongs to Vasily Petrenko as well, who continues his series of top-notch Shostakovich recordings for Naxos.

In the First Concerto, particularly the outer movements, Giltburg attacks the zany, theater music themes with unbridled ferocity, finding a bitter edge of desperation for all the music’s wackiness. The bright, up-front sonics and Rhys Owens’ piercing trumpet complement the approach, and there is also some remarkably precise ensemble playing from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic strings. It’s an exhausting cliff-hanger of a performance.

Giltburg and Petrenko’s vision of the theoretically light and easy Second Piano Concerto is even more striking. From the dry, perky winds at the start to the positively cataclysmic first movement development section, this is clearly a performance that has tremendous character–one which finds plenty of menace beneath the music’s breezy, sometimes comical, sometimes sweetly romantic exterior. It makes you sit up and listen with fresh ears, truly.

The two concertos really are two short for a single disc, and finding appropriate couplings is always an issue. This is where things get really interesting. Giltburg has made transcriptions of some of Shostakovich’s music for string quartet, the Waltz third movement from the Second Quartet, and the entire Eighth Quartet. He evidently had permission from Shostakovich’s family, which means nothing, as family members are usually terrible guardians of their illustrious ancestral legacies.

The Waltz works well enough, but the Eighth Quartet is an impossible piece to transcribe for the keyboard. This is string music, plain and simple. The sustained notes in the fourth movement simply cannot be reproduced on the piano, although with clever pedaling and a sensible tempo Giltburg almost pulls it off. The savage second movement sounds positively tame here: evidently it’s much easier to push a string quartet to its limits than it is a Fazioli.

Curiously, however, it’s impossible to call the performance as such a failure. It’s quite moving in its way, and if you know the original, either as a quartet or in its chamber symphony version, you can’t help but come away with a renewed appreciation of Shostakovich’s genius for matching the music to the (original) medium. But please, let’s not have any more of these experiments. One is more than enough. A great disc.

– ClassicsToday(David Hurwitz; 10/10)

Giltburg has all the agility, power and expressive intensity Shostakovich’s piano concertos demand, plus the temperament to negotiate their mercurial shifts of mood. Every phrase is imaginatively colored or nuanced, and never out of gimmicky point making, always because he has something worth saying. And he has found like-minded partners in the RLPO and Petrenko, who not only follow and support him superbly but also respond and provoke where appropriate.

– Gramophone

What is so appealing about this record is that the Boris Giltburg has rethought the works through the prism of the composer’s experiences. The first concerto is wonderfully skittish, a series of melodic in-jokes and exchanges with the orchestra. The second concerto, determinedly frisky, is played with a reckless to-hell-with-it abandon. With devastating precision, Giltburg has interpolated between the concertos his own piano reductions of one movement of the second string quartet and the entirety of the eight quartet, contemporaneous with the two piano concertos, exposing the composer’s seditious inner thoughts. This is a constantly illuminating, almost faultless project.

– Norman Lebrecht

For TRACKLIST/PERFORMERS SUMMARY, please expand note below:

Named as one of the world’s finest choirs by Gramophone, Wells Cathedral Choir and their director Matthew Owens make their Resonus Classics debut with a programme of carols typically performed during the Christmas season in Wells – A Wells Christmas. With an irresistible array of popular carols and more recent offerings this scintillating and varied programme is vividly realised by the combined boy and girl choristers and Vicars Choral that continue the 1100-year-old tradition of music in Wells Cathedral. Included in this compelling programme are works by David Willcocks, Andrew Carter, John Rutter, and Kenneth Leighton, Thomas Hewitt Jones. Also included are world premieres by Bob Chilcott, Jefferson McConnaughey & Matthew Owens.

TRACKLIST:

1 Bob Chilcott: Sussex Carol
2 Andrew Carter: A maiden most gentle
3 Jefferson McConnaughey: In the bleak midwinter
4 Malcolm Sargent: Zither Carol
5 Matthew Owens: Lullay, my liking
6 David Willcocks: Deck the hall
7 John Rutter: Donkey Carol
8 David Willcocks: Tomorrow shall be my dancing day
9 Ralph Vaughan Williams: This is the truth sent from above
10 John Rutter: Sans Day Carol
11 Alfred Hollins: Christmas Cradle Song
12 Bob Chilcott: The Sparrow's Carol
13 Thomas Hewitt Jones: What child is this?
14 John Rutter: Jesus Child
15 John Rutter: I saw three ships
16 Kenneth Leighton: O leave your sheep
17 David Willcocks: Jingle, bells
18 Richard Elliott: I Saw Three Ships
19 Arthur Warell: A Merry Christmas
20 Peter Gritton: Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Choral music has always played a significant and central role at Belfast Cathedral, since its consecration in 1904. This strong choral tradition continues to this day with the recently formed all-adult, fully professional vocal ensemble. This ‘new’ cathedral choir brings together some of the finest singers in Northern Ireland who lead the liturgy and worship of Belfast Cathedral and are featured here in their debut album for Resonus Classics. Featuring a varied program of seasonal carols from composers including Elizabeth Poston, John Rutter and Philip Ledger, this album celebrates Christmas from Northern Ireland’s national cathedral.

