A protege of legendary jazz master Dizzy Gillespie, Arturo Sandoval has been awarded 10 Grammy® Awards, and been nominated 19 times. He has also received 6 Billboard Awards as well as an Emmy Award for his composing of the entire underscore of the HBO movie based on his life, "For Love or Country", that starred Andy Garcia as Arturo. Considered one of the world's most acknowledged guardians of jazz trumpet and flugelhorn, he is also recognized worldwide as a renowned classical artist, pianist, and composer.
Italian Baroque Trumpet Concertos / Reiner, Interpreti Veneziani
Naxos
CD
$19.99Oct 11, 2024
The brilliant dynamism of Italian Baroque music is at it's most virtuosic and thrilling in works featuring the solo trumpet, whether in original compositions or transcriptions. Albinoni's astonishing ornamentations and the luminous dexterity of Vivaldi's concerto both represent each composer's distinctive character, heard alongside works by Corelli, Zipoli, Baldassare and Torelli. Domenico Sarri's Sinfonia a 5 is heard here in it's world premiere recording. Thomas Reiner is an acknowledged exponent of this repertoire with his performance of German Baroque Trumpet Concertos (Naxos 8.551419) described as 'first rate and spirited... an excellent protagonist' by Fanfare magazine.
Milica Djordjevic’s compositions are musical explorations, meticulous observations and dissections. Seven such investigations of sound are presented by the Serbian composer on her portrait album in the series EDITION ZEITGENÖSSISCHE MUSIK. Primarily, Djordjevic focuses on an extreme and exhaustive exploration of the musical material. In the booklet Barbara Eckle points out Djordjevic’s specific approach: "She develops a material component further and further in an increasingly large, loud and dense wave, distorting it, perverting it, multiplying it, squeezing out of it everything it has to give – until it implodes. The rupture is sudden and abrupt, as if the plug of an electronic appliance were ripped from a wall socket." Also essential for Djordjevic’s work is an interdisciplinary perspective, which is based on a diversified aesthetic socialisation, influencing her music in different ways. Each compositional process finally creates musical figures, which, at the same time, affect psyche and ratio. All pieces have been especially recorded at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne by internationally well-known interpreters such as Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Musikfabrik and Teodoro Anzellotti.
GRAMMY-nominated drummer Nate Smith, known for his deep groove and genre-blending style, has worked with legends like Pat Metheny and Jose James, and wowed millions with his viral drum videos. Following acclaimed projects like KINFOLK: Postcards from Everywhere and Pocket Change, Smith returns with a new album, out August 29, continuing his journey through jazz, R&B, and beyond. Some of the most renowned names in the jazz scene have joined him on the project, including Lalah Hathaway, Michael League, Lionel Loueke, and more.
Emerging from the Strasbourg scene and the Omezis collective, which includes about twenty artists, musicians, DJs, and videographers, Emile Londonien soaks up the English jazz scene of the last fifteen years and offers up a personal version. Trained at the Strasbourg Conservatory, the three musicians met during thematic evenings organized by the Omezis collective, co-founded by drummer Matthieu Drago. A studio session paying tribute to the English scene followed in 2020. The moniker Emile Londonien, a double nod to their UK influences and to a famous French saxophonist, sprang up spontaneously. The Covid-19 pandemic put the project on hold until their recordings fell into the hands of Dope Tone, the historical Strasbourg broken beat label, and then things started to accelerate. Influential DJs like Lefto immediately shared the tracks from this first session. Thus, emblematic of a generation that grew up in club culture, the band was launched, blending that very culture with the jazz trio tradition. Regularly playlisted on the BBC, their first productions found an enthusiastic echo, and the praise poured in, starting with that of the influential DJ and producer Gilles Peterson himself, who sees them as heirs: "I saw these guys recently live. They are a sort of celebration of the last 10-15 years of the UK jazz scene... It's a crossroads place." Unknown until a few months prior, the band played Sète's Worldwide Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival in the summer of 2021, and Nancy Jazz Pulsations, confirming on stage all the good that was already clear from listening to their recordings. Influenced by Yussef Kamaal, The Comet Is Coming, Atjazz, SunRa, and also Ornette Coleman or Thelonious Monk and by the Broken Beat, Jazz, House, and Hip Hop scenes, Emile Londonien perfectly incarnates this "next gen" French jazz alongside Léon Phal, whose sound is close to theirs. Beyond labels, they mix tradition and contemporary music with ease, as measured on the dancefloor.
