The two greatest big bands in jazz history side by side on your headphones: What can be more glorious? If, as Billy Strayhorn said, Duke Ellington's band was his instrument, then this 1961 session finds Ellington and Count Basie "trading fours," as it were. The composer credits and solo space are divided democratically, to say the least—four songs from Duke's camp, four from Basie's. The sparring between soloists of both bands is a pure delight, especially the gentle conversations between the two leaders-pianists, who finish each other's thoughts as if all four hands were attached to one unified torso. Highlights include two engaging new Duke compositions—the blistering opener "Battle Royal" and the impulsive "Wild Man"—and the closing Basie chestnut "Jumpin' at the Woodside," on which the lead tenors Frank Foster and Paul Gonsalves engage in ferocious dueling. Amazingly, there is no toe-stepping amid the rousing interplay. —Marc Greilsamer

1. December-Winter Galaxy / January-Silver Storm Illusion / February-Legion of the Ice Floes~~~2. March-The Insect Awakening / April-Mirage / May-Dream of the Frog in the Well~~~3. June-Rainbow Fossil / July-Sounding Cumulus / August-Song of the Jellyfish~~~4. September-Typhoon Sphere / October-Infinite Firmament / November-Winter Advent.

On paper, River sounds like a match made in several versions of heaven. Legendary pianist Herbie Hancock re-imagines Joni Mitchell with his hand-picked, star-studded band—including saxophonist Wayne Shorter—in tow. Luminary guests lend vocals to a song apiece: Norah Jones ("Court and Spark"), Tina Turner ("Edith and the Kingpin"), Corinne Bailey Rae ("River"), Luciana Souza ("Amelia"), Leonard Cohen (with an unsettlingly sanguine version of "The Jungle Line"), even Mitchell herself ("Tea Leaf Prophecy"). In the event, though, a few fundamental elements go awry. Hancock plays with almost saccharine understatement throughout, and even Shorter's seminal "Nefertiti" and Duke Ellington's "Solitude" fall into the album's presiding, somnolent surface, though to a lesser degree does the instrumental version of Mitchell's "Sweet Bird." But girding, and in some measure, saving, the proceedings, the lyrics here testify to a subtler wisdom guiding Hancock's set list. The mix includes a continuum from intrepid classics to dusty, fans-only fare, but a distinct reverence for Joni Mitchell the Poet threads them together, and, in the end, this album works best as a sleepy window into one fan's giddy and particular love affair with his source material. Fans of Hancock win out. —Jason Kirk

Package consists of the CD 1-Berg Lyric Suite (3 Pieces) 2-Schönberg: String Quartet No. 2 Op. 10 (Version for String Orchestra) with miniature score for String Quartet 3- Anton Webern 5 Pieces for String Orch. Op. 5 with miniature score for String Quartet

Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928 in Finland) has a musical style that can only be described as molten. He has mixed all the post-modern impulses to fashion a music that's at once eerie and riveting. His Cantus Arctus (1972) is a concerto for birds and orchestra. Recorded bird sounds weave in and out of a mostly tonal, mostly melodic background. (Or maybe it's the other way around.) The String Quartet (1975) uses a twelve-tone row, with frequent sonic clashes, a trick Schnittke uses. But the Symphony 5 (1986) is an atmospheric dazzler. No one writes like Rautavaara; he outdoes all the post-moderns in Finland today. —Paul Cook

Four Orchestral Works By Aaron Copland / Music for the Theatre, Music for Movies, Quiet City, Clarinet Concerto / William Blount, Clarinet, Orchestra of St. Luke's Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor / 1989 Musical Heritage Society / MHS 512336L

Four Symphonic Works By Duke Ellington / American Composers Orchestra, Maurice Peress, Luther Henderson, Conductor / Black, Brown and Beige Suits, Three Black Kings, New World a-Comin', Harlem / 1989 Musical Heritage Society / MHS 512335 /

Carl Stone's first solo CD release. Voted Best of the Year by the Village Voice.

The title to Kronos's most bleak album comes from a nearly 20- minute-long composition by American composer George Crumb that unfolds over 13 distinct parts. That ominous number only hints at the horror Crumb intended as an ode to the Vietnam War. War informs the whole CD: Shostakovich's Quartet No. 8, composed near the height of the Cold War, in 1960, was dedicated "to the victims of fascism and war." "Doom. A Sigh," by Istvan Marta, incorporates field recordings of two Romanian women singing personal laments of fallen friends and relatives; their grief is so intense as to render listening incredibly difficult. The original text to 16th-century composer Thomas Tallis's "Spem in Alium" (originally a 40-voice motet) recalled a biblical battle. And late American composer Charles Ives is heard singing (yes, singing) "They Are There!"—a ditty he wrote during the Great War and revisited for World War II; he's joined here by the Kronos, half a century after his death, in an act of studio magic that is ingenious if not musically stimulating. —Marc Weidenbaum

There are many, many Andrew Lloyd Webber albums out there, including cut-and-paste compilations and songbooks from individual artists, most notably Sarah Brightman, Michael Crawford, and even Jose Carreras. The Premiere Collection is probably as authentic as you can get in a hits album, however. In addition to the most popular selections from the original casts of Evita, Cats, and Jesus Christ Superstar, the 57-minute album includes two selections from Tell Me on a Sunday (also recorded by Bernadette Peters as Song and Dance), the title tune from Starlight Express, the "Pie Jesu" from the Requiem, and a snippet from the Paganini Variations, thereby allowing you to hear the good stuff without having to spring for the complete albums. Note that the three selections from Phantom of the Opera are the 1986 pop singles instead of the cast recordings, meaning Steve Harley rather than Crawford sings with Brightman on the title tune and Cliff Richard subs for Steve Barton on "All I Ask of You." (Crawford does sing "The Music of the Night," of course.) This 1989 compilation was too early for Aspects of Love or Sunset Boulevard, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is ignored, but these omissions are rectified in the follow-up album The Premiere Collection Encore, and the American-slanted version, The Very Best of Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Broadway Collection. —David Horiuchi

In 1994 Carl Stone and Yoshihide Otomo began a mail collaboration where master tapes were passed back and forth serially and the materials of each other's compositions served as the basis for their own. The collaboration is MONOGATARI: Amino Argot, released on the Trigram label. In December 1994 Stone and Otomo played a six-city tour in Japan.

The term crossover can mean many things, and, as Sony Classical has proved time and again, attempts to package classical artists as sophisticated dabblers in world music can be as embarrassing as it is, on rare occasions, stunning. On the cover of this, their Sony Classical debut recording, we have four essentially classically-trained guitarists slouching like members of a rock group. The 60-minute disc careers through music inspired by Africa, Brazil, the Balkans, Chile and Japan, with stops in reggae, jazz, and New Music along the way. Despite the obvious talent and technical skill of the L.A.G.Q.'s members, this listener found little to enjoy in this particularly watered-down and superficial-sounding repertoire. —Gwendolyn Freed

With the help of some friends (James Taylor and Alison Krauss lend some vocal support), the trio of Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor have created yet another fascinating hybrid of chamber music and bluegrass. This follow-up to 1996's Appalachia Waltz is filled with highly lyrical string passages, a homage or two to Copland, and plenty of tracks where Meyer's bass vamps with the best of them. This is reflective (and relaxing) music, lacking the intricate structure of classical music and the rough edges of folk. But, boy, is it catchy! Yo-Yo Ma fans may be disappointed to hear that—aside from the gorgeous "Duet for Cello and Bass"—the cellist takes more of a supportive role on this disc. Still, this is fun music, more intimate than Short Trip Home (Meyer's other crossover project for Sony), but still lively (just check out "1B" or "Caprice for Three"). —Jason Verlinde

This 65 minute DVD Audio/Video release allows 13 well-known composers to dramatically explore surround sound for the first time. The results are intense, exciting, haunting, beautiful. The 13 pieces here premiere on this recording - they've never previo

A concept album about the feminine divine, inspired by his wife and unborn daughter, "Bell" displays Davis' estimable wordplay, intellect, sense of humor, Buddhist philosophy and earthly fears in a sweeping, visceral roller-coaster of a listening experience. The new disc features the songs Belle, Sexy Messiah (listen), Karma Pyre, Dharma Drama, Human Girl, Smoke, IS, Flower Of A Zero, Wizard, Original Face, The Glimpse, Ara Belle, and explores themes of the feminine divine in general, and Dakinis in particular. Stuart himself ranks this as one of his very best albums to date, and its potent amalgam of sex, God, and Rock 'n Roll already has saints and heretics spinning ecstatic-like.

Requiem is the first Modern Classical Symphony created for Wind Gong by composer/cymbalist Von Kessels. All the sounds are generated by the gongs; with most of them being recorded below the level of a breath. It was captured live, with no added effects, reverb or processing of any kind.

The compositions consist of densely layered polyrhythms, melodic drones and harmonic overtones that sometimes defy description. The Hybrid Multichannel SACD format allows the listener to experience all the delicate nuances produced by these ancient instruments.

In the end, we ask ourselves a compelling question: "Where does this tone originate from and how do we know it?"

1 Hymn to the Users 2 Into a Virtual World 3 A Pocketful of Data 4 World Wide Web 5 Need for Speed 6 Inside the Computer 7 Virus Attack 8 Aftermath 9 In Search of Lost Identities 10 Second Life 11 Bolero Electronica/Switch On 12 Bolero Electronica/Into the '60's 13 Bolero Electronica/The '70's - Transistors and Chips 14 Bolero Electronica/The '80's - FM Synthesis and MIDI 15 Bolero Electronica/The '90's - Samplers and Computers 16 Bolero Electronica/The New Millennium of Virtual Instruments 17 Bolero Electronica/7 minute version

- Walter Thomas McKinley: New York Overture / Peter Kelly: Symphony No. 1 / William Thomas McKinley: Symphony No. 5 "Irish"

Aaron Jay Kernis, Eiji Oue, Truls Mørk, Minnesota Orchestra

Afro Celt Sound System Lots of traditional-music recordings thrive when they're at their purest, stripping away influence to revel in a core sound. The exact opposite is the case with the Afro Celt Sound System's sophomore effort, Release, which hits its highest plateaus when it's juiciest and pulpiest, throwing everything into the mix. Hailed for their cross-cultural toss-together of traditional West African and Celtic musics on an electronic backbone, the Afro Celts indulge their digital-age ability to throw African drum patterns behind Uilleann pipes and Irish tin whistle all with a club-ready pulse. Their debut and various appearances at World of Music, Arts, and Dance (WOMAD) festivals cemented their success at this mixological approach, and Release makes the clarity of the group's vision all the more astonishing. Perhaps it's what Irish violinist Martin Hayes has called the "lonesome touch," but the Celtic contribution often squares up as a yearning cry, contrasting vividly with the techno beats and West African drumming. —Andrew Bartlett

Alarm Will Sound The New York Times has called the 20-member Alarm Will Sound 'one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene.' For a/rhythmia, this new music band performs 14 pieces from composers spanning six centuries, all of which explore the concept of arrhythmia: 'want of rhythm or regularity, specifically of the pulse.' The resulting work, on the ensemble's fifth album, is both formidable and playful, upending order and expectation, often taking ideas akin to minimalism and refracting them through a funhouse mirror. This is wildly imaginative music, as joyful as it is challenging, designed to keep you on your toes and slightly off-balance. It's literally not for the faint of heart.

Alfred Schnittke

Alison Krauss & Union Station After her 1999 gold release, Forget About It, Alison Krauss has found additional success as part of the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?—an album that's done more to advance the cause of bluegrass since Bill Monroe first conjured the music out of the hills of western Kentucky. While Forget About It showcased the more contemporary part of Krauss's musical equation and the O Brother soundtrack spotlighted the more traditional, New Favorite combines the approaches in balancing the softer sounds with the rougher-edged material. Krauss particularly shines on the soulful title tune of love gone cold, her vocal—softer than a cloud and more intimate than a midnight kiss—threatening to steal your breath away. However, it's mostly the older sounds that you'll remember from this largely somber album, one that telegraphs uncertainty, doom, and the promise of bloodshed throughout much of the repertoire. On "Momma Cried," a song about a child-snatching that tore a family asunder, Dan Tyminski's tenor vocals rise above a wailing Dobro, a driving banjo, and a thumping, anchoring bass to convey unspeakable pain. Too many of the pop-minded songs fall flat in comparison, but although this may not be the group's best effort overall, no other crossover bluegrass band begins to meet their mark either musically or emotionally, as New Favorite so amply shows. —Alanna Nash

Alison Krauss & Union Station Recorded live during their spring 2002 tour.

Andrea Bocelli Romance. Passion. Emotion. These words are synonymous with the voice of Andrea Bocelli. Almost ten years ago he exploded onto the international music scene with Romanza, and has since sold nearly 50 million albums worldwide. Amore—released amongst the glamor of the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy (where he will perform at the closing ceremony) and the romance of Valentine's Day—finds Bocelli straying from the carefully groomed classical ground in which he is most familiar. The concept of the album came from famed producer and longtime Bocelli fan David Foster along with co-producers Humberto Gatica and Tony Renis, who posed the question: Why not take the most beautiful love songs in the world and pair them with the most romantic voice in the world? The result is a beautiful album of pop standards that Foster has publicly claimed is "one of the most beautiful records I have ever been part of."