Wells Cathedral Choir and director Matthew Owens are joined by violist Philip Dukes and mezzo-soprano Rachael Lloyd for this exploration of choral works by the American composer Gary Davison. Part of a continuing and fruitful relationship, all of the works on this recording were written for, and premiered by, the Wells choir. Consisting entirely of first recordings, this new album contains Davison’s largest work to date – the 'Missa pro defunctis', a powerful and moving setting of the Requiem – alongside 'Most High, Glorious God', the beautifully simple 'Wessex Service', and the uplifting 'Awake, My Soul'. The Wells Cathedral Choir was hailed in 2011 by an international jury from Gramophone as the greatest choir with children in the world, and the sixth greatest overall. The choir celebrated its 1100th birthday in 2009: boys first sang at Wells Cathedral in 909 and the full choral tradition dates back over 800 years. In 1994 the choral foundation at Wells was enriched by the addition of girl choristers. Today the choir consists of eighteen boy and eighteen girl choristers. and twelve Vicars Choral.

An extraordinary 4 DVD box set that brings together three of America's most lauded contemporary opera productions that collectively are a brilliant introduction to the astonishing diversity of 20th-century opera : John Adams' Dr. Atomic directed by librettist Peter Sellars, a riveting morality drama about the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Philip Glass', The Perfect American, like the book from which it is based, seeks to reveal an unvarnished Walt Disney, based on an imagined series of reflections and memories that might have occurred during the icon's dying months; and finally the 2001 cinematic film version of Trouble in Tahiti, Leonard Bernstein's satire on American suburban married life, with the characteristically jubilant conjoining of jazz and musical comedy; lyric art with popular entertainment. A marvelous collection of consummate direction, compelling designs, a collection of inspired musical performances by the Netherlands Philharmonic, Madrid's Orquesta de Teatro Real and City of London Sinfonia along with brilliant casting and stand-out performances - among them Gerald Finley's Oppenheimer and Christopher Purves' Walt Disney. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in true Surround Sound.

Still on the shy side of 30, Ulysses Owens Jr.. has garnered an international reputation as drummer of choice for Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, and Kurt Elling, three very different personalities who are very particular in what they want to hear from the kit. On his Criss Cross leader debut, Owens Jr.. convenes McBride and Payton, as well as pianist Christian Sands (even more visible for his work in McBride's year-old-trio), rising star alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw (Roy Haynes' main sax voice for the last five years), and trombonist Mike Dease. The leader finds fresh approaches to various flavors of the swing timeline - Art Blakey and the refraction's of Buhaina established by Mulgrew Miller and Bobby Watson (each a one-time employer); Tony Williams' two phases with the Miles Davis Quintet; Ed Thigpen's crispness with the Oscar Peterson Trio - within a 21st century context.

Ulysses Owens Jr. & Generation y - A New Beat / Grammy Award winning drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. Unleashes his Generation y band giving the listener a front row seat to this generation's top talent. - Generation y is a band concept that was conceived back in 2019 with the goal promoting the next generation of dynamic talent from the top conservatories in NYC and beyond. Led by Ulysses Owens Jr. #who is a Multi Grammy Award-winning Drummer, Producer, Educator and Cultural Entrepreneur. Serving at The Juilliard School in the role of Small Ensemble Director within the Jazz Department for the last 8 years, has given Ulysses a front row seat to this Generation's top talent. The material on this album is a culmination of repertoire from Ulysses' influences and mentors like Mulgrew Miller, Roy Hargrove, George Cables, and of course the great Art Blakey. This Generation y is an updated model of the Jazz Messengers, and many of these band members also perform in Ulysses' big band, and he met many of them at The Juilliard School. This album also features a few original compositions from Luther Allison who is an emerging talent performing with Samara Joy as her pianist, and the album also features a classic from Louis Armstrong titled Heart Full of Rhythm featuring Milton Suggs. This album is a culmination of repertoire that has been performed by this band around the world over the last 4 years and to add another level of nostalgia; it was recorded at the Legendary Rudy Van Gelder Studios in Englewood, NJ