Wicked (Original Cast Recording) Green/Black 2 LP / 15th Anniversary Edition includes the original cast recording, plus 4 bonus tracks featuring live performances by Pentatonix, Ariana Grande, Adam Lambert with Ledisi, and a new recording by Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel. 2 LP set pressed on green/black split color vinyl.
A subtle tour de force are the words with which Billboard met guitarist Bill Connors's Of Mist and Melting upon the album's release in 1978; and revisiting this music decades later only confirms that special spirits were indeed at work when the Manfred Eicher-produced session with Jan Garbarek, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette and Connors unfolded at Oslo's Talent Studio in December 1977. Reissued as part of ECM's Luminessence series, Of Mist and Melting arrives in a tip-on gatefold jacket with new liner notes and photos from the archive.
Double vinyl LP pressing. "Incomparable" is what the German weekly paper Die Zeit called this album on it's release in 2000, before going on to describe the music as follows: "A high, warm voice sings fragile songs, Annette Peacock accompanies herself on the grand piano, a string quartet models sound sculptures: the time measure from classical music, the feeling from jazz, openness from the lyrics, and a voice of dreams." An Acrobat's Heart is a ravishingly beautiful album by one of the most mysterious, elusive and beguiling figures on the fringes of jazz. It features the unique vocals and piano playing of singer-songwriter Annette Peacock, performing her own compositions with the acclaimed Cikada String Quartet. Available for the first time on vinyl, this ECM Luminessence Series is presented in tip-on gatefold jacket.
This 1958 jazz masterpiece features Cannonball Adderley alongside Miles Davis in a rare, high-caliber collaboration that defines the hard bop era. Known for it's sophisticated atmosphere and the iconic rendition of "Autumn Leaves," the album is widely considered one of the greatest jazz recordings of all time.
This release from the “Storyville Vinyl Remasters” series focuses on a classic late-career recording from pianist Bud Powell. Recorded at the Jazzhus Montmartre in 1962, Bouncing with Bud proved that Powell was still capable of giving performances as brilliantly fluid as his finest from the 1940s. Updated notes have been added to the inner sleeve and a free download of the album is included.
Post-classical composer, sound artist, and curator Matthew Patton returns with his second album as Those Who Walk Away. Afterlife Requiem is an elegy to friend and collaborator Johann Johannsson. Drone, electroacoustics, and near-silences extracted from unfinished recordings on Johannsson hard drives, underpin two string quintets-Ghost Orchestra (Reykjavik) and Possible Orchestra (Winnipeg)-processed and erased in a doleful durational work. Patton also works again with Andy Rudolph (Guy Maddin) and Paul Corley (Sigur Ros, Ben Frost) on co-production and sound design, to forge a simmering physicality that juxtaposes roiling low-end with haunting movements of ghostly strings. Everything I have ever written is a Requiem. Everything an ending. Death is smeared all over this music. My work is about disappearance-of the present, the past, of everything. Afterlife Requiem gets slower and slower over it's duration, it is one huge ritardando, time is not just slowing down-it is disappearing. Without even thinking, two related tragedies occurred and came to the surface organically while I was writing, recording, and working: the death of my mother and the death of composer and friend Johann Johannsson. When I start writing, I am not thinking of anything in particular, I am just writing, composing, recording, and listening... but something always makes itself apparent or pushes itself through in an unforeseen way. After my mother's medically-assisted death, in clearing out her apartment, I realized that I was also erasing the physical manifestation of her world-and that I was doing the exact same thing with the music I was writing and recording. During this time, Johann's death also kept making itself apparent. For Afterlife Requiem I have taken short abandoned fragments from Johann Johannsson's hard drives and placed these disembodied audio ghosts in alternating sections within my own music, leaving them impure-and in the process blurring the distinction between making and un-making. After his death, I had been given these hard drives from Johannsson's Berlin studio to listen to. This music was abandoned, in various states of formation and dissolution: an index of decayed and dead memories, forgotten and now existing only within a series of interlocking mechanical parts which in time will themselves fail and disappear, like everything else. For months, I listened to these remains of Johann's music obsessively, trying to discover clues about Johann before he died. Many times I would find that he had left the recording device going long after the recorded music was over. He seemed to be unaware that the music had ceased or didn't register this was the end of the music or maybe he was distracted by something else. But I found these long silences profoundly emotional and touching.