Embarking on a new era, Amore unveils a fresh sensuous sound that gently moves Bocelli into new territory. Spanish guitars flourish, traditional Latin percussion seductively keeps the tempo, accordions and harmonicas provide charming melodies, while sometimes Bocelli shares the spotlight with just a grand piano. Recorded late in the summer at Bocelli's Tuscan home studio overlooking the coast, the album exudes the natural beauty and breathtaking surroundings evident in Italy. Amore marks the only album David Foster has made outside of his Californian studio complex in two decades. This was also most musically gratifying for Bocelli: "I've been presented with opportunities I once could only dream of, challenges I longed to confront and experiences I will cherish forever, but while recording this album I realized that now is the perfect moment to arrive at an album of this repertoire, with the perfect producers, the perfect musicians and the perfect selection of songs."

More CDs from Andrea Bocelli

The Storyteller

Romanza

Cieli di Toscana

Verdi

La Bohème

Sacred Arias

André Previn, Renée Fleming, Barbara Bonney, Wiener Philharmoniker, London Symphony Orchestra André Previn's long and distinguished career as a conductor has overshadowed his work as a composer and pianist, but this disc of "diversions" lifts the curtain, offering a fair sampling of Previn's output. The Diversions show his flair for colorful orchestration—in both scurrying, energetic writing and bitter-sweet lyrical material. Sallie Chisum Remembers Billy the Kid, a prostitute's account of the celebrated outlaw (with a text by The English Patient author Michael Ondaatje), is sung beautifully by Barbara Bonney, who is joined by cellist Moray Welsh for the haunting Vocalise. Renée Fleming, star of Previn's opera A Streetcar Named Desire, takes the honors in The Giraffes Go to Hamburg. It's a piece on animal suffering, whose quirkiness probably requires a Fleming to bring it off. She rounds off the disc with Previn at the piano for Three Dickinson Songs, notable as much as anything else for his sure feel for instrumental color. The third song, the beautiful and atmospheric Good Morning Midnight, makes a superb end to the program. If it leaves you wanting more, perhaps the record company will be a little more generous next time than the 56 minutes it gives us on this collection. —Keith Clarke

Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips Japanese Version Featuring A Bonus Track.

Anthony Rooley, Claudio Monteverdi

Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina Japanese DSD remastered reissue of 1974 album, packaged in a limited edition miniature gatefold LP sleeve. 2001.

Antonio Vivaldi, Claudio Scimone, Cecilia Gasdia, Margarita Zimmermann, I Solisti Veneti, The Ambrosian Singers

Antonio Vivaldi, English Chamber Orchestra, Nigel Kennedy

Antonio Vivaldi, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, The Orchestra of St. Luke's, John Feeny, Myron Lutzke, Louise Schulman, Kay Stern, Robert Wolinsky, Krista Bennion Feeney

Anuna

Arditti String Quartet

Arvo Part, Hilliard Ensemble You might expect that Pärt's meditative, detached style—with little distinction between consonance and dissonance, or overt emotion—wouldn't wear well through a 70-minute Passion in Latin without even a break between tracks. (Actually, there's just one.) The roles are distinguished only by scoring: the Evangelist's narration is taken by four singers and a few instruments in various combinations; Pilate is a deliberate tenor; Jesus, a cavernous bass singing very slowly. However, if you listen calmly and attentively, this work will transport you. When Jesus sings (slowly, on a simple five-note scale), "It is finished," and the Evangelist quartet intones on a single note, "And bowing his head he gave up the spirit," it's heartbreaking. The choir's huge crescendo through the final nine-word prayer is stunning. —Matthew Westphal

Arvo Part, Neeme Jarvi, Boris Berman, Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus

Aulis Sallinen, Terry Riley, Arvo Part, Anton Webern, John Zorn, John Lurie, Astor Piazzolla, Alfred Schnittke, Samuel Barber, Anonymous, Hank Dutt, David Harrington, Joan Jeanrenaud, John Sherba, Earl L. Miller, Christian Marclay, Ohta Hiromi, Kronos Quartet

Ayub Ogada, The Meters, Peter Hammill, Dmitir Pokrovsky Ensemble, William Orbit, Tony Levin, Alex Gifford, Brian Eno, David Rhodes, Daniel Lanois

Balanescu Quartet

Barbra Streisand

Barre Phillips,Lee Konitz,Tristan Honsinger,Richard Teitelbaum Derek Bailey

The Beatles No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: BEATLES
Title: RUBBER SOUL (BRITISH)
Street Release Date: 08/09/1988
Domestic
Genre: ROCK/POP

The Beatles Revolver wouldn't remain the Beatles' most ambitious LP for long, but many fans—including this one—remember it as their best. An object lesson in fitting great songwriting into experimental production and genre play, this is also a record whose influence extends far beyond mere they-was-the-greatest cheerleading. Putting McCartney's more traditionally melodic "Here, There and Everywhere" and "For No One" alongside Lennon's direct-hit sneering ("Dr. Robert") and dreamscapes ("I'm Only Sleeping," "Tomorrow Never Knows") and Harrison's peaking wit ("Taxman") was as conceptually brilliant as anything Sgt. Pepper attempted, and more subtly fulfilling. A must. —Rickey Wright

The Beatles It begins with a twittering of birdsong lifted from "Across the Universe." And once the triple-tracked a capella harmonies of "Because" enter, followed by snatches from "A Hard Day's Night" and "The End," leading into a fired-up "Get Back," it becomes obvious that this is far more than just another Beatles compilation. This is Love, conceived by the Fabs' former producer George Martin and son Giles as a stageshow soundtrack to Cirque de Soleil's Las Vegas spectacular of the same name, but appears to have taken on a life of its own. Whereas the Beatles' last release, 1, delivered the (over?) familiar hits in a nice, simple package, Love is a mélange of the familiar and obscure, all literally mixed together in one 78-minute audio collage which succeeds in reminding the listener just why the Beatles truly are, as Lennon put it, "toppermost of the poppermost." There's no new Beatles material per se, but the songs are all approached differently—some are cut together in a flawlessly mixed medley (check out "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You/Helter Skelter"), some reassemble different backing tracks and vocal performances to create new spins on old classics; but all the songs are revitalized considerably. Even in its weakest moments (which probably work better in the context of the show itself), Love is still a formidable prospect, and one has to admire Martin's willingness to go out on a limb with such a project. While purists may complain that the cut 'n' paste nature of the project is simply tampering with perfection, at the very least it'll make them reach for the originals and enjoy them all over again. For newcomers and everyone else, it makes a fine listen, both in its sonic clarity (the actual tracks are the best they've sounded on CD) and audacious nature. —Thom Allott

More from the Fab Four

The Capitol Albums, Vol. 2
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Anthology 1
Anthology 2
Anthology 3

The Beatles

Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Claire Watson, James Pease, Owen Brannigan, Janice Watson, Marion Studholme Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes not only single-handedly revitalized the genre of English opera, but was also the most profoundly original and dramatically groundbreaking opera in this century and possibly the most significant English dramatic musical work ever written. Its subject, a misfit fisherman whose confrontation with society and its unforgiving rules leads to his ultimate destruction, was a vehicle for more important subthemes, not least of which was Britten's ongoing near-obsession with the nature of innocence and its corruption. The phenomenal impact of Grimes on audiences and performers assured Britten's place as the century's preeminent opera composer, and launched him on the path to creating many more successful stage works. This production, with Peter Pears in the role of Grimes and Britten conducting, remains the definitive recording, with an excellent performance by Pears, for whom the role was created, and fine sound. —David Vernier

Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Melos Ensemble of London, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus The composer's 1963 recording remains, after 35 years, the preferred account, unequaled in its scope and emotional intensity. It brings together the three soloists for whom the work was written, chosen not only because of their artistry but because they represented three of the nations most deeply scarred by World War II—the Soviet Union, England, and Germany. Benjamin Britten holds the vast forces together, and the superbly engineered recording captures with chilling exactitude the power and the nuance of his ardent, visionary interpretation. —Ted Libbey

Benoit Delbecq

Bernard Haitink (Conductor), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra - Amsterdam, Katsuya Yokoyama (Shakuhachi), Kunshi Isuruta (Biwa)

Beth Orton There's no way to offer a shortcut description of what Beth Orton sounds like. There are so many musical styles pulsing through Central Reservation—jazz, folk, pop, rock, and dance—that the album could easily have ended up an empty exercise in genre-hopping. Instead, it's a bracing example of mongrel music at its best as Orton carves out a new musical vocabulary with deep roots in familiar sounds. —Keith Moerer

Bill Bruford, Patrick Moraz Import exclusive reissue for artist best known for his work with King Crimson, Genesis, & Yes. This 1985 album, recorded with Patrick Moraz (Moody Blues, Yes), has been augmented with a bonus disc ('An Introduction To Summerfold') featuring three previously tracks, 'Eastern Sundays', 'Children's Concerto', & 'Galatea'. Winterfold. 2004.

Bill Evans Trio No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: SACD
Artist: EVANS,BILL TRIO
Title: PORTRAIT IN JAZZ
Street Release Date: 09/30/2003
Domestic
Genre: JAZZ

Bill Frisell For those who have been wondering where Mr. Bill's musical wanderings would lead him in the wake of his first solo CD, Ghost Town, Blues Dream provides the ambitious answer. Nearly all Frisell's fascinations are here: the pastoralism of Have a Little Faith, a Nashville tinge, and the cinematic sounds of Quartet. There's also the electronic loop atmospheres of his ECM and early Elektra years and the alternating Ellingtonian and Salvation Army horns of his quintet period. All of this melded into 18 new compositions commissioned by the Walker Arts Center.

A textural richness comes courtesy of Greg Leisz's various guitars backing Frisell's own guitar and a stunning integration of three horns: Curtis Fowlkes's trombone, Ron Miles's trumpet, and Billy Drewes's saxophones. As you listen to this string of broad-shouldered pieces, tributes to greats like Ron Carter, and strangely blues-inflected soundscapes, it's apparent that the solos of Ghost Town can operate as a sort of sketch or "cartoon" for this, the full painting; or a short that is then expanded into a feature. Frisell's career is taking on the aspect of a well-crafted movie or novel that explores different story lines before bringing them together for the finale (and this might be the prelude to the finale). —Michael Ross

Bill Holman

Bjork

Björk Special limited hi-rez SACD hybrid edition of the trailblazing art rocker's 2004 release was conceived as an album of pastiche, but Bjork changed her mind in the midst of the recording sessions. She decided to make the human voice a central focus and featured a variety of voices here, including throaty singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis, Rahzel from The Roots, Japanese acappella singer Dokaka, Faith No More's Mike Patton, legendary Soft Machine drummer/singer/songwriter Robert Wyatt and several different choirs! Regular participants included programmer Mark Bell and ace mixer Mark "Spike" Stent to once again expand the boundaries of her sound.

Björk When Björk became romantically involved with art-world darling Matthew Barney, the universe seemed to be uniting two of the most idiosyncratic artistic temperaments of the 21st century. The first major artistic product of this union, Drawing Restraint 9, music composed by Björk for Barney's film of the same name, finds their sensibilities eerily complementary. Barney's previous films, the megaton, five-part Cremaster Cycle, astounded audiences with a personal mythology inspired by the biological process of prenatal sexual differentiation, touching themes as unsettlingly diverse as speed metal, auto racing, Freemasonry, and Harry Houdini. Barney, a former model and football player, has always been interested in expressions of physical strain and release. This coincides quite nicely with the work Björk has produced lately, namely her album Medúlla, which was composed entirely of human voices—singing, coughing, grunting, and beatboxing. The intersection of these two artistic geniuses comes at precisely the right time, when Björk has cast off the last vestiges of her dance-floor self. To understand how remarkable a transformation this is, one might try to imagine what it would have been like if Donna Summers had turned into Yoko Ono.

There are instances of Björk's vocal soundscapes on this album, in the unsettling "Pearl" and the rainy and overdubbed opening of "Storm." Other tracks, filled to overflowing with bells and chimes, recall her most beautiful work on Vespertine. It used to be that Björk could chill the spine with a howl. Now she does it with a whisper, and these soft and haunting moments are what reward repeat listenings. With the music she produced for the soundtrack to Dancer in the Dark, Björk followed a more or less traditional narrative thread, stringing the songs together in such a way that one could follow a story even without having seen the movie. It's not quite that simple with Drawing Restraint 9. Without seeing the film, the music suggests a fascination with oceans, Japanese ritual, and the hidden powers of nature. It's spellbinding and confusing music, hinting at greater art to come from two artists of intense creativity and passion. —Ryan Boudinot

More Björk and Matthew Barney at Amazon.com
Medúlla
Vespertine
Selmasongs: Dancer in the Dark
The Cremaster Cycle: The Order (DVD)
Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle (hardback book)
Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle (paperback book)

Björk Björk's main asset as a musician is her fearlessness. Since the end of The Sugarcubes and the pop-dance of Debut, she has released progressively more experimental records. But after well over a decade of going further and further out, Volta steps back. Make no mistake; this is Björk, and so it's still fabulously weird. Like 2004's mesmerizing Medúlla and the 2005 soundtrack for Drawing Restraint 9, the songs are blissfully peculiar, with narratives about love, offspring, aliens...you name it. Yet melodically and philosophically, Volta recycles more than it innovates; the driving pulse of "Declare Independence," for instance, reminds us of Homogenic's "Pluto," and the lead single "Earth Intruders" sounds like Post's "Army of Me" on steroids. And just as Medúlla oriented itself around a certain instrument—the human voice—this one concentrates on horns.

