A vast and atmospheric piece of electronic minimalism, Mirage encompasses the changing states of the eponymous ballet - a ritual for 16 dancers conceived by choreographer Damien Jalet and contemporary artist Kohei Nawa. Delivering a statement that feels both radical and accessible, attuned to the elements, Thomas Bangalter takes a sculptural approach to sound and music in the lineage of Iannis Xenakis. The co-founder of Daft Punk continues to carve a personal path grounded by experimentation as a mode of performance and the pleasure of collaboration.
A vast and atmospheric piece of electronic minimalism, Mirage encompasses the changing states of the eponymous ballet - a ritual for 16 dancers conceived by choreographer Damien Jalet and contemporary artist Kohei Nawa. Delivering a statement that feels both radical and accessible, attuned to the elements, Thomas Bangalter takes a sculptural approach to sound and music in the lineage of Iannis Xenakis. The cofounder of Daft Punk continues to carve a personal path grounded by experimentation as a mode of performance and the pleasure of collaboration.
Thomas Kelly made his concerto debut performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No.24 with the orchestra of the Purcell School. He was just 9 years old. Since then, Thomas has studied with Dmitri Alexeev at the Royal College of Music, and awarded the RCM's highest accolade for a pianist, the Benjamin Britten Fellowship. Thomas has many awards from international competitions and has a wide repertoire embracing both core and lesser known areas of the piano repertoire. His debut album is a daunting program of organ works arranged by great pianists for their instrument.
A mainstay of the Memphis blues, R&B and soul scenes from the mid-1940s until his death in 2001, the sometime DJ who billed himself on radio as 'the world's oldest teenager' was the only man to record for the Bluff City's three major independent record labels (Sun, Stax and Hi) and a lot more besides. With daughter Carla, Rufus Thomas more or less started the Stax label on it's road to success, being one of the first and indeed also the last people to have a 45 issued by the label. Prior to that he'd built a career that began as a tap dancer in the 1930 to a point where he made his first records in the late 1940s. In this collection you can hear just about everything Rufus cut between our title track - his first release - up to his first Stax solo hit 'The Dog' in 1962. Rufus' musical journey up to that point and beyond mirrors the evolution of the black American music scene in the south across the same time frame. Only a few of these records were anything more than local hits, but they all contribute significantly to a much bigger catalogue that is one of the most consistent of any artist whose career stretched across eight decades! If you want to find out where The Memphis Sound (of soul, anyway) began, this is a very good place to start looking.
With Songs of Passion, a collection of vocal and instrumental music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell - English composers born nearly a century apart - mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, lutenist Thomas Dunford and Ensemble Jupiter have created a companion to their previous Erato albums, Eternal Heaven, Idylle and Amazone. Dowland is known for his intimate evocations of amorous melancholy in his writing for voice and for lute, while the music of Purcell - the greatest British-born composer of the Baroque era - encompasses a rich diversity of moods and emotions.
Thomas Strønen - "Relations". Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano - recorded between 2018 and 2022 - are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen solo and in a series of duets. With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Strønen offers a project that implies new threads of connectivity, new creative relationships. Produced by Manfred Eicher.
From Academy Award-nominated and Grammy Award-winning composer Thomas Newman (The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, Skyfall) comes his first-ever original ballet score, inspired by the classic John Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men and composed for The Joffrey Ballet's critically acclaimed 2022 production choreographed by Cathy Marston. Newman's music evokes themes of loneliness and the aspiration for a new life, even in the face of incredible hardship.
Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem / Nagano, Hamburg State Philharmonic
BIS
SACD
$34.99Feb 21, 2025
Recorded in August 2022 at concerts given in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg under Kent Nagano, this version of Johannes Brahms's celebrated choral masterpiece will come as a surprise to many. The German Requiem is heard not in it's usual seven-movement version, but rather as it was first performed in Bremen Cathedral on 10th April 1868 (Good Friday) under Brahms's direction, without the fifth movement for soprano and choir that was completed later that year. On the other hand there are numerous interludes, instrumental and vocal, secular and sacred, by Bach, Tartini, Schumann and Handel - including pieces that were then regarded as essential parts of a Good Friday concert. Such a programme might seem unusual today, but these musical additions shed new light on Brahms's work, which in this version manifests itself as what Umberto Eco might have described as an 'open work'. Presenting the work in the form heard at the Bremen premiere is more than just a reconstruction: it enriches our understanding of this unique music.
Thomas Strønen - "Relations" / Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano - recorded between 2018 and 2022 - are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen solo and in a series of duets. With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Strønen offers a project that implies new threads of connectivity, new creative relationships. Produced by Manfred Eicher. Verve Label Group; ECM; Jazz.
Michael Tilson Thomas's complete recordings for Deutsche Grammophon (1970-2003) and Argo (1992-1995) encapsulate the conductor's restlessly exploratory nature and masterful handling of the modern orchestra. The recordings in this collection demonstrate his superb ear for complex rhythms and textures, an orchestral builder, as well as an inspired interpreter of the widest imaginable range of music. Even the most cynical of critics set aside their Beckmesser's slate when Michael Tilson Thomas stepped on to the international stage in the early 1970s when Deutsche Grammophon released albums of Tchaikovsky, Debussy and American music. They were made near the start of his tenure as the Boston Symphony's Assistant Conductor, and they demonstrated a preternatural assurance as well as a superb ear for complex rhythms and textures. Tilson Thomas's first period with DG was relatively short-lived - just a couple of years - but it also took in his scintillating pianism, accompanying BSO principals in Debussy sonatas, and a viscerally exact Stravinsky Rite of Spring, as well as, of course, the luminous account of Tchaikovsky's 'Winter Dreams' symphony (still considered a benchmark recording of this work). All the repertoire played to his strengths and demonstrated his considerable talents as an orchestral builder as well as an inspired interpreter of the widest imaginable range of music. Once installed as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, Tilson Thomas rekindled his DG relationship with two definitive albums of music by his mentor Leonard Bernstein. On The Town and Arias and Barcarolles both feature Frederica von Stade and Thomas Hampson, who were also close and long-standing associates of the composer. The LSO/DG partnership also featured typically insightful and sympathetic performances of concertos with pianist Jean-Marc Luisada and cellist Mischa Maisky. With Il sogno, Elvis Costello's ballet score for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the conductor's skill at shaping the most eclectic range of styles comes to the fore. Finally, the set brings together for the first time the Argo recordings made by Tilson Thomas with the New World Symphony, which he founded in 1997 as a 'training orchestra' but which rapidly established itself as an international-calibre ensemble, capable of taking on the most challenging repertoire. With them, Tilson Thomas produced an exhilarating album of Latin American dances (Tangazo) a sensuous survey of Morton Feldman's orchestral music, and finally a loving tribute to his teacher from college days, the composer Ingolf Dahl. If Dahl's music is still too little known, the reissue of this album should bring it new friends. Reissued with original jackets, the set includes a new appreciation of the conductor's career by Peter Quantrill.
Soundtrack from the 2015 film Spectre (007) - Original music by Thomas Newman - Limited edition white vinyl double LP - Brand-new re-issue of the soundtrack from the 24th film in the James Bond series on limited edition white vinyl. One of the most anticipated film soundtracks of 2015, Newman's thrilling orchestral score heightens the action-packed film, which saw Daniel Craig reprising his role as 007 for the fourth time. Double white colored vinyl LP pressing.
This was a dream band to write for and play with," alto saxophonist Michael Thomas says of Manuel Valera, Matt Brewer and Obed Calvaire, his A-list rhythm section on Illusion of Choice, his Criss Cross debut, and fourth leader album. "These musicians can play any style and sound like it's the only thing they play. I wanted to explore these different areas and cohere them into an album, not sound like tunes stuck together for a CD. Everything was on the table. I wasn't afraid to develop whatever ideas I came up with, and see where they went.