Shards is a oneness of performance and transformation, transformation as performance. As Jason Moran and Marcus Gilmore play, BlankFor. Ms records micro fragments of time and sends them back to his collaborators sped up, slowed down, reversed, broken into ever tinier grains of data and smeared into a sparkling blur. Moran and Gilmore receive glimpses into their immediate past, or even further back in time, like they're playing into a broken mirror - not just cracked in it's visual plane, but in the sense of it's shards shattering time and light, showing them past and future. Transparent Vinyl
For his third solo album for Alpha, keyboard polyglot Anthony Romaniuk returns to the piano, exploring the seven modes: derived from the major scale, the basis of ancient Greek music but nowadays endemic in folk, jazz, and beyond, each one containing a world of character and mood. Starting with John Adams' Phrygian Gates, Romaniuk devised a programme comprising music by Pärt, Ligeti, Radiohead, and Björk, with his own original compositions; arrangements of traditional Catalan and English/Scottish music; and improvisations. Continuing his search for a personal and original sound, Romaniuk uses two pianos, including a Klavins upright grand piano (from the collection of Nils Frahm), which, thanks to it's massive soundboard and four-metre-long bass strings, overwhelms the listener. The addition of various analogue and digital audio effects, together with innovative recording techniques, brings the listener into a unique sonic landscape, approaching that of a sound installation.
When pianist Carsten Dahl went into the studio with his perennial fellow musicians, the bassist Niels Bo Davidsen and the drummer Stefan Pasborg, it was with a special dogma: Not to say a word throughout the recording. The album was created in a continuous sequence of first takes and everything was improvised without previous agreements or ideas except 'Falling Down' and 'How I Hear Beauty' based on some chords Dahl scratched down on a piece of paper in the studio. There is a natural, fluent and electric feeling in the music. The trio creates a series of intense pieces most of them no longer than 3-4 minutes, but together they constitute a suite-like process with stimulating variation in form and expression. 'To me Mirrors Within is the picture of the collective and the universal', Dahl says. 'In the music we mirror ourselves in one another. But the mirror can also break and behind it is black'. Hereby he insinuate the both bright and dark sides of his own artist life. He has spoken in public about trauma, therapy and medicine. Music, painting and poetry are his creative responses. Mirrors Within points in the direction of the inner landscapes of music, those places in the mind where music can become 'sound that bleeds, infect and flourish', as written in the Brøndums Encyklopædi. Dahl, Davidsen & Pasborg have developed a special musical dialect together. We are way beyond instrumental skills, which are top class, but it is about much more than that. The best way perhaps to summarize the activities is with the word: empathy. Not as a feeling, but as an ability to participate in a mutual human action which otherwise could not be realized.
Double vinyl LP pressing. 2024 release. Celebration, Volume 1 is the first in a series of archival releases that the legendary saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter curated before he passed away in 2023. This thrilling 2014 live recording captured Shorter's acclaimed quartet with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade at the Stockholm Jazz Festival in Sweden. The intrepid set includes some of the band's favorite vehicles of exploration including "Zero Gravity," "Smilin' Through," "Orbits," "Lotus," and "She Moves Through The Fair."
Limited vinyl LP repressing in gatefold jacket. Thriller is the sixth solo studio album by Michael Jackson. It was released by Epic Records on November 30, 1982, as the follow-up to Jackson's critically and commercially successful 1979 album Off The Wall. Thriller explores similar genres to those of Off The Wall, including pop, post-disco, rock and funk. Recording sessions took place on April to November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles with a production budget of $750, 000, assisted by producer Quincy Jones. Seven singles were released from the album, all of which reached the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. In just over a year, Thriller became-and currently remains-the best-selling album of all time, with estimated sales of 65 million copies worldwide. It has become the first album ever to be certified 32 times multi-platinum for U.S. sales, marking more than 32 million sales shipped. The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards in 1984, including for Album of the Year.
Andrew Lloyd Webber's STARLIGHT EXPRESS opens summer 2024 in the purpose-built Starlight Auditorium at Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, with performances from June 8. To celebrate, the original cast recording of STARLIGHT EXPRESS will be released on a special collector's Zoetrope LP. Each side has been masterfully designed by zoetrope specialist Drew Tetz and will animate with the rotation of the vinyl when exposed to the right light conditions or captured on your phone.
For her new recording, entitled Or (light), cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton has devised a two-part narrative, "like freeze frames, like incursions into time": first, Couperin's Les leçons de ténèbres or the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah. Prophecies are the time before. Before destruction and tears: "We hear the song of the prophet lamenting, but the possibility that this will not happen still exists." Then comes "our time": "With his dramatic force, Vivaldi confronts us with our present. He says, 'This is now.'" Sonia has chosen several excerpts from operas as well as two violin concertos. She transcribed most of the pieces in this programme for solo cello or two cellos, two voices that she plays herself. She also imagined bridges to other lights, those of Mahut's percussion and Marius Atherton's electric guitar and MS20 synthesiser.
A forbidding and gothic new score by Christopher Young (Hellraiser, Species, Urban Legend, The Grudge, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) for the F.W. Murnau classic 1922 silent-movie 'Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror', one of the most influential films of all time and one that continues to cast it's long shadow across the horror movie genre even still. The perfect match of composer and movie. The recording of this new score was made with Frank Strobel, conductor, Saya Hashino, organ and Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich.