The Promises of Darkness marks the next chapter in the visionary collaboration between Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynolds and conductor/producer Mathias Reumert. Released by Ekkozone, this landmark album showcases world premiere recordings of four major works, tracing four decades of Reynolds's trailblazing contributions to contemporary music. The title work, The Promises of Darkness (1975), pays homage to Reynolds's mentor Roberto Gerhardt. Scored for an ensemble of 11 players, this piece masterfully conjures vivid colors and an almost cinematic sense of dread, revealing Reynolds as a composer unafraid to probe the edges of musical and emotional experience. From 1985 comes Mistral, for strings, brass, and amplified harpsichord. Although inspired by an encounter with the forceful Mediterranean wind, the piece is "neither illustrative nor programmatic," according to the composer. Mistral has previously been released in a lo-fi live recording, but the highly refined score - with it's crystalline articulate harpsichord - is finally brought to life in this new version, which Reynolds himself has hailed as "a triumph." A relentless exploration of the interplay between two harmonic strata, Dionysus (1990) involves "a blend of metaphor and pragmatics" and is captured in a breathtakingly precise performance, with expressive solos from flutist Helene Navasse and trumpeter Laszlo Molnar. Closing the album is the electroacoustic Positings (2013), where the Mathias Reumert Group is joined by computer musician and Reynolds collaborator Paul Hembree. Seamlessly blending live performance with electronic textures, Positings embodies Reynolds's innovative spirit, pushing the boundaries of sound and structure. This release follows the critically acclaimed Wind Concertos, the first in the Reynolds/Reumert series, which earned Album of the Year (The Five Best) from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 2024. With The Promises of Darkness, Ekkozone solidifies it's reputation as a home for groundbreaking contemporary music, curated with Reumert's exacting vision.
Pieces of a Dream" by composer Christian Jost is a unique chamber music suite of symphonic proportions for flugelhorn/trumpet, vibraphone, and piano played by Simon Hofele, Frank Dupree, and Christoph Sietzen. This innovative composition transcends the boundaries of traditional music genres, inviting listeners to explore over 50 minutes of intricate melodies, harmonies, and rhythms across it's four captivating movements: "Is It Safe," "Come to Me," "Driven by a Strange Desire," and "In My Dream, It's All Alive." Is It Safe" opens the suite with an elegiac duo of flugelhorn and piano, setting the stage for a sonic exploration of deceptive beauty and emotional depth. The flugelhorn weaves a breath-like melody, creating a vivid and nuanced dreamscape. At the same time, the piano enriches this melody with complex emotional progressions. "Come to Me" introduces the vibraphone in a mysterious and melancholic mood, escalating into a scherzo-like movement filled with virtuosic passages and an ostinato rhythm that propels the music forward. The third movement, "Driven by a Strange Desire," marks the climax of the suite with it's fanfare-like vibraphone solo and a trumpet that soars over hammered piano rhythms and polyrhythmic structures. This extensive movement travels through varied sections, leading to a dramatic and fast-paced finale. "In My Dream, It's All Alive," the final movement, captures the essence of the suite with it's fragile mood and enchantingly tender melodies, wrapping up the musical journey in a transfigured serenity." Pieces of a Dream" stands at the crossroads of genres - not confined to jazz, yet it swings and grooves; nor is it experimental new music, as it embraces atmospheric drifting. This work represents a path untrodden, crafted by a new generation of musicians unbound by categorical constraints. Our heartfelt thanks to Simon, Frank, and Christoph for their commitment to bringing this visionary piece to life. Dive into "Pieces of a Dream" and let it's innovative compositions and emotional depth guide you through a musical journey unlike any other. Discover a world where chamber music meets symphonic scale and experience the beauty of music that defies categorization
Human creativity is versatile and endless. If we enthuse about something we feel a need to convey that enthusiasm to others - to quote, to recite. Creativity is thus closely bound up with inspiration. One of the oldest and most resilient ways of fostering cultural life is to "borrow" ideas. In music this has been normal practice as long as there have been songs and singers to sing them. In the Romantic period, this musical borrowing became an art form in its own right, with world-famous virtuosos and composers leading the way. But there are also artists today who relish this art form. Ole Edvard Antonsen and Wolfgang Plagge are two exemplary examples on this release!
