The distinctive sound of Israeli folk music has charmed listeners across the globe for centuries. With this album, you can bring the music right into your living room, regardless of what country you call home. These popular songs come from the best-known Israeli composers, such as Effi Netzer, Nurit Hirsh, HaGevatron, and more. The booklet includes transcribed Hebrew lyrics, as well as English translations.

The French composer Ange Flégier (1846-1927) enjoyed considerable frame in his own time but has now been completely lost from view. The extraordinary reception of his song Le Cor points to the predominant place held by the Melodie in his catalogue of more than 350 works. Flégier's songs, composed for his colleagues at the Opera de Paris, are large-scale and orchestrally conceived, sitting stylistically close to Faure in their unassertive dignity and to Duparc in their sense of scale. Many of them receive their first recordings or first modern recordings here.

This fun release features both old and new songs and dances from Israel, presented with energy and enthusiasm by Gevatron and by Effi Netzer and Yonathan Gabay. The music is from modern Israel, from the Kibbutz and with Eastern European, Mediterranean and Arabic influence. The Gevatron are representatives of Israeli folk music and songs of the good and lovely Israel. The group was established in 1948, and has since been composed of members of the Kibbutz and its surrounding area. Effi Netzer is a musician, composer, and music director. Choreographer Yonathan Gabay was one of the pillars of Israeli dancing, who passed away in 2011. He left us with a legacy of unforgettable Israeli dances.

This release features the most beautiful songs from the Andean regions of Colombia, presented by Niyireth Alarcon who is widely known for her warm, velvety voice. Niyireth is accompanied here on traditional instruments such as the tiple, bandola, guitars, bombo, and percussion. Born in Garzon, Niyireth Alarcon is a mezzoprano with a first class singing technique. In over twenty years of continuously working with Colombian music of the Andes, Niyireth has made her contribution to theis genre by taking its singing to new levels seeking to bring the genre close to the Latin American singing movement.

She’Koyokh, award-winning klezmer and Balkan music ensemble, present vibrant and exhilarating music, straight from London’s melting pot: soulful Eastern European Jewish, Balkan, Turkish and Gypsy music. Performing “the best klezmer & Balkan music in Britain” (Evening Standard), She’Koyokh have spent fifteen years absorbing the rich folk music traditions of Eastern & Southern Europe and Turkey. The band’s evolution spans the origins of busking at East London’s Columbia Rd Flower Market to performing at WOMAD and Sziget festivals, recording live for BBC radio, and playing venues from the Southbank Centre to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. Masters of the genre, She’Koyokh’s repertoire includes Bulgarian oros, Serbian kolos, Bosnian love songs, ballads from the mountains of southwest Turkey, as well as rip-roaring klezmer music.

Robert Fürstenthal's story is an extraordinary one, a kind of "fairy-tale" of the twentieth century. Born in 1920, when Germany invaded, Fürstenthal took the path of many Viennese Jews and fled to the United States where he made his living as an accountant. The fact that he had written a few songs in his youth was forgotten but after 35 years, he rediscovered the woman who had been his first love, it rekindled both the flame of love as well as the urge to compose. Hundreds of songs - achingly lovely songs, laden with an autumnal sense of loss - flowed from Fürstenthal's pen from that moment on, preserving the spirit of fin-de-siecle Vienna under the Californian sun. Just before Fürstenthal died in November, 2016, at the age of 96, he had the satisfaction of hearing his songs in these wonderful performances - a last-minute vindication by two young musicians carrying his music into the future.

Yevhen Stankovych is one of teh Ukraine's leading contemporary composers. His music for violin and piano is recorded here almost all of it for the first time. The works on this album cover a wide range of emotions, from wild highland dances that distantly recall Szymanowski to the plangent, lyrical lament of Maydan Fresco, protesting the deaths of demonstrators in Maydan Square in 2013. The musicians here - wife and husband team Ukrainian Solomia Soroka and American Arthur Greene - have consulted the composer on the preparation of this program, giving their interpretations a rare authenticity. Solomia Soroka was born in Lviv, Ukraine. She earned her master's degree and completed her postgraduate studies in the Kiev Conservatoire, and later served on its staff in the department of chamber music. Since her American debut in 1997, she has performed throughout the United States as well.

