Lux et Umbrae – In Handel’s Shadow: Vocal Music by his Rivals in Eighteenth-Century London (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:05:14 minutes | 691 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Toccata Next
The figure of George Frideric Handel cast a long shadow over musical London in the first half of the eighteenth century, condemning many of his contemporaries – fine composers themselves – to long years of obscurity. This recording throws light into forgotten corners and discovers some glittering gems, some of them demanding dazzling vocal fireworks from their performers. Several of these composers set scenes from Classical mythology or Old Testament narratives – but they also explore the underside of the Baroque psyche in one of David’s darkest psalms and in a representation of Arcadian madness.
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Lena Deluxe – Santaï (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 30:19 minutes | 339 MB | Genre: Pop Rock, Indie Pop, Female Vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Harmonie Records – Daydream Music
Après un premier album remarquable, Lena Deluxe, musicienne accomplie, décide de partir autour du monde. Le plus sûr moyen de ne pas se répéter. Avec « Santaï », elle fait bien plus que cela.
Au puissant groove rock de « Mirror for Heroes », succède une pop composée en Indonésie, qui semble prendre le contre-pied des mirifiques influences initiales, exclusivement anglo-saxonnes.
« Santaï » porte ainsi la musique de Lena Deluxe dans une autre dimension, pourtant reliée à la première par un psychédélisme évident. Ce changement géographique radical n’est pas une simple recherche d’originalité superficielle, mais le résultat d’une véritable immersion humaine et musicale. Le genre de démarche qui percute une trajectoire toute tracée, et qui dessine de nouveaux paysages intérieurs.
« Santaï » respire d’un bout à l’autre cet échange humain et culturel, et érige un pont entre le rock occidental et la musique traditionnelle indonésienne. Il en résulte des chansons passionnantes, d’une très grande richesse mélodique et harmonique.
Lena Deluxe y déploie par ailleurs des paroles intimes et engagées, toujours d’une grande subtilité, à l’instar de musiques ouvragées, infusées par le savoir-faire de musiciens indonésiens habités.
On citera notamment le guitariste Ipin Nur Setiyo, pétri de musiques traditionnelles, classiques et d’influences rock et psychés.
« Santaï » s’impose comme un superbe disque de pop, qui s’enracine ailleurs que dans son terreau habituel, pour mieux renouveler ses codes. Des codes qui ne cessent d’évoluer au contact du monde, comme Lena Deluxe le démontre si brillamment.
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Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective & Francesca Chiejina – Transfigured (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:26 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Known for its championship of neglected repertoire, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective presents a programme of works by members of the Second Viennese School, based around Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. Probably Schoenberg’s best-known piece – in either of its two orchestral versions or the original string sextet version heard here, Verklärte Nacht is certainly not neglected! The Collective has chosen to surround it, however, with works that are much less well known, producing a fascinating and rewarding programme. Schoenberg composed the work in 1899, whilst on holiday with his friend and fellow composer Alexander Zemlinsky and Zemlinsky’s sister, Mathilde, whom Schoenberg would marry two years later. Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen blühten überall, for soprano and string sextet, was never completed, intended originally to be a much larger work. Webern studied composition with both Zemlinsky and Schoenberg. His Piano Quintet may, like Zemlinsky’s composition, have been conceived a part of a larger work, but only this one movement was ever composed. Alma Schindler was another pupil of Zemlinsky, one with whom he developed a deep romantic infatuation. Their relationship ended when she herself fell in love with Gustav Mahler who, when they married, famously forbade her from pursuing her career as a composer. The four songs included here (arranged for soprano and string sextet by Tom Poster) are embedded in the soundworld of Zemlinsky and Schoenberg, and offer an intriguing glimpse of what she might have composed in other circumstances…
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Justin Klunk – Kindness Is Mandatory (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:11 minutes | 511 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Justin Klunk
Justin Klunk is a saxophone recording artist based out of Los Angeles, CA. Justin completed his BM in Popular Music Performance at the University of Southern California (USC) in May of 2013. Immediately after graduation, he went on his first national tour performing for pop artist, Ariana Grande, and released his debut CD/EP titled “Justin Klunk – EP”.
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Gaétan Jarry – Bastien et Bastienne · La Servante maîtresse (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:28:54 minutes | 1,48 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Château de Versailles Spectacles
In 1733, Pergolesi created La Serva padrona in Naples, which won over Paris in 1752, becoming the symbol of Italian music. Quickly played in French as La Servante Maitresse, it inspired Rousseau for his Devin du Village, a parody of which was created under the title Les Amours de Bastien et Bastienne. Mozart discovered it in 1768 and composed his Bastien und Bastienne in German for the private theatre of the magician Mesmer. These two masterpieces bound through style and history come to life with colourful plots: lightness, falsehoods and what is comic create delightfully bubbly situations for the tyrannical servant and naive shepherds, from which Pergolesi and Mozart derived the best musical effects. Adele Carlier, David Tricou and Marc Scoffoni, with the Opera Royal Orchestra and Gaetan Jarry, carry this torch of emotion and comedy, so emblematic of the 18th century.
