Esther Sévérac – Work Witch! (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Esther Sévérac – Work Witch! (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 34:53 minutes | 665 MB | Genre: Classical, Chamber Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hout Records

The Alien Dog is based on a cool children’s book that I read when I was seven years old.

Debussy sur le toit is an improvisation based on Debussy’s first Arabesque. I like to imagine the composer sitting on a roof and dreaming about his own music.

Neskatxa (pronounced « Neskatcha ») is a Basque word that means « little girl ». The melody came to my mind when I was in the French Basque country visiting a friend, who called her baby daughter by this name.

Catillon was the last woman burned for witchcraft in Switzerland in 1731. The first two movements are about the horror of the witch hunts: the stake (Flames) and the elegy that follows (Ashes). The third movement, Walpurgis, is the comforting fantasy that, thanks to their real magical powers, the victims of witch hunts escaped their fate and danced together around a big fire.

In Eastern European folklore, the Baba Yaga is a witch who lives in a hut that has chicken legs. The hut wobbles through a fairy tale forest during the Baba Yaga Interludes, guiding the listener from one piece to another.

The Invention 12 in A Major is my favorite of the two-voice inventions by Bach. It brings this album to a majestic and elegant close and pays tribute to my classical harp education.

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Ensemble ArtChoral – Art choral vol. 5: Romantique (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ensemble ArtChoral – Art choral vol. 5: Romantique (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 33:47 minutes | 558 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Les Disques ATMA Inc.

ATMA Classique, Ensemble ArtChoral and Mécénat Musica are proud to present Art choral, Vol. 5: Romantique with Ensemble ArtChoral under the direction of Matthias Maute. Featuring choral music from the Romantic era by Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Verdi, Brahms, Meyerbeer, Tchaikovsky, Gounod, and Fauré. This album is the fourth release from our ART CHORAL series.

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Emmrose – Thorns (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Emmrose – Thorns (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 38:13 minutes | 457 MB | Genre: Indie Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Emmrose

The full album, including previously unreleased tracks such as Hannah, Waiting for Nowhere, Afterlife, Brave New World, Thorns, The Gallows, and The Feeling’s Mutual.

In the title track “Thorns”, every verse is addressed to a different person and publicly addresses the resentment she once held against them, so pay close attention to those lyrics– there’s a unique story to be told, each one more palpable than the last. The verses are sung sweetly over a gorgeous piano, along with viola accompaniment by 15-year-old viola player Andrew Jensen.

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Elliott Fullam – End of Ways (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Elliott Fullam – End of Ways (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:05 minutes | 894 MB | Genre: Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Kill Rock Stars

End of Ways” is a bridge to healing as it was written during the period of helping a loved one escape an abusive household while working though its lingering horrors to find peace. On this second album release by indie label Kill Rock Stars, 18-year-old Elliott Fullam touches on even darker subject matter than his predecessor “What’s Wrong” which was a dissociative trip that reached out to thousands of like-minded music enthusiasts who hailed the record as their album of the year. And “End of Ways” is the next record that will continue in that same gentle melody which alleviates the emotional storm that torments so many of us.

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Eliades Ochoa – Guajiro (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Eliades Ochoa – Guajiro (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 38:53 minutes | 451 MB | Genre: World, Latin, Salsa, Son Cubano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © World Circuit

Eliades Ochoa, the Cuban singer, songwriter and guitarist well known as one of the original members of Buena Vista Social Club, returns with his brand new album ‘Guajiro’, a collection of beautiful and melodic songs that cements his reputation as one of the most important artists to come out of Cuba in the last century. Featuring guest artists Rubén Blades, Joan As Police Woman and Charlie Musselwhite.