Still, the transition between her early work and the avant-garde bender she's been on since Vespertine is pretty harrowing, and it's satisfying to hear Björk revisit her more accessible self. Uber-producer Timbaland pitches in here and there, most successfully on "Innocence," which uses a fat, disjointed pulse to drive the euphoric vocals forward. Elsewhere, the hyperactive sitar sample on "I See Who You Are" provides texture for the song's theme of enjoying each other while there's still "flesh on our bones." And "Pneumonia" makes fantastic use of the horn section with a soft arrangement that compliments the song's lyrical melody.

So while it's a bit of a stall, Volta is a lovely pause. It reminds us how much we appreciate the laboratory of Björk's imagination, but also how much we missed her back when she was just goofing around. -Matthew Cooke

Bob & Dana Kogut

Bob Belden Composer, arranger, and tenor saxophonist Bob Belden's 12-part orchestral tribute to Elizabeth Short recalls her as the "Black Dahlia," the dark-haired Hollywood actress who was killed in 1947. In this moving and moody work Belden evokes Miles Davis, Henry Mancini, Chico O'Farrill, and Shorty Rogers. Belden employs an impressive cohort, including trumpeters Tim Hagans and Lew Soloff, tenor saxman Joe Lovano, and pianists Marc Copland and Kevin Hays. In this sprawling score they move from the hyper-speed tempo of "Genesis" and the Sketches of Spain tinges of "Dream World" and "Zanzibar" to the misty Billy Strayhorn-like title track and end with "Elegy," which features a rare tenor sax solo by Belden that recalls the elliptical phrases of Wayne Shorter. With this opus Bob Belden begins this century with inspiration and imagination. —Eugene Holley, Jr.

Bob Dylan Inevitably, when critics praise a new Dylan album, they label it the "best since Blood on the Tracks," and with good reason. Inspired by a crumbled marriage, and recorded after a tour with The Band had apparently re-ignited his creativity, Blood is among Dylan's masterpieces. The album's epic songs are well known, but its real high points are the shorter numbers—"You're a Big Girl Now," the flawless blues "Meet Me in the Morning," and the sweetly devastating "Buckets of Rain." These are songs of "images and distorted facts," each expressed through tangled points of view, and all of them blue. —David Cantwell

Bob Dylan "You sound like you're having a good old time," a purist Dylan fan is spotted telling the artist in the documentary Don't Look Back just after the release of this, his first (half-) electric album. He certainly does. Updating Chicago blues forms with hilarious, tough lyrics—in fact, all but stealing the meter of Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" for "Subterranean Homesick Blues"—on one side, dropping some of his most devastating solo acoustic science ("It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Mr. Tambourine Man") on the other, the first of Dylan's two 1965 long-players broke it right down with style, substance, and elegance. —Rickey Wright

Bob Dylan Dylan's outstanding second album is a tremendous jump from its predecessor. Whereas the debut established him as a peerless interpreter of folk and country-blues classics, and a singer like none before, this followup features some of the most pungent original songs of the '60s. "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "I Shall Be Free": if this sounds like the lineup for a greatest-hits collection, you've got the idea. Nat Hentoff's liner notes are charmingly dated, but Dylan's idiosyncratic singing, unexpected lyrics, and inimitable guitar and harmonica playing are as immediate and relevant as whatever you heard on the radio today. (As great as this is, there's much more: a handful of top-rank outtakes from Freewheelin' appear on the Bootleg Series box set.) —Jimmy Guterman

Bodtker, Grex Vocalis

Branford Marsalis Quartet, North Car Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

The Brecker Brothers

Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir

California E.A.R. Unit

Carl Ditters Von Dittersdorf (1739-1799)

The Carpenters

Chanticleer Sound in Spirit represents another leap forward in power and purpose for Chanticleer. On this recording they explore the profound connection between sound and healing. The repertoire weaves together compositions ancient and contemporary, East and West, so the listeners hear familiar and unfamiliar sounds in equal proportions. The texts and sounds are inspired by many different cultures along with religious and musical traditions from Tibet, India, Japan, Africa, indigenous America and Byzantine Greece.

Charles Mingus Mercurial bassist and bandleader Charles Mingus was signed to Columbia Records for the briefest of time during 1959. His Columbia recordings, however, remain some of the most inspired, mood-jumping jazz in history. The flowing sadness of "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" (unedited here for the first time on CD!) rings like a funeral chorus that pitches headlong into a celebration of Lester Young's life and improvising flexibility, rather than his death. And there's the funky furnace blast of "Boogie Stop Shuffle" (also unedited!), which reaches its glory with Booker Ervin's Texas tenor sax, wrapped tight in bluesy tone. With the index of emotions captured, these songs nail why Mingus is possibly the most relevant jazzer for the '90s generation. He swings and shouts and hollers and somersaults. His tunes either induce foot-stomping with their intensity or reach for poignant yearning with their lyrical tapestry of orchestral colors. —Andrew Bartlett

Chet Baker While it's not quite the ultimate collection promised by the title, Deep in a Dream is still an excellent introduction to the music of Chet Baker. The 19 tracks, which were chosen by James Gavin, author of the definitive Baker biography, are culled from Baker's 1950s recordings for a variety of labels, including Pacific Jazz, Columbia, Colpix, Jazzland, and Jazztone. The tunes include both instrumental and vocal versions of Baker's trademark song, "My Funny Valentine," as well as a thoughtful selection of Baker's work with assorted groups, including Gerry Mulligan's famous pianoless quartet. Also included are previously unreleased a cappella versions of "Blue Room" and "Spring Is Here," which Baker sings in his fragile but compelling voice. —Michael Simmons

Chick Corea This Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) recording offers high-resolution sound and is playable on both standard CD players and SACD-compatible devices.

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, Timothy Brown

The Choir Of Trinity College

Chris Isaak CD > POPULAR MUSIC > ROCK

Clare Fischer & The Latin Jazz Sextet

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

Copland, Tocco

Cummins family

Dan Barrio

Dave Matthews Band With popcorn acoustic guitars, trampoline fiddles, bumper-car bass lines, and caramel-coated sax, the Dave Matthews Band's major-label debut is like an evening at the fair. "The Best of What's Around" and "What Would You Say" swirl like the amusement-park ride on the album's cover, sweeping the exhilarated and lightheaded listener higher as the ride spins faster. "Satellite" glides breezily like the prettiest horse on the carousel, "Ants Marching" runs around hitting the bell with the sledgehammer and winning the largest stuffed animals at the target-range booths, and "Lover Lay Down" is the quietest moment on the disc—like the sun setting on a baby's sleeping, snow-cone-stained face collapsed on her daddy's shoulder. —Beth Massa

David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir A single low note resonates. A second gradually becomes perceptible, then another, slowly swirling sounds that shift and pulsate from some unknown force, chords so ethereal they might be supernatural, or perhaps the vibrations of the universe. They are the voices of David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir. Hykes performs in architectural spaces as inspiring as his music. Harmonic Meetings was recorded in Le Thoronet Abbey, whose remarkable features grace the cover of the release. The music itself; however, sprang from a traveling art exhibition called The Tent of Meetings. Hykes composed the music for this project, which was based on the sacred art of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. And for the first time, Hykes incorporated actual words into his harmonic chanting, sacred words common to those three religions, words like Hallelujah and Kyrie Fragments. Hykes says, "It is the harmonic content of the words which interests me. The harmonic content in a word can be brought to life; it comes from the same place as a pure vibration."

Dennis Russell Davies (Piano), Romauld Tecco (Violin), Lee Duckles (Cello), Kenneth Harrison (Viola)

Dexter Gordon

Diamond, Schwarz, Seattle Symphony If ever there was an American romantic composer, it's David Diamond. His music is strictly tonal, abounding with colors, contrasts, and surprising change of moods. Symphony 4 (1945) is more of a tone-poem, brief, to the point, filled with all kinds of changing harmonic structures. Concerto for Small Orchestra (1940) has curious Coplandesque flourishes that lead into more introverted passages, nonetheless nostalgic in temperament. His Symphony 2, composed in 1942-43, is a dark, turbulent work, perhaps reflecting a world at war; yet its strength is in its meditative character. Gerard Schwarz does an admirable job, but the Delos ambience could be sharper than it is. —Paul Cook

Diana Krall The Look of Love doesn't tamper with Diana Krall's ongoing success, continuing the emphasis on romantic ballads and embracing them with lush string arrangements. At the core, of course, is Krall's voice. She's developing into one of the great torch singers, with an approach that's both direct and subtly nuanced, true to the song and yet deeply personal. There's a combination of restraint and drama here, as Krall ranges from the confident to the wistful, from loss to playful insinuation, as each song requires. "Cry Me a River" is bittersweet triumph, while "Love Letters" and "Maybe You'll Be There" maintain the most tenuous emotional hold, at once fragile and resilient. "Besame Mucho" and "Dancing in the Dark" are sultry romances wafted on light Latin beats. The songs develop their intimacy in the setting of Krall's quartet, which usually includes bassist Christian McBride and drummer Peter Erskine and several fine guitarists, most frequently Russell Malone. They're a superb complement to her voice and piano, and the close communication carries through the depth and sheen added by Claus Ogerman's rich orchestrations. —Stuart Broomer

Diana Krall No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: SACD
Artist: KRALL,DIANA
Title: WHEN I LOOK IN YOUR EYES
Street Release Date: 11/26/2002
Domestic
Genre: JAZZ

Diana Krall Singer/pianist Diana Krall breaks new ground interpreting modern standards by Tom Waits, Mose Allison, and Joni Mitchell, as well as compositions by herself and new husband, Elvis Costello. Krall's piano-jazz cred comes through loudly and clearly on her Count Basie-styled version of the Bonnie Raitt staple "Love Me Like a Man" (written by folk-bluesman Chris Smither). But it's the collaborations with her spouse that unearth untapped emotional nuances of her velvet voice; many are reminiscent of Bill Evans's moody, impressionistic pieces. The title track, "Narrow Daylight," "Abandoned Masquerade," and "I’m Coming Through" all deal with love and loss. "Departure Bay," a picturesque ode to her hometown of Nanaimo, B.C., proves that this is the start of something big, and that two heads—and hearts—are better than one. —Eugene Holley Jr.

Diana Krall Grammy nominated, Love Scenes features Diana's mastery of the romantic ballad in an intimate piano trio setting with Russell Malone on guitar and Christian McBride on bass.

Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy Although this group is long defunct, its one major recording will be fondly remembered for years—if not decades—to come. The Heroes consisted of rapper Michael Franti and percussionist Ron Tse; together, the San Francisco Bay area-based duo created a biting, politically savvy record that touched on both personal vulnerability and governmental venality. Franti used the microphone to preach about injustice, homophobia, materialism, and apathy. Although Public Enemy had long before established hip-hop's political potential, they never quite attained Franti's ability to translate black rage into universal themes. In the Heroes' best number, "Television, the Drug of the Nation," Franti raps, "Imagination is sucked out of our children by a cathode ray nipple / Television is the only wet-nurse that would create a cripple." Unfortunately, after extensive touring, the pair went their separate ways, Tse to a variety of solo projects and Franti to Spearhead. —Martin Johnson

Dohnanyi, Andras Schiff, Takacs Quartet, Kalman Berkes, Radovan Vlatkovic

Donald Byrd Blue Note seldom ventured far from the spontaneity of small-group jazz, but they put special resources into this 1963 project, letting trumpeter Donald Byrd and arranger Duke Pearson achieve some stunning results with a septet and the voices of the Coleridge Perkinson Choir. Gospel and blues influences had become more prominent in jazz through the work of Horace Silver and Cannonball Adderley, but Byrd explored the connection further here, combining the rich and wordless voices with a potent rhythm section, fluent soloists, and his own brassily declarative trumpet in an authentic and compelling way. Donald Best's bell-like vibraphone and Kenny Burrell's soulful guitar further emphasize the music's wealth of associations. The moods vary from the declamatory power of "Elijah" to the deep blues of "Beast of Burden" and the luminous hymn of Pearson's celebrated "Cristo Redentor" (a little-recognized master of jazz composition, Pearson also wrote "Idle Moments" for a Grant Green session), but the tunes are all realized with energy and feeling. The band seems to take special inspiration from the choir's carpet of sound, and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley and pianist Herbie Hancock also make substantial contributions. The session has always sounded fantastic, but Rudy Van Gelder's remastering has added even greater luster. —Stuart Broomer

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington with Max Roach and Charles Mingus What an alliance: a legendary bandleader and composer, a pioneering bop drummer, and an unclassifiable (and often prickly) bass behemoth. It's no wonder that the tension between Duke Ellington, Max Roach, and Charlie Mingus is thick and extremely tangible, permeating this breathtaking 1962 album with passion and aggression. On the jagged blues "Very Special," Ellington establishes a weighty mood while his piano work almost borders on free jazz. Roach's sticks dance and prance across every inch of his kit on "A Little Max"; on "Caravan" he effectively shifts from exotic rhythms to straight time. Duke's harmonic invention is delicate and mysterious on "Fleurette Africaine," but simultaneously jarring and cerebral on the confrontational "Wig Wise." It's hard to believe only three people are creating the stomping, disjointed monster that is the title track. Ellington alone emphasizes the beautiful melodies of the classic ballads "Soltitude" and "Warm Valley," but the edge returns when the rhythm section joins him. Mingus, who actually idolized Ellington, seems to be purposely agitating the master, almost taunting him. You'd say the synergy was magical, except that they seem to be working against each other. —Marc Greilsamer