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John Stein – No Goodbyes (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 55:53 minutes | 601 MB | Genre: Jazz Fusion, Vocal Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Whaling City Sound
Experience illuminates the path to clarity, and nowhere is this more evident than in No Goodbyes by guitarist John Stein. As his 18th recording and 13th for the renowned Whaling City Sound label, Stein, along with his exceptional trio partners Ed Lucie on bass guitar and Mike Connors on drums, showcases a transcendent musical experience. Building upon their previous collaboration on 2021’s Serendipity, the trio creates an enchanting collection of interactive, conversational, and expressive melodies.
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Tzimon Barto – Bach, The Well (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:01:53 minutes | 2,89 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © naïve
There are no songs for Prelude and Fugue No. 15, Bwv 884: Prelude (the Well-tempered Clavier, Book Ii) by Tzimon Barto. You can click here to post the lyrics to this song.
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Jil Caplan – Sur les cendres danser (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 35:55 minutes | 410 MB | Genre: Pop Rock, Chanson, Female Vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © At(h)ome
Tout feu, tout bleu. S’il fallait dépeindre le nouvel album de Jil Caplan avec des couleurs, ce serait celles-là. Feu comme le brasier de la colère et l’incendie de la passion, bleu comme l’azur infini et les meurtrissures de l’âme. La braise et le blues, la flamme et le spleen. Il conviendrait aussi d’y ajouter sensualité et mélancolie, tournoyant dans un tourbillon d’émotions. Comme un soleil noir, aussi sombre qu’incandescent. Sur les cendres danser, pour retrouver la joie, l’envol, pour revivre tout simplement. Après la pop électro de Derrière la porte et le jazz manouche d’Imparfaite, ses précédents albums, Jil Caplan revient à ses éternelles amours, un retour aux sources qui l’ont toujours nourrie : le folk rock à guitares, les ballades charnelles, les harmonies subtiles, quelque part entre Paul McCartney et Jeff Buckley. Tout cela grâce à la magie d’une rencontre : celle d’Émilie Marsh, musicienne, compositrice, autrice et interprète, qui fut longtemps la guitariste et l’arrangeuse de la chanteuse Dani, prématurément disparue, mais dont l’esprit bienveillant plane sur le duo. Une complicité à l’ardeur créatrice : Émilie à la musique, Jil aux textes, tandem fusionnel, alter égales, notes et mots, arrangements tissés par elles deux dans le même idéal écrin. Il y a des basses qui vrombissent et des guitares acides, des chœurs en ressac et des battements de cœur, des mélodies gracieuses et des envolées poignantes, du velours et des épines, de la folk et du rock, de la country urbaine, qui font des chansons tenaces. Variété de couleurs, de nuances et de tessitures, ourlées de la voix pleine de ferveur d’une Jil Caplan libre et intime. Avec Sur les cendres danser, Jil Caplan signe l’un de ses meilleurs albums, sans doute le plus beau et le plus personnel. Élégance, émotion, énergie, poésie, tout ce qui lui ressemble. Tout ce qui nous rassemble.
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Berliner Philharmoniker, Kirill Petrenko, Kirill Gerstein – Rachmaninoff 150 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:00:51 minutes | 766 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings
The Berliner Philharmoniker pay tribute to the Russian jubilee: Rachmaninoff 150 Juxtaposes an outstanding performance of the famous Second Piano Concerto with Kirill Gerstein and Kirill Petrenko with a selection of solo works for piano.
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Benjamin Boone – Caught in the Rhythm (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:35 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Origin Records
It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably / for lack / of what is found there.” ~ William Carlos Williams
By now, this fragment from one of Doctor Williams’s pastorals has become as well-known and widely circulated as “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Poets have always been the star reporters of inner space and, as with the best reporters, they tell us things we didn’t know before; or, closer to the point, things we at best vaguely suspected were there, but couldn’t pin down without a poet’s unholy combination of audacity and precision. There remain important things in our lives that stay “news” longer than whatever cable television, newsprint, or digital feeds tell us and poets can’t help but dig deeper for the truths beyond the reach of mere fact, especially the bastardized “facts” of what we’ve come to know as “fake news,” which has given human imagination a bum rap insofar as its usefulness for understanding the who, what, when, where, and how of our souls’ disparate passages. The poet is here to deliver news-that-stays-news and, if she knows what she’s doing, clears a path to that Truth-and-Beauty signpost John Keats identified centuries ago.