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Elene Gvritishvili & Alexey Pudinov – Silent Songs (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Elene Gvritishvili & Alexey Pudinov – Silent Songs (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:22 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Kaleidos Musikeditionen

Silent Songs – the fascinating collection of songs by the eminent Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov – enchants with its incomparable atmosphere of silence in a new, impressive interpretation. Elene Gvritishvili and Alexey Pudinov’s selection of Silent Songs celebrates the subtle beauty of the music, the contemplative lyricism and the sound of their words. Silvestrov once called his neo-Romantic sounds composed after 1974 “metaphorical music.” In turn, he described his cycle of Silent Songs as “silence set to music.” With the Silent Songs, he created a musical song collection that invites the listener to experience the magic of music in its quietest and most intense form. The initiator and pianist of this recording Alexey Pudinov found in the young Russian soprano Elene Gvritishvili (who herself has Ukrainian roots) a vocal partner who intones the Russian (and Ukrainian) verses as delicately and beautifully as only a native speaker can. Interpreted for the first time by a female vocalist, not only the voice and the piano are touching in a congenially realized tonal fusion, but also the linguistic melody of the Russian and Ukrainian poetry. Silvestrov himself once said about the creation of his songs: “The sung words themselves become the melody. I read the poems, and out of the verses flowed the melodies that combined with the words.” The song collection includes settings of verse by Russian poets Pushkin, Lermontov, Baratynsky, Tyutchev, Yesenin, Mandelstam and Zhukovsky, Ukrainian poetry by Taras Shevchenko and Russian translations of poems by Keats and Shelley. Themes such as transience, memory and the search for inner peace are at the heart of the texts.

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Disco Black – Black Disco (1975/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Disco Black – Black Disco (1975/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 35:48 minutes | 370 MB | Genre: Blues, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © As-Shams – The Sun

Press ‘play’ and the soulful notes of Basil ‘Mannenberg’ Coetzee’s saxophone tell you two things. First, Night Express is great music. But, second, the sound doesn’t fit neatly into any of the mid-70s South African musical genre boxes. This was an era when Abdullah Ibrahim’s music spoke to popular audiences as well as jazz fundis, with the bump jive mood of Mannenberg as representative as the more abstract piano explorations of Underground in Africa. It was also the heyday of Soweto Soul, when groups such as Jacob ‘Mpharanyana’ Radebe’s Cannibals melded hoarse lead vocals, sweet female backing choruses and Ray Phiri’s fiery guitar into South Africa’s answer to the Stax sound.

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Dagar Brothers Junior – Raag Jaijaiwanti (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Dagar Brothers Junior – Raag Jaijaiwanti (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:17:24 minutes | 813 MB | Genre: World, Indian Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Country and Eastern

Ustad Zahiruddin Dagar and Ustad Faiyazuddin Dagar are known as Dagar Brothers Junior as they are the two youngest of the four sons of the great Dhrupadiya Nasiruddin Dagar, the eldest two being Moinuddin and Aminuddin Dagar, well known as the famous Dagar Brothers.

On October 14 2022 we release a unique recording of Raag Multani that they recorded at Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar’s house in Chembur, Bombay in 1968 in which he accompanied them on tabla! A few days after this recording, on January 19th, they gave a private concert at Indorkar’s house in the neighbourhood accompanied by the great Ravi Bellare and this concert will be released digitally in 2023 on three separate dates as they did three long ragas that evening.

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Dagar Brothers Junior – Raag Darbari (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Dagar Brothers Junior – Raag Darbari (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:10:20 minutes | 757 MB | Genre: World, Indian Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Country and Eastern

Ustad Zahiruddin Dagar and Ustad Faiyazuddin Dagar are known as Dagar Brothers Junior as they are the two youngest of the four sons of the great Dhrupadiya Nasiruddin Dagar, the eldest two being Moinuddin and Aminuddin Dagar, well known as the famous Dagar Brothers.