E. Carter

E. Ugelvik Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Eagles This packed double-disc is the slim option for fans who find the Eagles' vaunted greatest hits sets too little and the boxed set too hefty. Hit singles large and medium are here, often ("One of These Nights," "Hotel California") still sounding definitive and even tough. Large helpings of favorite album cuts are also included, along with a taster from a promised 2004 Eagles studio reunion. Unfortunately, "Hole in the World," Don Henley's response to September 11, feels just as empty and entitled as "Get Over It," the band's previous state-of-the-union message (from which the newer song represents a philosophical 180-degree turn). But for those seeking an overview of this Southern California juggernaut's successes, as well as telling comments from band members—mostly Henley and Frey—in a well-designed booklet, Very Best will more than do. —Rickey Wright

Earl Klugh with Bob James

Egberto Gismonti The Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti drew his inspiration for this music from time he spent with the Xingu Indians in the Amazon, and it's intended to invoke both their spirit and the experience of the jungle. Gismonti assembled some remarkable musicians for this 1977 recording—guitarist Ralph Towner, percussionists Nana Vasconcelos and Collin Walcott, and saxophonist Jan Garbarek—but he uses them sparingly. The opening "Palacio de Pinturas" is a gorgeous duet between Gismonti's 8-string and Towner's 12-string guitars, a music so tonally rich that it suggests multiple geographic sources. "Raga," with Walcott on tabla, is more specific, with Gismonti's rapid-fire runs suggesting a sitar, but his use of percussive harmonics is a new element. The long final track is a remarkably varied suite. It begins with a light trio that has Garbarek's only appearance—a keening, soprano-saxophone solo—and includes "Sapain" for an ensemble of blown bottles with voices and wooden flute. Gismonti's fascination with shifting instrumental colors creates consistently interesting music, combining traditions and sources into a novel musical space. —Stuart Broomer

Elmer Bernstein, Isaac Albeniz, Jack Marshall, Christopher Parkening, London Symphoyn Orchestra

Elton John

Eric Dolphy With four of the brightest innovative talents in New York (Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams) and five startling, diverse originals, Eric Dolphy made the greatest and most adventurous album of his career for Blue Note. Unfortunately, it would be his last studio recording. He died in Germany four months later at the age of 36.

Ernst Ansermet - L-Orchestra de la Suisse Romande

The Flaming Lips The crazed genius of the Lips comes to full flower on the sonically massive and majestic The Soft Bulletin. Head Lip Wayne Coyne compounds the band's penchant for psychedelic freak-outs with a symphonic extravaganza. The result is nothing short of magnificent, not only the best rock album of the year, but among the best recordings of the decade. In 30 years, your grandkids are going to think you're pretty damned cool for having The Soft Bulletin in your collection. —Tod Nelson

Forsythe, Zappa, Brecker, Bach, Burgstaller

Frank Martin, James O'Donnell, Westminster Cathedral Choir, Ildebrando Pizzetti It's tempting to describe the extraordinary works on this disc as "neo-Palestrina". That wouldn't really work for Martin's Mass, as it might for Vaughan Williams's Mass in G Minor. Where Vaughan Williams stays rooted in a single tonality, Martin skitters from one to another, liberally sprinkling chromaticism and dissonance in a very 20th-century manner. Yet Martin conveys austerity, joy, and even some romantic emotionalism. The sinuous melodies and modal counterpoint of Pizzetti's Requiem are more obviously indebted to the Renaissance. His scoring is richly varied—ranging from striking two-part writing in the Dies irae, where the traditional chant melody supports a keening countermelody, to three four-part choirs in the dazzling Sanctus. The Choir of Westminster Cathedral (in a vocally secure, gripping performance) nicely captures and balances every element in this mix. —Matthew Westphal

Frank Sinatra Sinatra's biggest hits from Capitol Records and Reprise Records together on one record for the first time ever.

Frank Zappa Released shortly after his death in 1993, The Yellow Shark represents one of the only accurate performances of Frank Zappa's "serious" orchestral music—at least as far as the composer was concerned. Assembled from a series of sold-out performances in Germany by the Ensemble Moderne, the set includes re-workings of old favorites like "The Dog Breath Variations" and "Uncle Meat," live arrangements of some of his hairiest computer music like "The Girl in the Magnesium Dress" and "G-Spot Tornado" and new works by Zappa composed specifically for the event. The performances are astonishing and the music? Pure Zappa. —Andrew Boscardin

Franz Koglmann

The Free Design

Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, Judith Blegen, James Morris The chorus is at center of Shaw's reading of the score, presumably the more lightly scored 1893 version that Fauré, himself created (Telarc does not specify). The account flows very well, and the work of both soloists is highly satisfying, particularly Judith Blegen's airy soprano in Pie Jesu. The recording dates from 1985-86 and is one of Telarc's best, with excellent presence overall and real bass in the organ. —Ted Libbey

The Giants of Philosophy

Glad

Glenn Branca

Gnarls Barkley In 2006, Danger Mouse is King Midas of the music world. He has an uncanny knack for creating jagged, dense, frenzied beats and odd, eerie, vivid soundscapes that never compromise the music's natural flow. Meanwhile, rapper and singer Cee-Lo, a veteran of Atlanta's Dirty South scene, has never been one to be constrained by hip-hop conventions, and is a willing partner in adventure. The result is an intrepid psychedelic blend of pop, hip-hop, soul, and rock that consistently challenges and delights. It's no wonder that "Crazy," with its modest riff, irresistible hook, and disarming opening line ("I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind") became a worldwide Internet sensation a full six months before the official release of St. Elsewhere. But that relatively simple soul-pop gem is the tamest track on this wide-ranging, often dark and introspective collaboration. (In fact, the duo considers Gnarls Barkley to be a wholly new creation, as opposed to a collaboration of existing artists.) "Everybody is somebody, but nobody wants to be themselves," Cee-Lo croons on "Who Cares?" He and Danger Mouse try very hard not to be their old selves as they creatively and confidently break down boundaries, but the brilliant cores of their musical personae—Cee-Lo's eccentric spiritual soul man and Danger's bold sonic explorer—remain. —Marc Greilsamer

Grant Green

Gyorgy Ligeti, Jonathon Nott, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra The five extraordinary works on this disc will captivate Ligeti fans and entrance even those who don't know his music. The focus in Lontano on refined tonal colors makes it one of the most elegant pieces in the modernist canon. Atmosphères is more static, holding interest through subtle changes in color and dynamics. Apparitions was Ligeti's first success in the West after his escape from Hungary during the 1956 Soviet invasion. It's a ghostly two-movement work. The first, Lento, is creepy in a dynamically subdued way. The second, Agitato, surprises in its violence, the orchestral crashes fulfilling the fears embodied in the Lento movement.

San Francisco Polyphony, from 1974, is the most recent Ligeti composition on the disc, and it packs more into its 12-plus minutes than many full-evening works. It teems with dense orchestral figures and dynamic contrasts. Under its colorful façade, the work demonstrates how uncompromising modern music can enchant both ear and mind. It should become a concert staple as we move deeper into the 21st century. Finally, an early 1951 work, Concert Românesc, harks back to Bartók's transformations of folk material. Rich in color and vitality, its four movements are full of the dissonances of village bands and melodies rooted in Romanian folk music and in Ligeti's fertile, sympathetic imagination. The playing of the Berlin Philharmonic under conductor Jonathan Nott is outstanding, as is the engineering. —Dan Davis

Hamza El Din, Obo Addy, Kevin Volans, Terrence Kelly, Hank Dutt, David Harrington, Joan Jeanrenaud, John Sherba, Said Hakmoun, Radouane Laktib, Dan Pauli, Kronos Quartet

Harold Budd Harold Budd returns with his first solo album in four years and it's a timely reminder of how potent this pianist's ambient orchestrations remain. Although Budd himself would never use the term "ambient," he'll be forever tarred with that brush, having released The Plateaux of Mirror, one of Brian Eno's Ambient Music series in the 1970s. Budd's brand of ambience is full of ambiguity, hidden shadows, and dark corners. Based on themes from his last great album, 1988's The White Arcades, each piece on The Room is a miniature in mood. Dark organ drones underscore the time-stepping piano theme of "The Room of Ancillary Dreams." Another organ drone, along with cascading synthesizer bell swirls and the plucked, vibelike tones of a Fender Rhodes, establish an eerie desolation on "The Room of Stairs." Budd doesn't make happy music, but it has the poignant beauty of the last leaves of autumn. —John Diliberto

Harris, Gould, Miller, Albany Symphony Orch

Henry Threadgill Veteran alto saxophonist and flutist Henry Threadgill enters fresh territory with Up Popped the Two Lips. It's the first album by his intriguing, all-acoustic Zooid sextet. Along with a simultaneously issued new effort by another band of his, Make a Move, it also marks his first association with a small independent label in many a moon. A longtime proponent of world sounds, Threadgill plays international matchmaker here in drafting Moroccan oud player Tarik Benbrahim into a string section that includes acoustic guitarist Liberty Ellman and cellist Dana Leong. By turns jaunty and mysterious, funky and reflective, the music is characteristically Theadgillian with its contrasts between light and dark, juxtaposition of flighty carnival melodies and assertive zigzag rhythms, tricky time signatures and fulsome unison lines. And in Jose Davila, Threadgill has another excellent tuba player to man an instrument of great importance to his patented sound. But with Benbrahim and Ellman lightening the textures and drummer Dafnis Prieto nimbly threading through them—and doing his share of slashing as well—this may be Threadgill's springiest unit. Up Popped the Two Lips is certainly Threadgill's most consistently strong effort since 1993's Too Much Sugar for a Dime. —Lloyd Sachs

HERB ALPERT AND HUGH MASEKELA

Herb Pomeroy HERB POMEROY - BIG BAND JAZZ LIVE AT SANDY'S. Red Rose Music RRM 09. Tracks: Where's Paul; Theme for Terry; Aluminum Baby; Unknown; Zid Zib Byazeke; Ossified; Rockin' in Rhythm; Amphibian Race; Chelsea Bridge; Blue Grass; Unknown; Sweet Rain. 2001. SACD.

Hilary Hahn, Valentina Lisitsa Charles Ives's idiom is in Hilary Hahn's American blood - which her fierce and fitting playing shows. Her partnership with pianist Valentina Lisitsa models what two singular artists can accomplish in the interests of a common cause. Quirky, peculiar, rich with Charles Ives's idiosyncratic notion of melody, peppered with dissonance yet also logical - Ives's works for violin and piano turn familiar musical expressions upside down. They are an alternate universe of aesthetic pleasure.

Hindu Cowboys

Iain Matthews

Igor Stravinsky (Composer), Kent Nagano (Conductor), Vanessa Redgrave (Devil), Sting (Soldier), Ian McKellen (Narrator)

Inara George, Van Dyke Parks An Invitation is an intimate collaboration between Inara and legendary arranger Van Dyke Parks. The result is a lush, elegant, fully orchestrated song cycle, a catalog of experiences equally inspired by the sophistication of Frank Sinatra and the storied, cinematic wonder of Richard Sherman's oeuvre. Throughout the record, Van Dyke's cerebral (psychedelic, even) arrangements twist the music into multiple directions at once, a swirling canvas suspended over the sonic mantelpiece of Inara's songs, bewitching and perplexing, a truly organic achievement among friends in an era of artificial pleasures.

Iona

Iona

Isshi Ryoran and Kazuko Takade

James Brown In the '60s, James's instrumental recordings—both as bandleader and occasional organist, pianist and drummer—all but constituted a second disc career for the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. It was a career that gave him the odd hit single—"The Popcorn," "Ain't It Funky Now"- -but mainly allowed him to fill out LPs with tight band workouts and ultra-hip mood music. Soul Pride brings the word, as it were, from a succession of great lineups, bearing witness as the music evolves from early-'60s remembrances of jump blues through soul jazz and the full-on funk. The usual fascinating liner notes by compilation producers Harry Weinger and Alan Leeds complement the music. —Rickey Wright

James Brown This is a 2 CD collection of James Brown's early days. He hasn't found the style that would make him the Funkmaster, but he's looking for it awfully hard. He can't quite shake that 1950s feel; the saxes yaketty-yak instead of blurt and growl, and many of his vocals retain a crooner's feel. Some later hits show up in rudimentary formations—"I Found You" will become "I Feel Good"—and some, like the intro to "And I Do Just What I Want," are fully mature statements. This collection is recommended, but not fully essential. —Robert Gordon

James Forger, John Carbon, John Anthony Lennon, William Thomas McKinley, Robert Black, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra

James Maddalena, Daniel Belcher, Joyce DiDonato, Stephanie Novacek, Patrick Summers Mark Adamo's transfer of the Louisa May Alcott novel to the opera stage is an artistic and commercial success. It's been scheduled by numerous opera companies, and this Houston Grand Opera production drew a large audience to its PBS broadcast. The success is due to Adamo's sense of the lyric theatre—his sharply focused libretto that clarifies both story line and the narrative's meaning, and his accessible yet sophisticated music.