REVIEW:

Both Solomia Soroka and Arthur Greene play with sensitivity and passion and have been well recorded. The violinist’s own booklet notes are customarily excellent. This is a valuable addition to the roster of approachable and valuable new violin music available on the Toccata label.

-- MusicWeb International

After MANdolinMAN's successful first album "Old Tunes, Dusted Down" - a concept album devoted to the impressive field work of folklorist Hubert Boone - and a second album on which they explored the bossa nova style, MANdolinMAN return to their roots. The band digs even deeper into Flemish folk music and once again breathe new life into old tunes and melodies from the province of Flemish Brabant. Played on four mandolins, the music takes on new forms and teh historic melodies are injected with a modern and contemporary vigour, merged with various styles: African, polka, waltz, bluegrass and more. "...Passionate and polished playing...It's also refreshing to hear mandolins outside of bluegrass and Celtic folk settings..." - Rhythms, Australia

Over a period of some twenty years, from the late 1720s, Handel composed a series of virtuoso arias using only the words ''Allelujah'' and ''Amen'' as his texts. They were probably for use in private worship, and take their place in the tradition of ''Divine Song'' established by Purcell and other compoesrs. Here they receive their first recordings, set in a context of contemporary sacred song and instrumental music, with the accompaniment provided by the beguiling soun dof two theorbos and chamber organ. They are heard here in the extraordinarily dramatic timbres of a male-soprano voice - perhaps as close as modern listeners can come to the vocal acrobatics of the castrati who so amazed their own audiences. Robert Crowe has worked for over 25 years as a male soprano, was a 1995 National Winner of the Metropolitan Opera Competition and has sung over 70 leading roles in operas and dramatic oratorios in the United States and across Europe.

This new release is a beautiful album of traditional music from Eastern Polynesia that was taken from David Fanshawe's monumental Pacific Collection. The Pacific Collection was recorded over the course of fourteen years (1978-88), and focuses on the rich variety of authentic himene (hymns) indigenous to Tahiti, the Cook Islands, the Society Islands and others. David Fanshawe was a composer, ethnic sound recordist, guest speaker, photographer, TV personality, and a Churchill Fellow. He was born in 1942 in Devon, England and was educated at St. George's Choir School and Stowe, after which he joined a documentary film company. In 1965 he won a Foundation Scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. His ambition to record indigenous folk music began in the Middle East in 1966, and was intensified on subsequent journeys through North and East Africa (1969-75) resulting in his unique and highly original blend of music and travel. His work has been the subject of BBC TV documentaries including African Sanctus, Arabian Fantasy, Musical Mariner, and Tropical Beat.

Lutz Cassel came in touch with the culture of his ancestors for the first time in the early 1960s. This was during song contests at the Castle “Waldeck” in Germany. Although he had no idea of his background (he had been raised in the Christian faith) the music touched him deeply and from this time onwards he began to collect everything connected with Jewish culture and especially with Jewish music and to adapt it for his performances in folk clubs. Step by step he developed a repertoire of songs and also the idea to describe the history of the Jewish people and its music and culture. By and by Lutz started to season his performances with jokes, anecdotes and stories from the thousands of years of history of this people, which consists of more than just the Bible, the Roman Empire and the Holocaust. Lutz was often dissatisfied with the fact that singers of Yiddish songs in Germany generally only described the modern history of the Jews. The origins of the songs were not explained and therefore only a few people understood their meaning. His successes in many small cabarets encouraged him to combine history, stories and music. He did this not in the then popular way of many singer/songwriters, with a moralizing undertone, but with humor and irony- the typical self-irony of Jewish humor. This release is a live recording of a concert which took place in the Hamburg Music Hall for the Hanukkah Celebration of 1986.