Thomas Guthrie writes - In 2001, I had studied for a PhD at York University under the guidance of the inspirational conductor, musicologist and all-round Lieder lover, Peter Seymour. Our subject was ornamentation in Schubert Lieder. I was a poor student, and never finished it, but my eyes and ears were opened to the idea that Schubert expected his singers to ornament - and adapt in other ways - his music. I also learnt some of the wider ideas inherent in Rhetoric, an obsession of the literati of the Renaissance (and later). At the heart of this antique science, based on the art of both speech writing and speech giving, is the idea that genuine engagement with an audience demands spontaneity and invention. According to the rules of Rhetoric, this should be exactly half of it, right down to questions of tempo, instrumentation, expression and even the notes themselves. In this context, performing Schubert songs in white tie and tails, standing in the crook of a large grand piano in a refined, often large-capacity cultural venue, began to seem to me to be inauthentic, and even contrary to the spirit in which Schubert had composed them. I hope you can feel even a tiny whiff of it as you listen to these songs. Above all, I hope they conjure some sense of the Schubert that perhaps we have come to miss - a lover of relaxed storytelling through friendship, humanity, and intimacy.
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for the film A Man Called Otto featuring the score by renowned composer Thomas Newman and the track "'Til You're Home" by Rita Wilson and Sebastian Yatra. "'Til You're Home" was co-written by Rita Wilson and songwriter/producer David Hodges and co-produced by Rita and Matt Rollings (Willie Nelson, Keith Urban).
Red Vinyl LP pressing. Holiday release from the Matchbox Twenty frontman. The 10-track album includes original songs, covers of Ray Charles' 'That Spirit of Christmas' and Bryan Adams' 'Christmas Time' and duets, with collaborators on the album including Bebe Winans, Robert Randolph, Ingrid Michaelson, Brad Paisley, Forest Blakk & Abby Anderson.
Fischer: Music for Winds / Lindemann, Thomas, MTSU Wind Ensemble
Toccata
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Oct 01, 2021
The four works for symphonic wind band composed by Peter Fischer – born in 1956, across the bay from San Francisco, in Martinez, California – are almost textbook examples of American eclecticism, mixing urban vibrancy with a sense of the timeless outdoors, bringing in flavors from jazz and rock and moving easily between vigorous dance-rhythms and sultry nightscapes. Dance, indeed, lies at the heart of most of this music, which gives the mambo, the tango, the tarantella and the waltz a new and spirited twist amid echoes of Stravinsky, Revueltas and Bernstein. In Fischer's Trumpet Concerto, soloist Jens Lindemann plays trumpet, cornet, and flügelhorn.
Natural Habitat is a collection of music composed over the last decade, much of it written around the time I moved from Boston to New York City. During my first few years living here, I would frequently travel back and forth to perform, and the excitement and energy I felt at that time is expressed in these songs. The title track is the oldest tune we recorded - when it was composed in 2009, the manuscript simply said "Untitled Swing". For a while, that title stuck and became somewhat of a joke when I would play it on gigs, but in 2018, I was back in Boston and found myself performing it again at the same venue (and with some of the same musicians) as when I had composed it nearly a decade before. The title Natural Habitat came to me, as it suddenly felt like I knew where that tune belonged. // The other music on this recording was written while I was settling into life in New York City - which now feels like my natural habitat, both physically and musically. I chose material for this project that represents how I feel living and working in this environment. The variety of meters, forms, and intensities heard in these songs mirrors the unpredictability of daily life here, but the excitement and energy I feel when performing in this city is unparalleled. -Michael Thomas
The story of Beowulf, although thousands of years old, is still loved by many all over the world. This recording of a new musical telling of the story, composed by Toby Young, blurs traditional sense of the genre of classical music by merging it with folk and popular music. This fusion is what makes Beowulf a fantastic story. The greatest versions of the story are not those defined by a simplistic clash of good versus bad, but the ones which involve slight ambiguous points; ones which allow the reader/listener to make his/her mind up about what is exactly going on. The combination of Toby Young’s score and Jennifer Thorp’s libretto create this perfectly – with characterful narration by celebrated actor Timothy West, beautiful performances by soprano Elin Manahan Thomas.