Little Women is about change and letting go of the past. This theme and the dramatic conflict it engenders are beautifully encapsulated in two fine Act I scenes: Jo's "Look at us, Laurie: we're perfect as we are," and Meg's aria, "Things change." Adamo's music is equal to the challenge of his ambitious agenda. The 18-piece orchestra sounds bigger than it is, perhaps because it's always active, moving the story along on its own or commenting on the characters and action. Adamo writes big arias and unapologetically includes expressive coloratura passages. He even dares to write a Schubertian aria on the text of Goethe's "Kennst du das Land," repeating it (with variations) in English. And he injects some humor into the opera, as heard in the delightful scene of Brook's proposal to Meg, an arch snippet about surtitles, and Jo at the offices of a trashy tabloid. The singers are all first-rate, but the opera rises or falls on Jo, the kind of meaty part singers would kill for. Stephanie Novak is marvelous here, singing with passion and projecting Jo's innocence as well as her journey to self-knowledge. Patrick Summers leads a definitive performance of the opera. The recording is drawn from live performances in March 2000. Ondine, a Finnish company, has done American music proud with this release. —Dan Davis

James Taylor Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes house in a miniature LP sleeve. 2006.

James Taylor Ol' Sweet Baby James is known for his gentle coo-ing about life's little joys and tragedies (he's seen fire *and* he's seen rain) and for surrounding himself with the best studio musicians money can buy. Steve Jordan and Steve Gadd on drums ensure the rhythm is solid and guitarist Danny Kortchmar and saxophonist Michael Brecker are top flight cats who keep things in place. Taylor himself is in fine form, penning an immediate audience favorite, "Copperline," and getting playful with Sam Cooke's hit, "Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha," which initially seems incongruous but over time makes sense as more blue shirt soul from Martha's Vineyard's favorite boy. —Rob O'Connor

James Taylor The simplicity of this Hourglass (2003) begins with whats not there, namely a wooden holder. In addition to nothing hiding the black sand from view, the hand-blown glass is wonderfully clear and the pinched center maximizes the contrast between empty and full as the sand slowly slips through. Its an elegant solution for timing any activity that lasts for 45 minutes, especially where a ticking clock or stopwatch would be disruptive.

James Taylor

Jan Garbarek This 1992 recording by the Garbarek Group has their customary blend of Norwegian folk themes and original compositions, with the leader's big-toned soprano and tenor saxophones at the heart of a music that combines cool lyricism and intense, if restrained, passion. It's the emotion that Garbarek can concentrate in a single note that distinguishes his work. His soprano is a keening wail in the unaccompanied introduction to "Brother Wind March," his high-register tenor an impassioned cry on "The Tall Tear Trees." Rainer Brüninghaus's piano provides a reflectively lyrical contrast, while the shifting rhythms of percussionists Manu Katché and Marilyn Mazur add variety to the reiterated themes. The CD is filled with distinctively Norwegian touches. Grieg's "Arietta" is a wistful vehicle for Garbarek's soprano, while the traditional "Gautes-Margjit" is the briefest of melodies. The haunting "Psalm" is sung by Agnes Buen Garnås with whom Garbarek recorded Rosenfole, while Mari Boine, singer and Laplander activist, performs her "Darvanam" with just Garbarek's tenor as accompaniment, invoking another world of musical possibilities. The CD concludes with a serenely beautiful version of Jim Pepper's "Witchi-Tai-To," first recorded by Garbarek almost two decades before, and touching on Pepper's Native American roots. —Stuart Broomer

Jane Siberry

Jason Moran Jason Moran has a genuinely contemporary vision that's also in touch with a neglected and radical past. On his third CD for Blue Note as a leader (produced by his usual employer, Greg Osby), the young pianist continues to reach across the great divide that separates his often conservative generation from the label's '60s firebrands. This time he's taken that approach still further, working with saxophonist/flutist/pianist Sam Rivers, one of the stalwarts of Blue Note's most adventurous period and still, at 78, a commanding and adventurous musician. The results recall the early work of pianist Andrew Hill. Sometimes moody, sometimes bright, the music can be turbulent and multidirectional with complex, overlapping patterns that fuse the taut structures of hard bop with the density of free jazz, resulting in a music that combines the energies of both. Moran's meeting with Rivers is an extraordinary success. A mutual lyricism touches glowing, subterranean depths on the duet of "Say Peace," and the same empathy shows in the airy, Oriental grace of "Summit." The final "Sound It Out" is more intimate and spontaneous still, beginning with one of Rivers's own exploratory piano solos before he turns to flute, ceding the keyboard to Moran for another charged dialogue. —Stuart Broomer

Jean Mouton, Trouveres Anonymous, William Billings, Jean Sibelius, Paul Hillier, Christmas Traditional, Joan Garcia de Guilhade, Anonymous, Perotin, Orlande de Lassus, Thomas Tallis, Andrew Lawrence-King, Theatre of Voices, Alan Bennett, Daniel Kennedy, Paul Elliott, Hilliard Ensemble

Jim Hall & Pat Metheny The presence of Pat Metheny on Jim Hall's 1998 By Arrangement fulfilled the younger guitarist's long-standing dream of recording with Hall. But these duets confirm how beautiful their performing together could become. Unlike many encounters between high-profile guitarists, these recordings, from both a New York studio and a Pittsburgh concert, show no sense of competition or interest in displays of empty virtuosity. Instead, the CD's true to the enduring spirit of Hall's music, emphasizing interaction and a subtle complexity. Hall plays the lightly amplified electric guitar that is his trademark, with a gorgeous liquid tone, while Metheny brings a bevy of instruments to the meeting, including a standard electric (no synth), several acoustics—including a fretless classical—and his 42-string model for some remarkably harplike effects. There's tremendous variety in the music and thought in the choices of tunes and approaches. "The Birds and the Bees," played in memory of its composer, the late guitarist Attila Zoller, has a haunting depth, while the frequently played "Summertime" achieves a new identity in Metheny's arrangement, with spare and vibrant lead contrasting with animated rhythm guitar. Both musicians are adept composers, and highlights include Metheny's "Ballad X" and Hall's increasingly propulsive "Cold Spring." Given that Hall participated in one of the first recorded examples of free improvisation, "Free Form" with the Chico Hamilton Quintet in 1955, and Metheny has recorded with the British avant-gardist Derek Bailey, it's fitting that the two guitarists test the limits of their empathy in five brief and intriguing collective improvisations that sometimes explore unusual textures and microtonal harmonies. Whatever the material, though, the earmarks of the set are a quiet energy and a sustained lyric invention that invite and reward repeated listenings. The recording quality is superb, capturing every nuance of this music that seems to live near the core of the jazz guitar ethos. —Stuart Broomer

Jimmy Giuffre

Johannes Brahms, Robert Shaw, Arleen Auger, Richard Stilwell, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus Robert Shaw, despite being a fine choral conductor, was often a pretty boring interpreter—like most choral conductors, in fact. However, there were times that he really put everything together, particularly in his many fine recordings for Telarc, and this is one of the best. Of course, it helps that the music itself is largely pretty subdued, but Shaw directs a performance of exemplary clarity and genuine nobility of utterance. Gorgeous recorded sound too. —David Hurwitz

John Adams, Lorin Maazel, New York Philharmonic This is the first recording of Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls (which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music), by the orchestra and conductor that commissioned and premiered it. Adams grips from the start, with a slow buildup of taped mundane city sounds, the obsessively repeated word "missing" superimposed on them. The taped texts are drawn from fragments found on missing person posters, newspaper memorials, and the names of victims of the 9/11 attack. Sometimes the taped voices dominate; at others, the chorus intones the texts; the orchestra an ever-present commentator, its impressionistic harmonies fulfilling Adams' description of creating a "memory space" where each listener can find a personal response to the events. The orchestra erupts in an overwhelming climax after the words "I wanted to dig him out," managing, in a brief passage, to encompass anger, deep grief, and the enormity of the tragedy. Then it subsides into a long, slow decrescendo overlaid by the quiet recitation of names, as if the souls of the title hover over us. Adams has created music for his time and place that fulfills music's ability to move us. —Dan Davis

John Coltrane This set is drawn from a February 15, 1967, recording session—one of John Coltrane's last days in the studio. The tapes had been in Alice Coltrane's care since the recording, and she gave titles to the pieces, overseeing their release on CD in 1995. All are previously unreleased with the exception of "Offering" which appeared on Expression. As on that release, there's evidence here that Coltrane's relentless musical search was drawing him ever further out. The performances are shorter, focused, with a magisterial lyricism seamlessly integrated with exclamatory shrieks and cries. There is an aching, though rough-hewn, beauty to Coltrane's playing on these tracks. With the exception of "Tranesonic" where he is on alto, he plays tenor sax throughout. His command of the instrument from the very bottom of the low register to the stratospheric heights of the altissimo is staggering—note in particular his "duet" with himself on "Sun Star" where he questions and answers with himself on the extreme ranges of the horn. There's a depth and wisdom to these recordings that only further extends the Coltrane legacy. —Michael Monhart

John Coltrane Bethlehem Records was a New York-based independent record label active in the 1950s and '60s. It boasted an impressive array of jazz talent, including Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Mel Tormé, Dexter Gordon, and many others. Shout! Factory is proud to be reissuing some of the key Bethlehem albums.

The Bethlehem Years is a compilation of sessions featuring tenor saxophone legend John Coltrane and made for the Bethlehem label in 1957. These little-heard recordings, which catch Trane just after he recorded the monumental album Blue Train, offer a revealing look at the sax player in large-group settings, as part of the Poll Winners group and Art Blakey's Big Band. Taken together, these underexposed recordings add to our understanding and enjoyment of one of the leading figures in modern jazz.

John Denver

John Mayer

John Sherba, Michael Collins, John Constable, Christopher van Kampen, Kronos Quartet, London Sinfonietta Soloists

John Zorn

Johnny Clegg & Savuka

Jon Anderson Side One: Ocean Song, Meeting (Garden Of Geda) Sound Out The Galleon, Dance Of Ranyart, Olias (To Build The Moorglade), Qoquaq en Transic Naon Transic To, Flight Of The Moorglade Side 2: Solid Space, Moon Ra Chords Song Of Seach, and To The Runner

Jon Anderson Japanese limited edition issue of the album classic in a deluxe, miniaturized LP sleeve replica of the original vinyl album artwork. this is an imported (non-Japanese) disc that comes in a Japan-made paper sleeve.

Jon Anderson

Jonatha Brooke Getting a fix on Jonatha Brooke's music has never been easy, and her 2001 effort further complicates the task. As a solo artist, Brooke has teased fans with genre-gobbling pastiche (10 Cent Wings) and austere acoustics (Live), as if she were still searching for her voice in the Story's aftermath. On Steady Pull she may not find it, but you can hear her zeroing in. Working with legendary producer Bob Clearmountain (Pretenders and Bryan Adams) Brooke emphasizes her strengths—mercurial but memorable melodies, complex but flowing rhythms—through a variety of settings: polished contemporary R&B, alternative guitar rock, orchestral pop, as well as some trademark acoustic folk. If the musical shifts occasionally verge on distraction, Brooke's compressed, confessional songwriting and sincere, tart delivery mostly remain in focus. —Roy Kasten

Joni Mitchell Painter-turned-folksinger Joni Mitchell had slipped stark saxophone solos into her prior album, For the Roses, and her singing had often hinted at a capacity for bluesier fare than her guitar- and piano-framed confessional ballads offered. None of those hints prepared fans for this sudden, expansive shift toward a much larger canvas—a sleeker, orchestrated pop style pulsing with jazz elements. Court & Spark found Mitchell casting aside her earth mother affectations and revealing herself as the thoroughly modern, thoroughly complicated woman she is; the songs sustained familiar preoccupations with relationships but replaced courtly settings and naturalistic imagery with recognizably modern locales. Deeply romantic, constantly questioning, classic tracks like the title song, "Help Me," "Free Man in Paris," "Same Situation," and "Raised on Robbery" display a more liberated Mitchell, ready to rumble with unbridled electric guitars (guest Robbie Robertson on "...Robbery"), even willing to poke fun at her own oh-so-sensitive rep with a hip cover of Annie Ross's hilarious "Twisted." —Sam Sutherland

Joni Mitchell Sandwiched between the solitary, heart-on-her-sleeve confessions of Blue and the ravishing pop of Court and Spark, 1972's For the Roses captures Joni Mitchell in a deceptively subdued period of transition. Still hewing to a spare sound, Mitchell ventures beyond the elegant folk sources of earlier records to explore her love of blues and jazz-based harmony, writing as much on piano as guitar; thematically, the earnest reveries and heartbroken dirges of before give way to a more detached, even journalistic perspective and darker, grittier settings, most strikingly on "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire." "You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio" was the set's nominal hit, yet in hindsight the keepers here are found in evolutionary pieces like the jazz-tinged "Barangrill," the rock-infused "Blonde in the Bleachers," and in more sober meditations like "Woman of Heart and Mind"—testaments to her restless growth and signposts to the more mature music ahead. —Sam Sutherland

Joni Mitchell After the expanded instrumental scale and sonic experimentation of Court & Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni Mitchell reverses that flow for the more intimate, interior music on Hejira, which retracts the arranging style to focus on Mitchell's distinctive acoustic guitar and piano, and the brilliant, lyrical bass fantasias of fretless bass innovator Jaco Pastorius. Known for his furious, sometimes rococo figures beneath the music of Weather Report, Pastorius is tamed by Mitchell's cooler, more deliberate ballads: these meditations coax a far gentler, subdued lyricism from Pastorius, whose intricate bass counterpoints Mitchell's coolly elegant singing, especially on the sublime "Amelia," which transforms the mystery of Amelia Earheart into a parable of both feminism and romantic self-discovery. This isn't Mitchell at her most obviously ambitious, yet the depth of feeling, poetic reach, and musical confidence make this among the finest works in a very fine canon. —Sam Sutherland