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Stewart Goodyear – For Glenn Gould (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Stewart Goodyear – For Glenn Gould (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:06:06 minutes | 1,99 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sono Luminus

This release comes from one of the hardest-working and most respected pianists in the world today- Stewart Goodyear. Every album from Goodyear is released to widespread critical acclaim, and this one is sure to be no different. Goodyear writes of this release: “It was the year Glenn Gould died when I first heard his legendary name. It was his Bach that introduced me to his playing. His sound struck me immediately… a sound that was compelling and uncompromising. It was not designed to speak words of mere prettiness, but of an individual truth… My decision to record Glenn Gould’s program came right after performing it in Montreal. While playing homage to one of the great Canadian legends, I was being transported to childhood memories of growing up in Toronto, Gould’s home town, studying at the Royal Conservatory, Gould’s home alma mater, and being an artist from Canada, Gould’s country.” “A phenomenon.” (Los Angeles Times) “One of the best pianists of his generation.” (Philadelphia Inquirer)

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Itamar Borochov feat. Rob Clearfield, Rick Rosato, Jay Sawyer – Arba (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Itamar Borochov feat. Rob Clearfield, Rick Rosato, Jay Sawyer – Arba (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:20 minutes | 900 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Greenleaf Music

Arba – Borochov’s fourth album as leader, was recorded in 2022 with his quartet of in-demand New York musicians and Grammy award-winning producer Matt Pierson, and is due for release on 8th September 2023 on Greenleaf Music. The nine original compositions celebrate an emergence from a time of hopelessness and loss to a recognition of faith in the radiant life-force. Borochov performs on a custom-made Monette 4-valve quarter-tone trumpet which he uses to incorporate Maqams into his playing (the middle-eastern microtonal modes that are the musical language of his traditional upbringing).

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Irreversible Entanglements – Protect Your Light (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Irreversible Entanglements – Protect Your Light (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 45:14 minutes | 544 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Impulse!

Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother) leads the Irreversible Entanglements quintet on a cool, swaggering 4th album of punk soul-inspired free jazz jams.

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Ingmar Lazar – Franck: Piano Works (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ingmar Lazar – Franck: Piano Works (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:34 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © haenssler CLASSIC

Ingmar Lazar, the founder of Festival du Bruit qui Pense, is a leading French pianist. He is set to release an album featuring four sets of pieces by César Franck. The album opens with an unpublished sonata written by Franck at age 13, followed by a seldom-recorded Grand Caprice and two great piano works, Prélude, Choral et Fugue, and Prélude, Aria et Finale. The album pays tribute to Lazar’s grandmother, Sculptor Marie-Maxence Gibani, who passed away two years ago. Lazar discusses the album and his relationship with his grandmother in this interview.

discovered the existence of this Sonata at the BNF (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) in Paris, where the manuscript of this work is being kept. It is fascinating to see the evolution of his musical language, and therefore this Sonata is immensely interesting. One couldn’t recognize Franck by listening to this work if one would do a blind test, but it is indeed exceptional to think that he wrote it at the age of 13.

It is a very charming work, full of various moods and contrasts, and the extremely touching second movement seems to me to be clearly influenced by Schubert, a composer who was very dear to Franck as he made later transcriptions of four of his Lieder for solo piano.

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Ines Rio – Cool Breezes Velvet Sounds: Volume Two (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Ines Rio – Cool Breezes Velvet Sounds: Volume Two (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 22:50 minutes | 215 MB | Genre: Bossa Nova
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Music Cats Productions

Ines Rio, Ashley Burns Cool Breezes Velvet Sounds: Volume Two 2023 MCP Released on: 2023-09-02

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I Fagiolini & Robert Hollingworth – Alessandro Striggio – Mass in 40 Parts (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

I Fagiolini & Robert Hollingworth – Alessandro Striggio – Mass in 40 Parts (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:08:53 minutes | 697 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro

I Fagiolini’s re-discovery and recording of Striggio’s longlost Mass in 40/60 Parts was ground-breaking when it was released in 2011. The premiere recording won awards around the world including the Gramophone Early Music Award and a Diapason d’Or de l’Année in France and remains a trailblazing account of this Renaissance epic. It is complemented on this album by Tallis’s Spem in alium which it is said to have inspired. The Gramophone citation particularly mentioned the new lustre brought to the piece by instrumental involvement and the clarity brought to the detail by the use of viols, cornetts, sackbuts, dulcians and more. Eight further works by Striggio are also included, each of them premiere recordings in 2011.

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