An English Concert (Festliche Musik Fur Trompete & Orgel) / Hofs, Janz
Berlin Classics
CD
$21.99Jan 05, 2024
Matthias Hofs (trumpet) and Matthias Janz (organ) present a program of works by English masters from the Renaissance to the late Baroque. The instrumental combination of trumpet and organ let this repertoire resound in festive splendor. The musical performance is historically informed and played on modern instruments. Among the works on this album are songs from “The Musical Entertainer 1737”, English Dances and Trumpet Voluntaries by George Frideric Handel, John Stanley and many more.
If someone told you there was music that could lull pillowy-winged moths into a fluttery state of happiness, that the Aurora Borealis can sing even better than you and I, or that the roots of the American elm trees in Central Park are a bustling ensemble waiting for their cue, would you believe them? Matthew Burtner would, and he'd have no trouble proving it on PROFILED FROM ATMOSPHERES, the veteran ecoacoustic composer's sixth release with Ravello Records. Burtner lifts the veil between humanity and it's planet, translating it's messages into an intimate medium invariably understood amongst it's inhabitants. These messages make an urgent case in the titular work Profiled From Atmospheres, a collaborative work between atmospheric sound profiles derived from humanity's top three greenhouse gas emissions and saxophone/percussion duo Michael Weiss and Elizabeth Soflin. The result is an eerie, haunting sonification that serves as a poignant reminder; if we want to continue hearing the songs of the atmosphere and the planet it blankets, it's our responsibility to preserve it.
Creative collaboration is central to American composer Joel Puckett's career, a spirit that unites the three works on this recording. Each work represents a partnership between Puckett's vibrant creative imagination and a particular musician, or group of musicians. Puckett's new Trumpet Concerto (2024), his second for the instrument, was written for the distinguished jazz trumpeter Sean Jones. It's a homage of sorts to another American classic conceived for a great jazz musician, Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto, which was commissioned and premiered by Benny Goodman. The work is a personal response to Jones's artistry, showcasing his dazzling high register and individual articulations and inflections that are unique to his playing. The orchestral song cycle There Was a Child Went Forth was created for Grammy Award winning tenor Nicholas Phan. The music is accessible and inward, much like the verses by Walt Whitman. It's a work of celebration, composed in 2023 for the 225th anniversary of the United States President's Own Marine Band. Inspiration came from Phan's love of Whitman, and synergy from Whitman's written reviews of the Marine Band.' The album's title track Short Stories is a string quartet concerto, which has been widely performed since it's 2013 premiere. Principal players of the London Symphony Orchestra shine as the soloists, at times playing as individuals, at others as a unit with their orchestral colleagues providing a resplendent accompaniment.
Ashley Henry presents it's second album "Who We Are", a London-born jazz journey that unites devotion, collective dreaming, and the fight for freedom. Featuring acclaimed artists like Judi Jackson and Aja Monet, this record is a powerful anthem for our times-echoing Nina Simone's legacy while finding inspiration in the pulse of the city and collective dreaming. Praised by global medias such as Wonderland, Notion and the BBC, Ashley Henry is set to become one of the most influential jazz acts in Europe with it's signature piano touch and soothing vocal tones.
Resonus Classics is pleased to present an exquisite album of orchestral and chamber works by the London-based contemporary composer Peter Fribbins. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor Robertas Servenikas are joined by violinist Philippe Graffin and trumpeter Christopher Hart in a programme of mostly world premiere recordings including Soliloquies for Trumpet & Strings and the substantial Concerto for Violin and Orchestra titled Dances, Elegies & Epitaphs dedicated to the memory of the composer's father. Completing this portrait is Capriccio for Orchestra, based on the hymn tune ''Abide with Me'' and the wind quintet ''In Xanadu''.
- The trumpet concertos by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) are two of the most celebrated works in the trumpet repertoire, showcasing the instrument's evolving capabilities in the Classical period. Haydn's Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major was composed in 1796 for Anton Weidinger, a Viennese trumpeter who developed a keyed trumpet capable of playing chromatic notes. This innovation allowed Haydn to explore a wider range of expressive possibilities, incorporating lyrical melodies and rapid passages previously unattainable on the natural trumpet. - Similarly, Hummel's Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major, composed in 1803, was also written for Weidinger and the keyed trumpet. Hummel, a prominent composer and pianist of the time, crafted a work that emphasizes virtuoso technique and lyrical expression. The concerto opens with a grand, dramatic Allegro, followed by a lyrical Andante, and concludes with a lively Rondo, which tests the soloist's agility and technical prowess. Hummel's concerto reflects the transition from the Classical style of Haydn to the more elaborate, early Romantic idiom. - Played by the young, gifted Italian trumpet player Marianne LI Gregni, accompanied by the Orchestra da camera Domenico Mazzocchi del Civita Festival, conducted by Martin Sieghart.