Joni Mitchell

Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers

Josh Groban Thanks to a fortuitous intersection of talent and fate, 22-year-old Josh Groban hasn't finished his senior year in performing arts school but has already released his sophomore effort on a major major label. Fans of the young vocal phenom's debut will find much to enthrall them here, even if it nudges the singer closer to the center of producer/mentor David Foster's MOR pop sensibilities. Eschewing much of its predecessors more overt classic-lite pretensions and pop-rock covers for a slate of dramatic, Eurocentric ballads that serve as a showcase for the singer's inviting baritone, Groban shrewdly positions himself as the American alternative to the Bocelli-Watson crossover axis. "Caruso" may find the singer falling short of its operatic inspiration, but "Oceano" and "My Confession" quickly showcase the singer's true dramatic range (which seems to all but yearn for a bona fide Broadway musical challenge), while a vocal take of Bacalov's graceful "Il Postino" theme uses classical virtuoso Joshua Bell's violin flourishes to good effect. To his credit, Groban displays some promising efforts at songwriting collaboration on the bittersweet "Per Te" and "Remember When It Rains," while the ambient/ethnic soundscape of Deep Forest's "Never Let Go" offers a teasing alternative to the record's otherwise melodramatic production formula. Groban has found commercial triumph via Foster's mentoring, but there remains a nagging sense here that he hasn't truly pushed himself as an artist—yet. —Jerry McCulley

Joshua Redman Quartet Presented in the early 1990s as a full-blown media darling, followed by a short tenure surrounding himself with jazz heavyweights, media-savvy tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman eventually got down to the business of living up to the hype. In this mission he has sometimes faltered. Freedom in the Groove was a bland attempt to cast old-school funk and hip-hop with hard bop, and Timeless Tales (for Changing Times) cast Redman as a jazz journeyman plying standards such as "Yesterdays" and "Love for Sale." These were interesting efforts, but lacked creative risk. With 2000's Beyond, Redman seemed to have finally found himself, perhaps proving that the hyperbole was justified. Passage of Time continues Redman's breakthrough, fired not only by his self-realization, but also by his highly spirited band, consisting of pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Ruben Rogers, and super-drummer Gregory Hutchinson. Passage of Time is swift in message, concise in conception. Redman makes these eight songs compact vehicles, full of soaring melodies, rapt interplay, and luxurious, introspective, probing solos. The songs are loosely conceived through warm melodies, as the band's elastic improvs reshape the balance and direction of each song. The opening "Before" is a solo saxophone lament, setting the stage for the stormy, contemplative music ahead. "Free Speech, Phase I" works a willowy melody illustrated by hard-bop changes and flexible rhythms. "Free Speech, Phase II" is equally graceful, with even greater rhythmic daring from the musicians, particularly Hutchinson, who is expanding on the style of the explosive Jeff "Tain" Watts. "Our Minuet" and "Time" are sumptuous ruminations combining the introspection of Wayne Shorter with the soulful swing of Gene Ammons. "Enemies Within" rides a Latin groove, giving pianist Goldberg a chance to strut his best Ruben Gonzalez chordal hurricanes, as the band mambos and swings down below. The album closes with the bluesy "After," a gospel-like exultation that perfectly resolves Joshua Redman's latest passage of time. —Ken Micallef

Kate Bush Few women have expanded the vocabulary of rock as bewitchingly as Kate Bush; among male stars, only Prince may have taken as many risks. Hounds of Love saw Bush reining in the kookier aspects of The Dreaming, channelling them into epic electro-pop that tackled big issues of life and death and God with gripping drama and intensity. "Running Up That Hill" was one of the great singles of the '80s; "Cloudbusting" was string-driven, magically pretty; "Jig of Life" showed that Bush is one of the few pop artists who can flirt with Celtic mysticism without sounding twee or trite. Forget the riot grrrls: Bush is the real thing. —Barney Hoskyns

Keith Jarrett A musical chameleon, pianist Keith Jarrett was at his finest when he recorded these sustained solo improvisations in a German concert hall in 1975, the first lasting 26 minutes, the second 40. Melodies and rhythmic figures arise fluidly from his fingers as he moves from one idea to another, while his strong left hand is often used for repeated motifs that generate a rolling hypnotic power. This couples with strongly consonant harmonies to impart the flavor of gospel music at times, dance musics and Debussy at others. Above all, it's Jarrett's ability to knit all of his moods and wanderings into an almost seamless tapestry of warm and tuneful ideas that gives this music its enduring appeal. —Stuart Broomer

Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette Now into its third decade as a unit, this stupendous trio featuring pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Jack DeJohnette has evolved into one of the most enduring and rewarding trios in the history of jazz. This brilliantly recorded live date captures this towering triad at its telepathic best. The highly imaginative and spontaneous Jarrett delivers a complex and gospel-like figure, then Peacock's fluid bass lines comment on the pianist's statement, and DeJohnette's intricate propulsions conclude the phrase. Although Bill Evans and Paul Bley first glimpsed this kind of jazz improvisation, Jarrett and his partners have created a new language that speaks with its own voice. —Eugene Holley Jr.

Kevin Gilbert

King Crimson

Kölner Kantorei MIT MENSCHEN-UND MIT ENGELSZU

Kramer, Yip, Barabba, Crouch, Trevor

Kronos Quartet, Charles Ives, Jon Hassell, Thomas Oboe Lee, Ornette Coleman, Ben Johnston, Bela Bartok, Kevin Volans Kronos's second Nonesuch record combines seemingly unrelated work into a fairly seamless whole. From the off-kilter jazz of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" to the strains of Bela Bartók's String Quartet No. 3, this is an album of blues-tinged music. Kevin Volans, the South African composer, lends the disc its title and its opening track, which melts hesitantly familiar folk melodies into a racing quartet. Volans's technique is not far removed from that of Bartók, more than 70 years his senior. Kronos slow the intonations of Bartók's quartet to about a minute and a half longer than the Emerson Quartet's take—long enough to contribute to a kind of defamiliarization. Speaking of which, Ben Johnston's arrangement of "Amazing Grace" is what makes this CD a real keeper. He tests the mettle of this beloved melody by playing it against itself in numerous different ways, and the tune never succumbs to the tinkering. —Marc Weidenbaum

Laurie Anderson CD-Rom for MacIntosh.

Laurie Anderson Laurie Anderson is something of a missionary. Having endured the scorn of some influential avant-garde peers for "selling out" (by signing to a major label and taking her live shows to a relatively large, mainstream audience), Anderson instead chose to challenge their assumptions, proving by default that they were as ossified as anything in the so-called mainstream. Anderson also chose not to define herself strictly as an artist, but as a storyteller and de facto humorist—and one that dared point out that her chosen venue of "performance art" wasn't particularly avant at all. Or that the dreaded cliché was often merely the most efficient way to make a story point. This generous double-disc anthology charts the arc of Anderson's adventurous "mainstream" recording career, from the minimalist, unlikely Euro-hit "O Superman" through 15 years of ever more ambitious studio recordings and live shows. Tellingly, as Anderson's ambitions and acceptance grew, so did her playful warmth and often self-deprecating humor. Indeed, much of this set is an implicit jab at the implicit elitism of the so-called avant-garde—or is it their jealousy? —Jerry McCulley

Laurie Anderson A new Laurie Anderson album is usually a thing to welcome. Often less a performance artist than point person for global-village storytelling—as on 1995's The Ugly One with the Jewels—she's also demonstrated a high level of musical savvy. Life on a String's meld of Biblical references, New York wanderings, world rhythms, and chamber music doesn't cohere like it should, though. Caught between bemusement and empathy, Anderson's knack for nailing oddball details can lift her work beyond mere wit, but not here. On "Dark Angel," she damns consumerism with lines that would've been laughable even at the outset of her career in the '70s: "Look at all the things I bought / I'm feeling kind of lost." Her quoting "I'm a Little Teapot" on "One Beautiful Evening" sounds like self-parody, or the result of a lost dare with another artsy type. And is the observation that it's a small world but she wouldn't want to paint it supposed to sound fresh? For true Anderson wigginess and smarts, try Ugly One, or for that matter, her classic debut, Big Science. —Rickey Wright

Lee Konitz, Alan Broadbent

lee saeng-kang dae-gum sanjo

Leni Stern

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs

The Lilting Banshee

Lois V. Vierk

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Sclavis & Dominique Pifarely

Lukas Ligeti

Lyle Mays

Lyle Mays

Lyle Mays With Johnson & DeJohnette

Machine Drum 2nd album fusing cutting edge loveliness & warmth of IDM w/chopped up vocals & hard hitting hiphop beats. Strict headnod w/small smattering of cutup vocal sounds more chilled than his previous releases but still gets people moving.

Mahavishnu Orchestra

The Manhattan Transfer

The Manhattan Transfer

The Manhattan Transfer When Tim Hauser convened the original Manhattan Transfer in the early '70s, there was more than a whiff of camp to the vocal group's pre-rock pop perspective, but what may have started with tongue-in-cheek quickly shifted into an earnest (if still good-humored) mission—the preservation of closely-arranged choral pop. From their first mid-'70s hits forward, the Transfer has gone from strength to strength, extending their reach into r&b, jazz, Brazilian pop, and even the vocal equivalent of fusion. This first-rate two-CD package focuses on their long career at Atlantic Records, where they did their best work, and is correspondingly ripe with gorgeous group and solo vocals. —Sam Sutherland

The Manhattan Transfer Some of the Transfer's best records have been themed, such as Brasil and Vocalese. However, their biggest commercial successes have come from albums like Extensions and Mecca for Moderns, recordings that highlighted the genre-hopping versatility of the vocal quartet and yielded big pop hits along with it. This album falls into the latter category. The previous five decades are harmonically represented throughout these 11 tracks, including traditional '40s vocal styling on "Embraceable You," a classic '50s doo-wop medley, and some Beach Boys-styled psychedelic '60s pop on "Feel Flows." They've always excelled at jazz, and do so here with lyrics by Jon Hendricks to melodies from Horace Silver and Marcus Miller. But it's the group's forays into the 21st century via songs by Brenda Russell and Rufus Wainwright that really stand out. —Mark Ruffin

Manu Katche Neighbourhood gathers Jan Garbareck, Tomasz Stanko, Marcin Wasilewski and Slawomir Kurkiewicz. ECM. 2005.

Martin Simpson, David Hidalgo, Viji Krishnan, Puvalur Srinivasan

Mary Chapin Carpenter On albums like State of the Heart, Shooting Straight in the Dark, and Come on Come On, Mary Chapin Carpenter melded folkie singer-songwriter concerns with melodies and hooks that country (and, occasionally, adult-pop) radio programmers could get behind foursquare. Since those late-'80s/early-'90s high points, the Brown University graduate has often pushed niceties such as catchiness to the artistic back burner. Despite some too-languid stretches, Time* Sex* Love*, her first studio disc since 1996, finds Carpenter recapturing some of the balance that marked the best of those earlier records. "In the Name of Love" lifts off with a trademark midtempo groove and a complex lyric about attraction and independence. Other tracks subtly spice Carpenter's formula with lovely, sighing vocal harmonies and fleeting evocations of Beatles-era AM radio. Her need to attempt major statements about the sad realities of grownup life may ultimately be Time's biggest flaw; where's Carpenter hiding her gifts for limning small moments (State's "This Shirt") or events that few other songwriters would think to commit to tape (Shooting's comet-appearance commemoration "Halley Came to Jackson")? There's reality, and there's reality. —Rickey Wright

Matthias Pintscher, Christoph Eschenbach, Dietrich Henschel, Claudia Barainsky Currently composer-in-residence with the Cleveland Orchestra, 30-year-old Matthias Pintscher was born and trained in Germany. He has written more than a dozen vocal and orchestral works; the first two on this disc, both from 1999, are world-premiere recordings. Hérodiade, a long dramatic scene for soprano and orchestra on a text by Stephane Mallarmé, requires the singer to negotiate huge skips in an enormous range, to scream as well as sing, changing mood and expression constantly, while the orchestra provides color and atmosphere with sound effects of great variety. Part of a cycle using words by Rimbaud, Départ turns six lines of text into 16 minutes of music. The women's chorus produces whispers and shouts, the orchestra whistles and crashes; indeed, noises are integral to the text.

The opera Thomas Chatterton (1998), on a text by Hans Henny Jahnn, is about the unfortunate, enigmatic English 18th-century poet who, frustrated by his inability to gain recognition, committed suicide at the age of 17. Pintscher's arrangement of excerpts from it for baritone and orchestra is probably the most accessible piece on the disc. Like the other two, it is punctuated by long silences; the dynamics range from barely audible to deafening. Eerie chordal passages alternate with wild outbursts from both singer and orchestra; there are echoes of Berg's Wozzeck, perhaps underlined by the baritone voice. Dietrich Henschel sounds a little like the young Fischer-Dieskau; he creates a real character and his diction is exemplary.

