Irv Grossman Sextet - Sound Advice - New York trumpeter Irv Grossman arrives at Cellar Music with a killer sextet configuration. New York trumpeter Irv Grossman arrives at Cellar Music with a killer sextet configuration. The 'Jazz royalty' rhythm section of Dave Hazeltine, Billy Drummond, and Todd Coolman is joined by horn players with a deep knowledge of jazz and a personal chemistry in Sam Dillon, Andrew Gould. Before this recording the band had played mostly famous arrangements of classic be-bop tunes but switched up for the album recording to include some lesser-known gems and some original Grossman compositions.

Little Brother Montgomery - Vicksburg Blues: The Singles & Albums Collection 1930-61 - It's a fascinating and substantial overview of two different phases of his career, and offers an entertaining showcase for his highly personal style. - Little Brother Montgomery was a blues, boogie-woogie and jazz pianist and singer, who was hugely versatile, working solo and with bands, and equally impressive across all the genres, with a highly distinctive style. Born in Louisiana near New Orleans, he was influenced by family friend Jelly Roll Morton, and over the years was associated with the Mississippi town of Vicksburg, which gave it's name to several of his song titles, and Chicago, where he later worked and made most of his records. This 72-track 3-CD collection comprises the A & B sides of just about all his releases on the Paramount, Melotone, Bluebird and Century labels from 1930-47, along with titles from the 1954 album "Windin' Ball Recordings" on Saydisk, the 1960 album "Tasty Blues on Bluesville and the 1961 album "Blues" on Folkways. It comprises many solo recordings, plus some with his jazz quintet, featuring trumpeter Lee Collins, and recordings with singers Irene Scruggs, Annie Turner and Creole George Guenson. It's a fascinating and substantial overview of two different phases of his career, and offers an entertaining showcase for his highly personal style.

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Johnny Hodges - The Clef & Norgran Albums 1951-54 - It's a snapshot of a particular and intriguing phase of Johnny Hodges' career. - Johnny Hodges was a jazz alto saxophonist, who enjoyed a performing and recording career that lasted from the 1920s through to his death in 1970. Best-known for his work with Duke Ellington, he had a pure tone and economy of melody on both the blues and ballads that won him admiration from musicians of all eras and styles, and made him ubiquitous on recording sessions across the spectrum of jazz. He occasionally led his own bands, and this 41-track 2-CD collection focuses on albums he made in a concentrated period in the mid-1950s with his small orchestra for the Clef and Norgran labels, owned by renowned impresario and producer Norman Granz, which were forerunners of Verve. It features the titles from the albums. "Johnny Hodges Collates", "Johnny Hodges Collates No. 2", "Swing With Johnny Hodges", "Memories of Ellington", "Castle Rock", "The Blues" and "In A Tender Mood", with some of the titles appearing on more than one album. A number of the titles were also released as singles, and two of them "Castle Rock " and "A Pound Of Blues", were US R&B hits. It naturally features some notable musicians of the era, including Al Sears, Leroy Lovett, Billy Strayhorn, Al McGibbon, Sonny Greer, Emmett Berry, Lloyd Trotman, Flip Phillips, Red Callender, Ray Brown, J.C. Heard and others. It's a snapshot of a particular and intriguing phase of Johnny Hodges' career, and a great showcase for his understated virtuosity as a jazz musician and leader.

HERE TODAY GONE TOMORROW

In my music I am looking for the traces of beauty and depth of expression that radiate from the tone constellations. This is nothing new, but always a wonderful challenge. An aesthetic of prohibitions is as alien to me as an indiscriminate deployment of stylistic means. Every composition has it's determination and derives from this it's contours, the sequence of harmonic colours, the nature of the melodic and formal configuration. The so-called material is set in motion by the initial idea, the inspiration, ultimately flowing into the interplay of it's own momentum and control: This is the most exciting stage of the composer's work. When the material is consistent and the ear, as the highest authority, has made it's judgement on the sequence of sounds, then, perhaps, the magic of an art that can speak emerges, where memory and imagination are fused into a work. Thomas Daniel Schlee

The concepts of Romanticism and Late Romanticism steer our thoughts towards musical epochs, but the selection on this CD is based on a word art that encompasses romantic notions and experiences such as sorrow, joy, love, anxiety, despair, expectation, and longing that have existed in all times. This CD features, for the first time, recorded works by the young composer Alvin Vikman's five-movement piece The Japanese Seasons, Agneta Skold's Dar blaklinten slog en bro, and a bouquet of songs by composers active from the mid-1800s, Laura Netzell and Valborg Aulin. For over two hundred years, the interest in choral singing has inspired choral compositions of many different kinds. It has laid the foundation for the utilization of words and tones for the human voice, which has fostered cohesion, community, and musical innovation. Therefore, the compositions of Ludvig Norman, Jorgen Jersild, and Alvin Vikman show a continuity in humanity's need for words and tones to collaborate, regardless of the epoch, giving us n

Superb performances of Beethoven Sonatas for Piano and Violin, including the justifiably famous "Kreutzer" Sonata.

MELODIA MEDITERRANEA is a collection of art songs based on the folk music of the Mediterranean region. It draws upon melodies and traditional texts, many of which are still sung today in Italy, Greece, and Spain. The project was born from a musical encounter between Yannis Tsanakaliotis, Andreas Nebl, and Lee Santana with soprano Maria Palaska. This meeting developed into a long-term collaboration, characterised by a shared longing for the sounds and images of the Mediterranean. In this project, the three instruments - piano, accordion, and vihuela - merge in a unique way with the voice, creating a distinctive musical atmosphere.