This recording revives long-forgotten sonorities that once would have been very familiar: the sound of piano and organ being played together. It also presents a Sibelius premiere: the arrangement by Sigfrird Karg-Elert of the suite from ''Pelleas and Melisande''. As the popularity of domestic music-making grew through the nineteenth century, it brought first the piano and, then, often the harmonium into well-off living rooms across the western world. Composers naturally responded, with original works and arrangements: Sibelius' Andante catabile was written after a visit to relatives who had both instruments in their salon. Karg-Elert, by contrast, was one of the world's outstanding virtuosi on both harmonium and organ and composed with his concert public in mind. Annikka Konttori-Gustafsson has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and Lied pianist in her native Finald, of course, but in concert halls across the world, performing a wealth of Finnish music and French twentieth century repertoire. Dr. Jan Lehtola is one of the most successful and progressive Finnish organists of his generation. He has given more than 150 world and regional premieres and can be heard on more than 30 commercial recordings.

Throughout his long career Liszt’s songs – perhaps the most neglected part of his enormous output – took a radical approach to form: he eschewed convention in his search for a sincere musical response to each text. His free-spirited creativity meant that a single song would often call on a range of stylistic devices, among them bel canto vocal lines, unaccompanied recitative, orchestrally conceived piano textures and audacious harmonic procedures. This first recording of his songs by a bass voice brings out both the power and poetry of Liszt’s remarkable imagination. The American bass Jared Schwartz was born in Berne, Indiana, where he began piano lessons at the age of three, violin at seven and French horn at ten. He began a double major in pre-med and music at Bethel College, Indiana, then studied piano with Alexander Toradze and voice with Victoria Garrett, earning a graduate degree from the Eastman School of Music. For Toccata Classics he has already recorded albums of songs by Faure and Flegier.

REVIEW:

Schwartz's forte singing is most impressive, and his voice remains lustrously smooth and elegant in all registers. His vocal coloring, use of contrasting dynamics, and feeling for the text combine to make his readings thoroughly engaging. When he sings with gentleness and lyricism he weaves a magic spell, as in ‘Des Tages Laute Stimmen Schweigen’, which ends sublimely as he delivers the final line of the text (“As night embraces you with gentle silence”). It is stunning.

Mary Dibbern, who collaborated with him in his Flegier album and in preparing his Fauré album, does a superb job with Liszt’s often challenging accompaniment. She also wrote the comprehensive and informative notes for the release.

I learned to enjoy Liszt through his songs, especially his early high-flying Schiller and Petrarch settings, sung by tenors. I am now enjoying a voice that plumbs the sonic and textual depths of the songs.

-- American Record Guide

This new Musical Explorers series from ARC Music makes available, often for the first time, a valuable range of historical films and audio recordings gathered from all over the world. During the 20th century more people started travelling and became more aware and interested in the world’s musical traditions. And technological advances meant that the equipment necessary to record those musical traditions in their natural environment become more portable and of higher quality. In Songcatchers, his excellent book about music collectors, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart writes: “I’ve learned what it takes to be a field recordist: how you have to fight the rain, the insects, the sand, the sun. You have to drink with and eat the food of the musicians you’re recording and observe their traditions, no matter what they are. To understand the heart and soul of a music, to earn the right to hear it, you must respect and honor the culture that creates it.” All the musical explorers in this series did exactly that. The recordings on this album were made in Taiwan in 1973 when mainland China was undergoing the destruction and upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Musical Explorer Deben Bhattacharya was fascinated by the traditional Chinese culture he found in Taiwan. The accompanying film includes not just music, but other traditional arts and crafts.

This release features newly composed Greek songs from the pen of Michalis Terzis, one of Greece's most prolific and distinguished composers. Sung by the prominent Cretan singer Vasilis Skoulas, the songs create a warm and pleasant atmosphere. Michalis Terzis studied piano and music theory at the Macedonian Conservatory in Thessaloniki and in Athens with A. Ainian and K. Chronopoulos. He started his music career in 1973, performing in music theatres in the historic part of Athens beneath the Acropolis. He recorded his first piece in 1976. His works have since been performed and recorded by the most famous Greek singers, and he has won awards at many Greek and international film festivals for his music. As Michalis Terzis continues his very successful music career, he maintains the strong belief that music is the most important, direct and creative way to communicate with people of different cultures and languages.