The booklet quotes from a correspondence between Pintscher and Hans-Peter Jahn (who is not identified). Discussing his working method, Pintscher says the stimulus for a composition is often literary, which these pieces seem to bear out. However, though understanding the words would greatly help in understanding the music, the texts—unlike the correspondence—are not translated. —Edith Eisler

McCoy Tyner, Stanley Clarke, Al Foster As the title declares, pianist McCoy Tyner is matched here with two inspired and inspiring partners, a rhythm section that possesses a light touch and reserves of power. While Tyner has at times sounded like he's pulling a trio in his wake, that never happens here. Instead this trio touches on many of the usual postbop bases with a fresh vitality. The empathy is apparent from the opening "Trane-like," with bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Al Foster creating a springy rhythmic backdrop that has Tyner's triphammer runs sounding like stones dancing across water. That scintillating performance extends to the standard "Will You Still Be Mine?" and the Afro-Cuban "Carriba," while the pianist takes an expansive view of the blues on his "Goin' Way Blues," mixing traditional and modernist approaches. Clarke is equally adroit, whether accompanying or soloing, playing acoustic or electric. He uses his electric bass sparingly, contributing infectiously funky slap bass to the first take of "I Want to Tell You 'Bout That" and a reverberant lead to his other original, "In the Tradition Of," a tuneful bossa nova that suggests Antonio Carlos Jobim. But it may be Foster who does the most to make this date as successful as it is. His drumming sparkles, and he prods and levitates the music without ever intruding. The results are deep in the tradition of the piano trio, and it's Tyner's finest outing in the form in many years. —Stuart Broomer

Medeski Martin & Wood "Jazz is the teacher. Funk is the preacher." It's a maxim upon which Medeski Martin and Wood have built a career. On The Dropper, they just happen to be doing a lot more preaching than teaching. Drenched in a gauzy fuzz, this disc scatters thumping beats, wild solos, and eerie, shadowed melodies across a landscape of cavernous groove. Although it's certainly not as accessible as earlier dance-friendly efforts, The Dropper is even more to wrap a brain around. —S. Duda

Mel Torme, George Shearing Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. SSJ. 2007.

Meredith Monk, Olivier Messiaen, Ricky Ian Gordon, Gyorgy Ligeti, Kim D. Sherman, Robert Moran, Richard Westenburg, Musica Sacra

Michael Nyman & Alexander Balanescu

Michael Olatunji When he first appeared on the scene in America, Babatunde Olatunji was acclaimed by artists such as John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie; later, his influence was acknowledged by Carlos Santana and the Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart. As influential as this breakthrough record has been, it is delightfully unassuming, simply a straightforward excursion into the rhythms of Nigeria. "Akiwowo" is a joyful evocation of the rhythms that are created by a moving freight train. "Oya", "Jin-Go-Lo-Ba," and "Shango" all feature drumming of fiery intensity. Make no mistake, this recording is about rhythm and percussion, but don't overlook the fact that Olatunji has a distinctive and powerful voice. He uses it to fine effect on a number of pieces on Drums of Passion, at times soaring above the drums, then joining in harmony with others in his troupe. This is a rewarding album that truly deserves the decades of popularity it has enjoyed. —Jeff Grubb

Michael Tilson Thomas, Bob Becker, Russ Hartenberger, Garry Kvistad, Edmund Niemann, James Preiss, Pamela Wood Ambush, Rebecca Armstrong, Jay Clayton, Timothy Ferchen, London Symphony Orchestra Steve Reich's music is based around the phase shifting of percussion instruments. Even when he uses a larger ensemble—or a whole orchestra—you can still make out the percussion underneath. It's always there. In The Four Sections he takes a simple theme on the strings, then punctuates the flow with precise, percussive effects. It is very engaging music, some of the best this composer has written. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ is a tour de force. Once again the percussion rules. Here the organ and voices provide the undercarriage for all sorts of wondrous mallet instruments to flow over the top. —Paul Cook

Michael Tilson Thomas, Charles Ives, San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, Thomas Hampson Michael Tilson Thomas is an expert Ivesian. His 1970 recording debut was with Three Places in New England, still available from DG. Here, he redoes the work with the interpolation of a chorus singing the poem on which the last movement, "The Housatonic at Stockbridge," is based—unusual, not as effective as the orchestral version, but fascinating. Tilson Thomas cites Ives's desire for performers to creatively shape his music, and this disc vindicates his editorial liberties by making Ives's surprising music even more unpredictable. The choral contributions are fine, too, but baritone Thomas Hampson steals the show with seven songs that display his empathy with Ives's varied styles and the range of the composer's music, from cowboy songs to touching elegies. The way Hampson bellows a Brooklynese "Coytin" (for "Curtain") at the end of the first song of Memories is worth the price of purchase. Here's a disc to be entertained by, and moved as well. The recording was made at SFS concerts, and we're privileged to share the audience's experience. A must-have for Ivesians and the curious. —Dan Davis

Mickey Hart & Planet Drum This 1998 album continues the polyrhythmic approach of Planet Drum, and features many of the same players, including Zakir Hussain, Babatunde Olatunji, Airto Moreira, and Giovanni Hidalgo.

Mika Akiyama

Mike Keneally

Mike Keneally Mike's seventh album, "Nonkertompf," is an instrumental effort featuring Keneally playing everything, including guitars, keyboards, drums, sax, a stool and about a dozen other devices. It's a 74-minute stream-of-consciousness flight-of-fancy that takes the listener on an unparallelled sonic journey. Countless styles and moods are explored and seamlessly sewn together, always with extraordinary musical precision, rich orchestrational sense and a very big heart.

Mike Keneally & Beer for Dolphins The first Mike Keneally & Beer For Dolphins album in three years, "Dancing" is well worth the wait. Mike has invited his finely tuned eight-member unit into the studio to lay down nearly 80 minutes of the most adventurous, yet heartfelt, MK/BFD music ever.

Mike Stern

Miles Davis Japanese DSD mastered reissue of the late jazz icon's 1963 album. Packaged in a limited edition miniature LP sleeve for the first pressing. 2001 release.

Miles Davis This is the one jazz record owned by people who don't listen to jazz, and with good reason. The band itself is extraordinary (proof of Miles Davis's masterful casting skills, if not of God's existence), listing John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on saxophones, Bill Evans (or, on "Freddie Freeloader," Wynton Kelly) on piano, and the crack rhythm unit of Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Coltrane's astringency on tenor is counterpoised to Adderley's funky self on alto, with Davis moderating between them as Bill Evans conjures up a still lake of sound on which they walk. Meanwhile, the rhythm partnership of Cobb and Chambers is prepared to click off time until eternity. It was the key recording of what became modal jazz, a music free of the fixed harmonies and forms of pop songs. In Davis's men's hands it was a weightless music, but one that refused to fade into the background. In retrospect every note seems perfect, and each piece moves inexorably towards its destiny. —John Szwed

Misha Quartet Mengelberg One of the Village Voice’s Best Jazz CDs of 2002! Witty originals and Monk tunes called "terrific" and "irresistible" by Sound and Music; "inventive and inspired" by SoundStage.

MMW

Modest Mussorgsky, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Alexander Borodin, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Mikhail Glinka, Fritz Reiner

Muse The English alternative rock trio's third studio album features 14 tracks including the hits 'Time Is Running Out' & 'Stockholm Syndrome'. Mushroom. 2003.

Nat King Cole With his silky tenor and subtle, if highly underrated phrasing, Nat King Cole will long be remembered as one of the 20th century's true vocal giants. But lost among his renowned ballads and wealth of pop hits is the fact that Cole began his career as one of America's great jazz pianists, before his tentative vocalizing with the Nat King Cole Trio forever sealed his fate. Though Cole purists will be familiar with much of this material, this satisfying collection eschews the biggest hits to focus on standards by Gershwin, Mercer, Berlin, and Rodgers and Hart (among others), performed in musical settings ranging from Cole's original trio (in a pair of previously unreleased tracks), the Count Basie Band, and arrangements by the likes of Nelson Riddle and Billy May. The result is a remarkably fresh introduction to an artist who effortlessly wove jazz, blues, and pop into a dreamy, often transcendent new whole. —Jerry McCulley

Ned Rorem, The Fibonacci Sequence

Neil Young Proclaiming his intentions with "Are You Ready for the Country?" Young detoured briefly to the Nashville mainstream. On this No. 1 1972 album, even the singer's acquired-taste voice comes across smooth and beautiful—the smash "Heart of Gold," with steel guitars and Linda Ronstadt's backup vocals, is by far Young's most commercial-sounding song. His usual dissonant touches, like the otherworldly guitar in "Out on the Weekend," are less spooky in this new context. The last two tracks, the deceptively gentle "The Needle and the Damage Done" and the hypnotic rocker "Words (Between the Lines of Age)," predict "Tonight's the Night," Young's haunted 1975 classic. —Steve Knopper

Nellie Mckay

Neville Marriner, Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Label: Musical Heritage Society MHS 11247Z Genre: Classical Release Country: Usa Release Date: 1987 8 Tracks Email {} for tracklist.

Nick Drake Pink Moon is the sound of Nick Drake cracking up. That's not exactly true—some have long thought that his death by an overdose of an anti-depressant was an accident, and not suicide—but this album, recorded over two late nights, certainly sounds like a fever dream. Peter Buck of R.E.M. has called the album "Like an English version of (Robert Johnson's great blues) `Hellhound on My Trail.'" The lyrics to the title song read in their entirety: "Saw it written and I saw it say, pink moon is on its way. None of you will stand so tall, pink moon is gonna get ye all. And it's a pink moon." Aside from a splash of piano, the only instrumentation on this stark and spooky collection is Drake's eloquent acoustic guitar. —John Milward

Nickel Creek

Nirvana If Nevermind's sound is familiar now, it's only because thousands of rock records that followed it were trying very hard to cop its style. It tears out of the speakers like a cannonball, from the punk-turbo-charged riff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" onward, magnifying and distilling the wounded rage of 15 years of the rock underground into a single impassioned roar. Few albums have occupied the cultural consciousness like this one; of its 12 songs, roughly 10 are now standards. The record's historical weight can make it hard to hear now with fresh ears, but the monumental urgency of Kurt Cobain's screams is still shocking. —Douglas Wolk

Norah Jones Norah Jones Photos (by Danny Clinch)            

More from Norah Jones

Not Too Late
Feels Like Home
The Little Willies

Old & In the Way

Oliver Knussen, Paul Crossley, Peter Serkin, London Sinfonietta, Sebastian Bell, Michael Collins, Andrew Crowley, Gareth Hulse, Joan Atherton, Rebecca Hirsch, Timothy Lines Sometimes, even while you are listening, it can be very difficult to understand how Takemitsu created such exquisitely beautiful music using so much dissonance. As the brief Day Signal opens the disc, for example, you're more likely to think of the glory of sunrise than of the discords. And Quotation of Dream, which quotes freely from Debussy's La Mer, is nearly as beautiful as its source. Rather than waste time figuring out how Takemitsu's spacing of notes and imaginative scoring influences our perceptions, it's much more rewarding just to relax and let the music wash over you. Knussen, who leads amazing performances here, has programmed the disc for a continuous listening experience, although the novice should probably listen only to a couple of pieces at one sitting. —Leslie Gerber

Olivier Messiaen, Vera Beths, Anner Bijlsma, Reinbert de Leeuw, George Pieterson

Orchestra of St. Luke's

Oregon A suitably ambitious memento of the group's 30-year association, Oregon in Moscow is not a concert recording but a far-reaching exploration of the ensemble's substantial orchestral influences. Recorded over six days in the company of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, the two-disc project (covering more than 90 minutes) highlights the venerable group's attentiveness toward tone, dynamics, and phrasing as much as its facility for transcending genres and rhythms. Producer Steve Rodby seated the quartet (founding members Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless, and Glen Moore, plus new, fresh-faced percussionist Mark Walker) face-to-face in the same studio (Moscow's State Recording House GDRZ) during the overdub-free recording, a move that imbues the CD with a rewarding collaborative spark. On several occasions, Rodby mentions in the liner notes that orchestra members responded to Oregon's group improvisations with shouts and stomping feet. The recorded outcome is often serious-minded and somewhat less lyrical than, say, Northwest Passage, the disc that preceded this project by more than two years. Abstract at times ("Arianna") and liberating at others ("Zephyr," "Icarus"), Oregon in Moscow seems to invigorate every artist involved, and McCandless seems especially adventurous in the orchestral setting. It serves as a fitting, challenging reminder that beyond jazz, world rhythms, and categories not yet defined, classical stimuli are another fundamental element in Oregon's free-range musical amalgam. —Terry Wood

Ornette Coleman

Oscar Peterson, Singers Unlimited Japanese only paper sleeve SHM pressing. SHM-CDs (Super High Material CD) can be played on any audio player and deliver unbelievably high-quality sound. You won't believe it's the same CD! Universal.

Pat Metheny Like Beyond the Missouri Sky, Pat Metheny's score for A Map of the World is music stripped to its most intimate roots. The fusion master is joined here only by acoustic bassist Steve Rodby and percussionist Dave Samuels on 28 vast soundscapes that range from a mere 22-seconds to more than six minutes. Metheny fingerpicks his acoustic guitar throughout these tracks, though a New Age-style keyboard occasionally creeps in. The drama, starring Sigourney Weaver (based on the Jane Hamilton novel), obviously has its darker moments, reflected on cues such as "Alone" and "Discovery." But for the most part, this hour-long soundtrack (featuring a full 25 minutes of music not included in the movie) suffers from sonic monotony. The light string orchestrations that accompany some of these tracks never sound original, and Metheny's guitar work—though certainly soulful—lacks its usual improvisational beauty. —Jason Verlinde

Pat Metheny & Ornette Coleman Pat Metheny confounded fans and critics alike with this opening salvo for his new label, Geffen, delivering among the most uninhibited, collective meltdowns ever released on a major pop label. Song X served notice that this was one artist who refused to be pigeonholed. In joining forces with jazz maverick Ornette Coleman, Metheny midwifed a compelling declaration of principles on behalf of experimental musicians. Jack DeJohnette and Denardo Coleman throw down on acoustic and electronic percussion, and stalwart bassist Charlie Haden holds down the time. Metheny and Coleman journey through the interstellar regions of collective improvisation on the saxophonist's fulminating title tune and "Video Games" (with Metheny's room-full-of-mirrors synth guitar inventions) while unleashing a horde of killer bees on "Endangered Species." Still, for all the collective freneticism, the lyrical, swinging side of each artist is well represented on the Tex-Mex airs of "Trigonometry," the bluesy "Mob Job" and the elegant "Kathleen Grey." —Chip Stern

Pat Metheny Group

Patrick Moraz Japanese limited edition issue of the album classic in a deluxe, miniaturized LP sleeve replica of the original vinyl album artwork. Please note that this is an imported disc(not of Japanese origin) that comes in a Japanese-made sleeve.