REVIEW
This disc is really a lot of fun. The English composer Toby Young (b. 1990) studied at King’s College, Cambridge (with Robin Holloway) and New College, Oxford. This work is a retelling of the classic story of Beowulf, involving a script by William Towers, based on ideas by Danny Coleman-Cooke, and a sung libretto by Jennifer Thorp. Famed actor Timothy West is the superb narrator, and the young choral forces sing music to accompaniment of a small instrumental ensemble. Coleman-Cooke’s treatment of the story introduces ambiguity rather than hewing to a simple good vs. evil dynamic. Young’s music feels perfectly gauged. Each “cue” is never too long. The overall style is both completely of the present while also evoking the “ancient” era of the story. It is beautifully recorded and performed, and makes for a most enjoyable hour of storytelling in words and music.
Tilson Thomas: From the Diary of Anne Frank & Meditations on Rilke
SFS MEDIA
SACD
$22.49Jul 17, 2020
Winner of the 2020 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Compendium!
In celebration of Michael Tilson Thomas' 25th and final year as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, SFS Media presents the premiere recordings of MTT's first and most recent compositions for voice and orchestra. MTT's From the Diary of Anne Frank and Meditations on Rilke feature narrator Isabel Leonard, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny. Inspired by and based on the words and compassionate spirit of Anne Frank, From the Diary of Anne Frank opens with a flourish and culminates in a solemn yet hopeful vision for the future. Meditations on Rilke takes listeners on an emotional and evocative journey befitting the lyrical sweep of Rainer Maria Rilke's poems. This album will be available June 26, 2020 for digital download and streaming and July 17, 2020 in studio master-quality double SACD set.
One of the best trumpet players in the world. -THOMAS CONRAD, JAZZTIMES. Trumpeter/composer Thomas Marriott has covered a lot of musical ground over his 11 Origin releases, most recently with the lush balladry of his 2019 recording, "Romance Language." For "Trumpet Ship," Marriott goes for the exuberant, highly intuitive, propelling joy that is a jam session. Here, that session includes three of the more electric and empathetic players in jazz - pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Luques Curtis and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr. - all long time collaborators with Marriott, recording in Seattle while on a quartet tour of the Northwest. Through a set of five Marriott originals along with a take on Jerome Kern's All the Things You Are, Gil Evans' Barracuda and the Sonny Simmons title tune, the quartet's spirit and chemistry shine. Vivid is the magic that comes from talented, trusting friends and first takes.
BARTOK: ORCHESTRAL WORKS VOL.1 - CONCERTO FOR ORCH
ONYX CLASSICS
CD
$20.17Jan 03, 2020
Onyx presents a new series from Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra that celebrates the scope and stylistic variety in Bartok's compositional output. Whether inspired by impressionistic or late romantic music or Gypsy music from the streets of Budapest, Bartok's music speaks to us with an irresistible vitality, passion, humor and compelling seriousness. This is apparent no more so than in his youthfully exuberant Suite No.1, recorded here for the first time in it's original uncut version. The suite is paired with his last completed orchestral work, the Concerto for Orchestra.
Brass instruments are a vital part of the festive fabric of Christmas, and Tchaikovsky’s iconic ballet The Nutcracker is made even more joyful with the brassy brilliance of Septura. Narrated by preeminent actor Derek Jacobi, The Nutcracker is set on Christmas Eve, with music both rapturous and fantastical. It tells the story of how young Clara’s favorite present, a nutcracker shaped like a little man, turns into a handsome prince at midnight. Septura has been acclaimed by Brass Band World for its ‘stylistic perfection’ and ‘beautifully portrayed artistry.’