On Mexico's west coast, inland from the tourist zone of Acapulco and Huatulco, the Costa Chica is an isolated region of towns and villages in the foothills of the Sierra Madre. It is a region known, from the outside, for violence and poverty, but, as the boleros in this album reveal, has a deep feeling for poetry, a love of music and constant parties where it all comes together far from the recording studios and the concert halls of Mexico City. In 2016, after several journeys to the area, these five remarkable bands were recorded. The groups, each in their own way, are masters of the bolero tradition, inherited from the local musician and composer Alvaro Carrillo. This collection includes very well known boleros like 'Sabor a mi' and 'Luz de luna' as well as contemporary boleros from the Costa Chica, recorded for the very first time.

'Daa Dee' is the first groove a baby learns in Ethiopia as it takes it's first steps. It is the sound the mother makes to help her baby in it's first attempt into independence. Minyeshu explores her own upbringing and the resulting positive changes in this uplifting album of strength, vulnerability, faith and doubts overcome. Daa Dee is Minyeshu's fourth album, a collection of dance songs exalting love, spiritualism, and what it means to be a woman- especially a mother and daughter- in today's times. Drawing from her cultural life experiences in Africa and Europe, Minyeshu has sculpted her signature tone- a hypnotic and modern hybrid of Ethiopian grooves and melodies, delicately mixed with Western instruments and styles. "Minyeshu manages to sound both accessible to a wider audience yet still authentically and proudly Ethiopian at the same time." (Songlines) "... brave and new musically stimulating and exciting experience." (NetRhythms UK)

Musicians from the UK travel to The Gambia in this unique cultural exchange. Under the guidance of Gambian percussionist and vocalist Musa Mboob, musicians from both countries create an inspired, energetic, tribal, West African soul music. "... captivating sounds of West Africa in it's most innovative masterpiece of artistic creativity... " (ebonyonline. Net) Musa Mboob and XamXam aim to bring you the perfect blend of traditional West African music with a modern twist. Musa has made it his aim in life to continue the family tradition of playing percussion and promoting traditional music from The Gambia. In 2017 Musa returned to The Gambia with a new set of musicians and returned with this collection of new songs that capture the exciting Gambian vibe.

“Schumann soaked into my life not too fast. It might have been the over intertwining of inner voices…it might have been the broad spectrum of his emotions that needed time to mature and grow within myself….. I did not fall in love with him at first sight as I did with Chopin. Processing his music at times felt heavy. It was like a map in which I had to discover the evolvement of my own searching. The inner struggles, the layers of his wandering spirit embedded in his music either subtle or obvious way (with his own marking) brought me deeper into the cave of my own inner world. To understand him and to ultimately empathize with him required integrity and effort. Nevertheless, contrary to this weight, the duality of Florestan and Eusebius and many between them lift off the certain seriousness in my approach to his music. His music evokes the lightness of the existence. Perhaps the distance which enabled him to observe the alter egos within himself is the humor to his music. I learned to love him in time more than any other composers, most firmly, closely and freely to my heart.“ (Klara Min)

Hamburger Ratsmusik: an ensemble with a 500-year-old history. This contrast prompts a creative dialogue between tradition and the present day, about Early Music and vivid interpretation. The origins of Hamburg‘s “municipal music” go back to the 16th century. Under the motto “in praise of God and for the pleasure, delight and edification of Hamburg”, the city created an elite ensemble of eight city musicians, which was to be the equal of the princely court ensembles (Hofkapellen) to be found elsewhere. The Ratsmusik attained early excellence in the 17th and 18th centuries under such eminent musicians as William Brade, Johann Schop, Georg Philipp Telemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Revived in 1991 by gambist Simone Eckert, the ensemble now performs in Germany, many European countries, the USA and China. More than 30 albums (largely with world premiere recordings of Early Music) and recordings for all German public radio stations and Austrian broadcaster ORF document its rediscoveries of music from the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. The ensemble received the Echo Klassik award in 2006 and 2010, and was awarded the 2016 RITTER Prize by the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation in Hamburg. The musicians will be responding to renewed invitations to China in 2021. Hamburger Ratsmusik is the Ensemble in Residence in the Komponisten-Quartier museum complex in Hamburg.