Susanne Westenfelder, music theorist and music journalist, writes in the booklet for the latest addition to the Calmus CD library 'Liebesleid', among other things: 'In 2017, the two researchers Kazuma Mori and Makoto Iwanaga published a study. The result: songs that bring tears to our eyes seem to have a cathartic effect on us, calm us down and even make us feel good afterwards. A German newspaper concluded what we all already suspected: Music helps against lovesickness. Tear-jerking songs for tear-jerking eyelids. ' We have taken on this mission - as usual across styles and eras. We move between baroque (Johann Grabbe: Three Madrigals) and contemporary music (Gordon Kampe: 'Je deviens fou... ') and also make a stopover in the German Romantic period with works by Johannes Brahms and another with folk songs from the British Isles (John Rutter: 'Five Traditional Songs'). We have also been able to recruit outstanding arrangers to tailor some of the love song dramas to us. These include our house and court arranger Juan M. V. Garcia with 'Hallelujah' and 'Another Love' as well as ex-King's singer Philip Lawson with the eponymous arrangement of Fritz Kreisler's 'Liebesleid'. Because alongside all the heartache, there is always certainty at the end: 'And if you are ever sad, don't despair, because it will always be like today: love's sorrow is followed by love's joy. '

This programme brings together composers who, for the most part, were compelled to flee their homeland. In 1920, Ivan Wyschnegradsky took refuge in Paris, where he wrote for a quarter-tone piano at a time when, in Russia, the slightest dissonance was considered a political provocation. Andrzej Panufnik left his native Poland in 1954. Alfred Schnittke settled in Hamburg in 1990, eight years before his death, having spent most of his life in the Soviet Union. Although Schubert never moved away from Vienna, the pain and solitude of his inner exile are palpable in his music. Finally, the Belgian violin virtuoso Eugene Ysaye emigrated on account of the First World War and it was in the United States, in 1917, that he wrote the melancholy musical poem recorded here, which he called Exil! Is exile nothing but pain and isolation, or also a source of inspiration which, with music, expresses what words cannot say, acting as the ultimate refuge? 'Let's listen to what they have to say', suggests Patricia Kopatchinskaja, herself 'uprooted for ever'. She is joined by cellist Thomas Kaufmann and her friends from Camerata Bern.

Carmina Burana, the staged cantata by Carl Orff, is a work unique in musical history, claims conductor Paavo Jarvi: 'The convergence of medieval texts with such daringly original orchestral colours creates a soundworld that is both archaic and yet beyond time, in which chorus, orchestra and soloists vie in splendour.' The work also has an unusual history: composed shortly after the Nazi takeover of Germany, it was at first rejected because of it's Latin texts and the erotic character of some of it's songs; yet Orff and his work subsequently became highly prized by the Reich. The composer (who was secretly 'a quarter Jewish') did not support the regime, but made the best of his success... Orff was 42 by the time he experienced this breakthrough with his Carmina, which he designated as his Op. 1, disowning all his previous compositions. Departing from the Romantic style, he now wanted to create music linked to rhythm, simple repeated melodies, and non-complex forms. This work's popular success confirmed that decision.

Night Windows, the title of Fabien Waksman's work, is the general theme of Lucile Dollat's recital, playing out the many sonorous possibilities of the Grenzing organ in the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique Auditorium. This "window open on the night" invites us on an unpredictable journey, awash in mysterious resonances, intangible or thunderous, calling up fleeting and poetic images, flashes of improvisation, all combining to rekindle the imagination through a new vision of the repertoire.

For it's first recording for BIS Records, the Marmen Quartet tackles three major works from the twentieth-century string quartet literature. The two quartets by Gyorgy Ligeti belong to two different periods in the composer's output. Written before Ligeti left Hungary and emigrated to the West, the First, subtitled 'Metamorphoses nocturnes', represents the peak of his 'Hungarian' period. Regarded as a virtuoso exercise, the work reveals the influences of Bela Bartok, particularly from his Third and Fourth Quartets. Ligeti's Second Quartet belongs to his second period, particularly rich in significant works. Considered by the composer as a response to the works of his illustrious predecessors such as Mozart, Beethoven, Bartok and Berg, the Second Quartet, with it's calculated anarchy, dynamic extremes and sublime climaxes, is not only one of Ligeti's masterpieces but also a true classic of modernism. Bela Bartok's Fourth Quartet, which had a particularly strong influence on Ligeti, is widely seen as one of his most radical; it requires high levels of technical accomplishment from the performers, yet reveals a deep understanding of the instruments, and draws an unprecedented range of colour and character from them.

Peter Donohoe's first album devoted to Busoni was enthusiastically received by the critics, and nominated for a BBC Music Magazine award. This second volume offers playing and musicality of the same high standards. His programme opens with two of Busoni's finest Bach transcriptions, widely seen as a pinnacle of the repertoire for pianistic virtuosity, and much more widely played than Busoni's own compositions. This is followed by the Variations on Chopin's Prelude in C minor - a work in which Busoni demonstrates his innate skill of re-interpretation, and his mastery of counterpoint, and a piece he reworked several times. The following works are 'all Busoni' - the first and second sonatinas, and the Fantasia contrappuntistica, in the composer's later adaptation for two pianos. The first Steinway Artist of Indian origin, Karl Lutchmayer is equally renowned as a concert pianist, a lecturer, and a broadcaster. He joins Peter Donohoe in the Fantasia, and also performs the Second Sonatina.