This unusual album shows the contemporary trombone in a rich variety of guises – dramatic, lyrical, flirtatious, solemn, capricious and many more – in four recent concertante pieces for trombone and symphonic wind band, demonstrating the striking versatility of the instrument. It’s an international undertaking, too: the soloist is English, the band and conductor American, and the composers American, Danish, Dutch and English, all four writing in a language that is direct and immediate. Brett Baker is viewed internationally as a leading brass performer and educator. One of the most often recorded brass soloists, he is passionate about encouraging composers to write pioneering new repertoire. Brett is Programme Leader for Musical Arts at the University of Salford. He continues to be an ambassador for Michael Rath Brass Instruments and is Principal Trombone of the Black Dyke Band. He is Festival Director of both the Singapore and Thailand Low Brass Festivals and is a Past President of the British Trombone Society.
If you see one opera this year, make it The Exterminating Angel, ran the headline in the New York Times after the US premiere of Thomas Ades' "stunningly inventive" opera based on Luis Bunuel's surreal and satirical 1962 film El angel exterminador. Like the British composer's score, Tom Cairns' production is both spectacular and surprising. "Ades keeps the listener on edge," wrote Opera magazine, "because one never knows where his dazzling palette of possibilities will take him next." Thomas Ades TITLE: Ades: The Exterminating Angel (MET)(DVD) Label: PRX/Warner Classics/Parlophone
If you see one opera this year, make it The Exterminating Angel, ran the headline in the New York Times after the US premiere of Thomas Ades' "stunningly inventive" opera based on Luis Bunuel's surreal and satirical 1962 film El angel exterminador. Like the British composer's score, Tom Cairns' production is both spectacular and surprising. "Ades keeps the listener on edge," wrote Opera magazine, "because one never knows where his dazzling palette of possibilities will take him next." Thomas Ades TITLE: Ades: The Exterminating Angel (MET)(Blu-ray) Label: PRX/Warner Classics/Parlophone Language: English Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish Number of discs: 1 Run Time: 142 minutes
Composer, musician and broadcaster John Brunning is perhaps best known for his choral work Pie Jesu. The piece was initially recorded by the vocal group 'All Angels', and there has since been around a dozen recordings including an acapella arrangement by The King's Singers. In his introduction to the album, John Brunning writes: There are probably more euphemisms employed when speaking of death than any other subject. Take a walk around a graveyard and you will see any number of headstones bearing inscriptions such as 'passed away', 'fell asleep', 'called to rest', and so on. Yet death is the one inescapable certainty that each of us must ultimately confront. I have sought to address this issue in as positive a way as possible with my cycle, 'Swansongs'. Elin Manahan Thomas is one of the most versatile sopranos of her generation. Since releasing her début album Eternal Light in 2007 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, she has performed at many of the world's most prestigious venues, festivals and events, including the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018. On this recording she is accompanied by pianist Daniel Grimwood, a performer of international renown who combines an exceptional talent with rare versatility and refinement.
Thomas Marriott has, in a series of 10 beautifully executed and well received albums on Origin, more than proved his jazz credentials with formidable technique & fluency, celebration of the tradition and a deep joy of extemporaneous risk-taking. On this recording, however, Thomas strips things down to their essence, taking all he has accrued and employing it to delve deep into the heart, leaving us with only his beautiful sound and the truth of the stories being told. Wanting to create something beyond a jazz ballads album, Thomas and his producer, vibist Joe Locke, imagined something more operatic in nature, with each song resembling a free-standing aria. They teamed with pianist/composer Ryan Cohan to arrange and orchestrate this collection of ten classic & modern jazz compositions, popular tunes and several original works by Locke and Cohan, creating a sumptuous, glowing palette over which the melodies and solos can soar."Thomas Marriott's trumpet sound is as lush and inviting as it comes." - DOWNBEAT