Ssewakiryanga James Jr., also known as SSEWASSEWA, is a Ugandan multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, innovator and educator. He leads his audiences into the soulful African music culture with traditional instruments, songs and stories from his homeland, weaving these traditions together with a modern and global sound. Ssewa Ssewa's music is about social and global issues, diversity, economic development and empowerment. Ssewa Ssewa's music is a cross-cultural marriage between Uganda, Africa and the world. He seeks to promote Ugandan traditions while modernizing and interweaving them with other international genres to renew the spirit of his indigenous culture. The janzi is a Ugandan instrument created and designed by Ssewa Ssewa. It has 22 strings, eleven on each of it's two long, wooden necks. The strings on the left-hand neck are tuned in the diatonic scale, and the strings on the right to the pentatonic scale.

The composing career of Simon Bainbridge (born in London in 1952) is spanned by the four chamber works in this album, all of them cast as single narrative spans. The First String Quartet, written when its composer was not yet twenty, blends lyricism and pointillism, rather as if it were recasting abstract poetry in sound; and the recent Second offers a kaleidoscopic tableau of color and nervous energy inspired by visual art. In his Cheltenham Fragments, as the title suggests, Bainbridge uses mosaic technique to build up textures and thematic outlines. And the long lines of the virtuosic Clarinet Quintet generate fleetfooted whirlwinds as they unfold. Linda Merrick and the Kreutzer Quartet worked closely with the composer on the preparation of these recordings.

East West explores musical landscapes from the European and American parts of the globe, resulting in a kind of travel journal that begins in Eastern Europe and then travels westward Duo Aliada is known for their creative approach to adapting classical repertoire for their own instruments. Polish saxophonist Michal Knot and Serbian accordionist Bogdan Laketic formed the duo in 2013 in Vienna, a city whose rich musical tradition reflects its history as a crossroads between Eastern and Western Europe. The following years brought Michal and Bogdan to performances around the world, and into contact with various cultures and musical traditions. This wide range of experiences, beginning all the way back with their childhoods in Eastern Europe, is a major source of inspiration for their music making and for this album.

A vibrant mix of creole heritage. The music of Sakili is from the island Rodrigues, a small volcanic island just east of Mauritius. The island’s European and African influences - waltzes, polka, mazurka, Scottish - all blend harmoniously with the ségadrum rhythms to intertwine the past musical traditions of African slaves with the western world. The three members of Sakili (Francis Prosper, Vallen Pierre Louis and Ricardo Legentil) had their own solo careers and were put together in 2019 by Mauritian artistic director Percy Yip Tong. The purpose of the group’s formation was for a European tour to introduce the rarely heard music of the Rodrigues island.

Indian classical music has certain modes and ragas dedicated to the seasons, which have been explored by many generations of musicians. In accordance with the Indian calendar, spring runs from mid-February to mid-April, and is known as Vasant (or Basant). The festival Holi celebrates spring’s arrival. In this album, Baluji captures the rapture of spring, expressing seasonal feelings of renewal and hope through the subtle nuances of the chosen ragas. He celebrates his mastery of the sitar with wonderful sensitivity and dexterity. There are also some thrilling moments enthused by the distinctive tabla playing of Sukhvinder Singh “Pinky”, with his vivacious renditions of 1relas and 2chakradas. Baluji cannot see the colors of flowers but he has heard their voices, and they sing out through this joyous album – Voice of Flowers.