Vinyl LP pressing. Nonesuch Records releases The Wild Heart, the label debut from composer Dylan Mattingly, The Wild Heart, performed by Contemporaneous with conductor David Bloom and vocal soloist Iarla O Lionaird. The vinyl edition features two movements - 'Ulysses Dances' and 'Last Dance' - from the five-movement work The Transmutation Notebooks, as well as Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things).
With this reflection on breathing as the most intimate human experience - one that connects people through language, movement and touch - Berlin-based jazz vocalist Esther Kaiser has dedicated her ninth album to 'Breathing'. Critics have described her as a 'voice artist','shaman of jazz', and a 'jazz poet'. Esther takes responsibility where she is. Her albums breathe and are politically and socially charged, as jazz has always been. With BREATHING, the vocalist and composer provides a glimpse into the heart of jazz. It breathes in what is, and it feels and exhales that which creates space for more understanding, tolerance, peace, and freedom. The interplay of lyrics and compositions by Esther Kaiser and pianist Alexander Wienand, alongside Kaiser's own works, interwoven with elements of spoken word, invites listeners to become part of the act of breathing itself.
By the time Bach relocated to Leipzig, he had already composed a number of masterpiece works. During his pivotal years at Köthen, he composed his Inventions and Sinfonias. These pieces, although typically overshadowed by his larger works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, show Bach’s maturity as they serve as a fundamental tool for learning the piano.On this album, recorded in Leipzig, pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei does an extraordinary job of bringing out the musical density in these pieces.
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - "First Flight To Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings" - A previously unreleased live recording of drum legend Art Blakey with a classic line-up of the Jazz Messengers, trumpeter Lee Morgan, tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Bobby Timmons, and bassist Jymie Merritt. It was captured on January 14, 1961, at Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo during the band's first-ever tour of Japan. Co-produced by Zev Feldman and David Weiss, the audio was newly transferred from the original 1/4" tape reels. First Flight To Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings [2 LP]
Julius Berger writes of his new release: "Johann Sebastian Bach’s suites for cello solo are arguably the purest form of music, works that require no explanation or background knowledge. Johann Sebastian Bach made one of his most profound affirmations, a Gradus ad Parnassum, which in six stages sets out an intellectual and technical challenge that is and will probably remain peerless in the history of music for our instrument. My colleague and friend, Prof. Peter Langgartner from the Mozarteum University of Salzburg pointed out to me that the Prelude of the first suite contains Luther’s chorale “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm’ ich her” (from Heaven above, from thence I come). I had always presumed so and was grateful for confirmation that the cello suites make allusions to chorales and religious messages. I have therefore found a musical way of opening a spiritual door to the suites and added chorales to Suites 1, 3, and 5 in the mould of sounds from John Cage’s work One 8, chorales that in my opinion are definitely consistent with messages conveyed in the suites. I find that John Cage’s music shares similarities with Bach’s. His music allows for inner reflection, providing a contemplative point of calm. Cage said the purpose of music is “to cleanse the soul and bring it peace, thus making it amenable to divine influences”. My son Immanuel intones the chorales to this special music; each chorale is followed by two Bach suites."
Listening to this album takes you back to the atmosphere and sound of Jazzhus Montmartre on a random night in the 1960s, engulfing you in Dexter Gordons enormous aura. Dexters arrival in Copenhagen had a tremendous impact that left a lasting impression on the Danish jazz scene. He was handsome and well-dressed. His playing was superb, with a giant sound; his introductions and showmanship were unique and captivating. In addition, Dexter felt the Danish mentality was well-suited for playing and enjoying jazz. It was always there, Alex Riel remembers It wasnt a case of going to work, even though we played every, single night in June, July and August during the summer of 1964. Dexter and Tete were there solely for the music, and so were Niels-Henning and I. It is so obvious when I hear the music today. Dexter loved being in Montmartre. He often stayed and jammed with the night shift when it took over, playing on till early morning And Dexter ended up owning Copenhagen!
Vox Clamantis - "Part: And I heard a voice". Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis and their leader Jaan-Eik Tulve have established themselves among the leading interpreters of Arvo Part's music over a quarter-century of close collaboration with the composer - a relationship that builds on the almost half a decade-long artistic partnership between Part and producer Manfred Eicher. 'And I heard a voice' was recorded in Haapsalu Cathedral, Estonia and is released as Arvo Part turns 90.
At Chasing The Dragon, we have started to release a series of Live Beethoven concert recordings. For our second, we present the wonderful pianist John Lenehan in an amazing performance of the Piano Concerto No. 5. John's playing, combined with the Locrian Ensemble of London, was an incredible event. I have recorded it using only 4 microphones, in an effort for you to connect directly with the jump factor we all felt on that very cold February evening! Part of the Live Beethoven Series On 180g 33RPM Vinyl LP!
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![Bouncing with Bud [Vinyl]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/0347641.jpg?v=1786832777&width=800)
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