Zieritz: Japanese Songs; Le Violon de la Mort etc. / Brenner, Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie
Haenssler Classic
CD
$20.99Jan 05, 2024
This CD - significantly only the second CD dedicated exclusively to von Zieritz - presents a longitudinal section of her oeuvre. It begins with the Japanese Songs, written in 1919, here in the version for soprano and chamber orchestra from the 1980s. The centrepiece is Le Violon de la Mort, composed in 1953 for violin and piano and arranged for violin, piano and orchestra in 1957, as well as the trumpet double concerto of 1975, the final piece and, as it were, a satyr play. Like Hans Bethge's collection Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute) from 1907, the poetic model of the Japanese Songs belongs to the context of interest in exotic art of the fin de siècle. Gustav Mahler made Bethge's poems the basis for a large symphonic work; Grete von Zieritz took the opposite approach with the Japanese Songs. These are a kaleidoscopic sequence of the briefest miniatures. It would hardly be possible to do otherwise, since the Japanese models are not song texts in the European sense, but poetically condensed sayings that defy conventional song settings. Aphoristic brevity was the order of the day.
Siobhan Lamb is a classical musician with a background in jazz, making her particularly well-suited to explore and play with the boundaries between the two. A foot in both worlds makes for an evocative and explorative mix of different and distinctive sounds on this release. Allow this release, thoughtfully performed by the Suoni Ensemble under Gerard Presence, to help you meditate on the seam between the two genres, and perhaps to let it melt away.
In 2013 a group of Krakow-based instrumentalists shared the stage as part of the European Workshop for Contemporary Music, conducted by maestro Rudiger Bohn. Having then played together at Darmstadt's Internationale Ferienkurse fur Nee Musik, the musicians established an independent body. A couple of events held in a community center by one of the town's exit roads and in a then neglected theater marked the beginnings of Spoldzielnia Muzyczna contemporary ensemble, a group who specializes in performing new music. This is the ensemble's first entirely self-curated and self-produced album. It includes compositions which shaped the group's identity.
With it's latest CD, the Trumpet Consort, under the direction of renowned trumpeter Matthias Hofs, takes you into a fascinating world of trumpet sounds that unites tradition and innovation in a unique way. With exceptional skill and impressive arrangements, the ensemble showcases the entire range of the trumpet family - from festive baroque works to modern compositions. Experience the masterful variety of sounds created by the special collaboration between experienced musicians and young talents.
A spectacular album by a superb brass quintet. -- American Record Guide
Baroque masters were already playing to the gallery with brass players’ fanfares; Mozart and Haydn com-posed wonderful concertos for trumpet or horn; then the Romantics Brahms and Dvorak did their bit, followed by orchestral wizards Berlioz and Richard Strauss who triumphantly ushered trumpet, horn and trombone into the symphony orchestra. Jazz brought the great liberation, and light entertainment contributed to the overdue recognition of their possibilities. The wide spectrum of the present album illustrates the boundless popularity of this musical genre. The composers of these works enjoy life, and are proof positive that brass ensembles are to be taken seriously – whether performed in venerable concert halls, the Music Hall or the circus. The Wien-Berlin Brass Quintett radiates a cheerful, vibrant atmosphere, offering musical fireworks, sparkling wit and humor along with quite unique and breathtaking virtuosity.
REVIEWS:
This disc is simply good, clean fun and a sheer delight. The Wien-Berlin Brass Quintett—Gábor Tarkővi and Guillaume Jehl, trumpets; Thomas Jöbstl, horn; Mark Gaal, trombone; Alexander von Puttkamer, tuba; Jöbstl and Gall are members of the Vienna Philharmonic, the other three men present or former members of the Berlin Philharmonic—here kicks back its collective heels to present five entertaining divertissements. All the music is unabashedly tonal and listener-friendly.
The virtuoso, spirited playing of this marvelous brass fivesome [is] captured in brilliant sound. A booklet provides basic notes. Cheerily recommended.