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Bayerisches Staatsorchester – Mendelssohn: Elijah, Op. 70, MWV A 25 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:06:12 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings
Das Bayerische Staatsorchester sieht seine Wurzeln im Jahr 1523 mit der Anstellung des Sänger-Komponisten Ludwig Senfl, der von Herzog Wilhelm IV. aus der 1520 von Karl V. aufgelösten Hofkapelle Kaiser Maximilians I. zusammen mit anderen Musikern übernommen wurde. In der Anstellung Senfls ist jedoch weder ein Gründungsdatum zu sehen (die Hofkapelle existierte bereits seit dem 15. Jahrhundert), noch von einem „Orchester“ zu sprechen. Vielmehr handelte es sich bei der Münchner Hofkapelle um eine vornehmlich geistliche Institution, die Vokalmusik im Sinn einer herzoglichen Herrschaftsrepräsentation aufführte. Ab 1563 war der von Herzog Albrecht V. berufene Orlando di Lasso Leiter der Münchner Hofmusik.
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Explosions In The Sky – End (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 45:30 minutes | 866 MB | Genre: Post Rock, Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bella Union
End, the enigmatic seventh album by Explosions in the Sky, was inspired by darkness, but became a loud, dramatic, wild rumination on life and death.
“Our starting point was the concept of an ending – death, or the end of a friendship or relationship. Every song comes from a story, or an idea one of us has had that we’ve all expanded on and made its own world. Maybe it’s our nature, but we kept feeling that the album title was ultimately open to a lot more interpretation – the end of a thing or a time can mean a stop, but it can also mean a beginning, and what happens after one thing ends might pale in comparison to what it becomes next,” says the band about the album.
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Eddie Henderson – Witness to History (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:59 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Smoke Sessions
Trumpet legend Dr. Eddie Henderson celebrates the 50th anniversary of his debut album as a leader, 1973’s “Realization,” with the exhilarating new release “Witness to History.” The stellar quintet on this album bridges that half-century of music: lifelong collaborator George Cables returns once again to the piano bench. Henderson’s colleague in The Cookers, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, and his more recent collaborator, bassist Gerald Cannon, have also appeared on the trumpeter’s recent string of releases for Smoke Sessions. They’re joined by legendary drummer Lenny White, who has reunited with Henderson in the studio for the first time since Realization 50 years ago). Henderson is also the subject of an upcoming PBS documentary “Dr. Eddie Henderson: Uncommon Genius,” set to arrive in February 2024 that charts his fascinating life in three disparate endeavors: as a medical doctor, as a pioneering figure skater, and, of course, as a legendary jazz musician. “My first trumpet teacher, way back in 1949, was Louis Armstrong,” recalls Henderson, “From that point on, I witnessed the evolution in music through Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Woody Shaw, John Coltrane, up to the present. I lived through the turmoil of the ’60s and ’70s and the rise of Black Power in this country. So, I have been a witness to history, and inevitably that rubbed off on me musically.” “Witness To History” traces Eddie Henderson’s evolution through a remarkable span of time, but it’s abundantly clear that he’s done more than watch from the sidelines as history unfolds. Dr. Henderson has made his own indelible mark on history, and this vital music reveals that he’s far from writing his final chapter.
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Aram Amatuni, Igor Tchetuev – Poulenc, Janáček & Rachmaninoff: Chamber Works (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:08 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ars Produktion
Poulenc’s Cello Sonata is technically demanding for every cellist. Since he had a great affinity for woodwind instruments, his notation is not really tailored to the requirements of a string instrument. He himself was aware of this fact, so he sought expert advice on the composition from the famous cellist Pierre Fournier, who was also the dedicatee and soloist of the premiere in 1948. “Everything we see, hear and touch is connected with feeling.” This is how Leoš Janáček defined his artistic attitude, from which an idiosyncratic musical language emerged that was hardly comparable to other models or traditions of his time. Pohádka means – translated from Czech – “fairy tale”. The model is a fairy tale written by the Russian romantic Wassiliy Shukovskj (1783–1852) about the love of a prince for a princess. This choice of topic shows Janáček’s enthusiasm for Russian culture.
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Håvard Svendsrud – Selected Works by Johann Sebastian Bach (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:11 minutes | 925 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aksent
Håvard Svendsrud, from Sysle på Modum, is known as one of Scandinavia’s most active accordion players. He has been a professional freelance musician for 25 years, and is known from a wide range of music projects, both as a soloist and in various collaborations.
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