Patrick Moraz 2006 digitally remastered edition, personally attended by the artist himself. "Future Memories Live On TV" was at the time (1979) considered a brave experiment. The music was performed live for a Swiss television programme and recorded directly to tape as the programme was broadcast. At one point you can even hear the television cameras moving around Patrick. The album consists of three tracks Metamorphoses, Eastern Sundays and Black Silk.

Patrick Moraz Follow-up to his Precedding Solo Album "Future Memories" by the Ex-yes and Moody Blues Keyboard Wizard.

Patrick Moraz 2006 Digitally Remastered Edition Personally Attended by the Artist Himself. 1984's "Timecode" is Considered by Many to Be Possibly the Most Pop Oriented Release from Patrick Moraz, Although it Rather Depends on Your Definition of the Word Pop. The Album features Bill Bruford on Electronic Percussion on the Track "Life in the Underworld". Other Tracks to Feature on this Album Are "no Sleep Tonight" and "Black Brains of Positronic Africa".

Patrick Moraz Patrick Moraz is probably best known in rock music circles for his membership of two of the world's biggest rock bands - Yes and The Moody Blues as well as a solo artist in his own right. This is a pairing of the first two Future Memories releases, from

Patrick Moraz Swiss born Patrick Moraz is probably best known in rock music circles as the man who played with two of the world's biggest rock bands firstly with Yes recording the album Relayer and touring extensively with the band between 1974 and 1976. Following this stint with Yes Patrick was to join another legendary rock band, the Moody Blues. Patrick stayed with the band between the years 1978 and 1991 touring the world extensively and contributing to a number of successful albums. Human Interface was originally released in 1987 and sees Patrick once again returning to Electronic instrumentation. The material on this instrumental album could be considered almost mainstream and has been compared to his work with the Moody Blues although only in terms of sounds and textures with the track 'Light Elements' considered to be one of his best works. Patrick Moraz has personally remastered this album for release. Nine tracks. Time Wave. 2007.

Patrick Moraz 2007 Digitally Remastered Reissue of a Solo Album by the Former Yes/Moody Blues Keyboardist that was Originally Issued in 2000. "Reasonance" is a Composition that was Written for the Piano.

Paul Dolden

Paul Simon After the success of Graceland, Simon's meshing of South African rhythms with his own overtly self-conscious singer-songwriter pop, Simon figured he'd best keep traveling. This album follows him to South America, where he indulges in Brazilian music and still manages to make it sound like Paul Simon. His quirky, introspective lyrics are front and center; set to the beat of multiple drummers, the effect is soothing and unexpectedly rich. "The Coast" is a brilliant narrative about traveling musicians and "The Obvious Child" handles Simon's neurotic obsession with middle age with a lightheartedness unheard in his '70s solo work. —Rob O'Connor

Paul Winter Consort

Peter Fayle

Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel Import only Hybrid/SACD pressing of this 2002 album from the musical maverick and former leader of Genesis. 10 tracks including 'Darkness', 'Now Way Out' and 'Growing Up'. EMI.

Philip Glass, David Bowie, Brian Eno Glass finds inspiration for his music in the strangest places. Here, he has taken his themes for the Low Symphony from the music of David Bowie and Brian Eno, specifically from their album entitled Low. You needn't be familiar with (or like) the work of Bowie or Eno to appreciate this piece, which is in three movements: Subterrraneans, Some Are, and Warszawa. Glass doesn't quote the borrowed themes directly, but lets them generate their own variations- -which he's very good at. This is an unexpected success and a grand delight. —Paul Cook

Philip Glass, Grant Gershon, Los Angeles Master Chorale

Pink Floyd The Super Audio CD (SACD) features two disc layers. One layer contains a standard version of the album that works on any CD player. The other layer includes high-resolution stereo and a 5.1 surround version of the recording that works on SACD-compatible DVD players and home theater systems. Both layers employ SACD's Direct Stream Digital (DSD) encoding process that samples the music 64 times faster than CD for unprecedented fidelity.

Police This Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) recording offers high-resolution sound and is playable on both standard CD players and SACD-compatible devices.

Power Salad The first album from comedy idiots Power Salad, as heard on the nationally-syndicated "Dr. Demento Show". Funny music in many different styles, from gut-busting to head-scratchingly obscure.

Power Salad The first album from comedy idiots Power Salad, as heard on the nationally-syndicated "Dr. Demento Show". Funny music in many different styles, from gut-busting to head-scratchingly obscure.

Puccini, Callas, Di Stefano, La Scala Orchestra, Victor De Sabata, Tito Gobbi Little can be added to what's been written about this landmark recording, except that Walter Legge's 1953 mono production yields nothing to modern recordings of Tosca in vivacity and theatrical impact—especially that of Maria Callas. All the more so with this marvelously remastered edition. The miraculous Victor de Sabata conjures a vibrant, inspiring orchestral canvas that enables Callas and her stellar cohorts to work their magic. Tito Gobbi and Callas spur each other to such heights that the characters replace the singers in the listener's mind. Giuseppe Di Stefano is on his best behavior and in fresher voice than on his fine Leontyne Price-Herbert von Karajan remake. On this set, EMI includes texts, translations, and notes that discuss this recording in the context of Callas's mercurial career. —Jed Distler

Ran Blake Trio

Rare Silk

Ravel, Abbado, Argerich, Bpo

Ravi Shankar and Phillip Glass

The Ravi Shankar Project

Ray Charles No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: SACD
Artist: CHARLES,RAY
Title: GENIUS LOVES COMPANY
Street Release Date: 09/14/2004
Domestic
Genre: BLUES

Ray Charles, Count Basie Orchestra To fake or not to fake: That is the question consumers must answer for themselves in assessing this feat of aural Photoshopping: an "imaginary concert" created by combining recently discovered soundboard tapes of Ray Charles's vocals from a mid-'70s European show and newly recorded backing by the Count Basie Orchestra—the "ghost band," still on the road 22 years after Count's passing. Charles is in exceptional voice, singing the heck out of standards like "How Long Has This Been Going On?," Genius classics like "Busted," and pop covers like Melanie's "Look What They've Done to My Song." His performance is a thrilling corrective to forgettable posthumous albums like Genius Loves Company, designed to cash in on the new audience created for him by the movie Ray. But as competently as the Basie band fill in the blanks under the direction of Bill Hughes, with Joey DeFrancesco guesting on organ, most of the new arrangements are rather pallid, and the ensemble lacks the personality of both the Basie orchestra and Charles's best groups. And as attractive as Ray Sings, Basie Swings may be for the casual listener, the gimmickry will appall serious fans, particularly since neither Charles nor Basie—who never collaborated in life—was around to lend his approval. Is The Doors Sing, Woody Herman Swings next? —Lloyd Sachs

Ray Charles, Count Basie Orchestra

Richard Rodney Bennett, John Rutter, Cambridge Singers

Richard Stoltzman

Richard Stoltzman, Judy Collins, Jeremy Wall, Eddie Gomez

The Righteous Brothers

Rob Mcconnell

Robert Ashley ALGA MARGHEN label, catalog number ALGA 030CD. String Quartet Describing The Motions of Large Real Bodies' was composed as the potential orchestra for an opera based on the text of 'In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men And Women'.

Roger Kamien Editorial Reviews About the Author Roger Kamien received his B.A. in Musicology from Columbia and his M.A. and PhD. from Princeton. Kamien taught for 2 years at Hunter College and for 20 years at Queens College, where he coordinated the music appreciation courses. In 1983, he was appointed to his current position. In addition to Music: An Appreciation, Prof. Kamien has written numerous articles and reviews, co-wrote A New Approach to Keyboard Harmony, and edited the Norton Scores. He is an accomplished pianist and, in recent years, has formed a two-piano team with his wife, Anita.

Rova

Sainkho Namchylak & Ned Rothenberg

Sam Rivers Sam Rivers' second album is a killer quintet album from '65 with Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Joe Chambers at the top of their game. An alternate take of "Mellifluous Cacophony" is added to the original album, which is mastered in 24 bit from the original analog tapes.

* bonus track, not part of original LP

Sam Rivers, Rivbea Orchestra

Sam Rivers & the Rivbea All-Star Orchestra Inspiration is a perfect title for this session from jazz veteran Sam Rivers. Having earned his chops playing with everyone from Miles Davis to Cecil Taylor, Rivers in the 1960s was both a consummate explorer and a creator of spectacular melodies. Here he goes full-tilt in the explorative direction, with a stellar orchestra of guiding jazz lights navigating Rivers's heated, improvisationally energetic compositions—each of them bristling with intensity. And his "Beatrice" is a lovely, decades-old dedication to his wife, a piece that flows from the heart brilliantly. —Andrew Bartlett

The Sam Rivers Trio

Sam Rivers' Rivbea All-Star Orchestra For those who recall Inspiration, 1999's showcase for the densely layered big-band writing of Sam Rivers, the title of this disc tells the story. Culmination comprises seven tunes from the same 1998 session that produced Inspiration, again produced and mixed by saxophonist Steve Coleman, with the same all-star lineup—including saxists Greg Osby and Chico Freeman and trombonists Ray Anderson and Joseph Bowie. Culmination also draws from the same body of arrangements that the visionary Rivers has assembled since the late 1960s. So why does it sound brighter, less cluttered—more accessible—than its predecessor? It has to do with the pieces themselves. Inspiration dove further into the pools of complexity that nourish Rivers's imagination; as he explains, each of the CD's seven pieces runs about 50 minutes in performance, which forced him to edit them heavily for recording. But the compositions on Culmination are shorter by design and focus more on concise composition and compact solos. They appear at their intended lengths (ranging from six to thirteen-plus minutes) and tell their stories more cleanly and succinctly—reminding one how well Rivers has always balanced his wonderful abstractions with a straightforward lyricism, exemplified by his best-known composition, "Beatrice." The highlights of this album include the opening track, guaranteed to confuse those who bought the first album (being a barely altered version of that disc's opening track); "Bubbles," with Hamiet Bluiett's ebullient baritone taking the lead; and the title piece, the most enjoyable lesson in atonality you'll ever hear. Rivers, in his late 70s when he recorded these tunes, plays wizardly soprano and hurly-burly tenor solos throughout the disc, which offers an ideal introduction to his musical omniverse. —Neil Tesser

Santa Fe Desert Chorale Lawrence Bandfield, Music Director

Saraband, OJC

Scott Jarrett

Scott Jarrett Scott Jarrett re-emerges into the music scene with this collection of well crafted songs with poetic lyrics and an organic production style. Written, arranged, engineered, and produced by Jarrett with performances by world class players, this album makes you wonder where Jarrett has been hiding for the past 25 years since his release of Without Rhyme or Reason on Arista/GRP in 1980.

The Sea Cliff Chamber Players, Gerry Mulligan, Hale Smith, Herberg Sucoff, Marga Richter 9 tracks; 1990

Sequentia (Benjamin Bagby), Dialogos (Katarina Livljanic)

Sergio Mendes Brazilian music legend Sergio Mendes spins his remarkable magic on his newest recording, a bona fide classic! This is a kaleidoscopic album that underscores the maestro's ear for addictive melodies, as well as his ability to cast incredibly talented singers and musicians from all over the world

Shawn Colvin Whether because of a creative impasse or a return to her club roots, Shawn Colvin opted to pass some of the time between her breakthrough Steady On and later, more mature efforts with this 1994 collection of cover songs. Paging through a latter-day Great American Songbook, Colvin acquits herself well enough on a selection of Bob Dylan, Jimmy Webb, and Tom Waits songs. Less successful are her rewordings of the Police's "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" (Colvin preserves traditional family values by switching the "she" to a "he") and Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)," neither of which benefit from the stripped-down approach. This is a pleasant enough album for fans, but newcomers are advised to start with Colvin's excellent A Few Small Repairs. —Bill Forman

Simon Rattle Duke Ellington, a restless experimenter, flirted occasionally with the traditional symphony orchestra, most memorably in 1963, when he recorded his band with three European classical orchestras. This new development of those experiments is lent authenticity by the involvement of Lena Horne, who sang with Ellington in 1940, and Clark Terry, who worked with Ellington through the 1950s (and performs a hilarious vocal and trumpet duet with himself in the final blues here). The orchestration is by Luther Henderson, and he, too, worked with Ellington, shortly before the latter's death, in 1974. Along with these veterans, seven younger jazz musicians, including Joshua Redman, Regina Carter, Geri Allen, and Lewis Nash, are heard in excellent form. Although this CD is released by EMI Classics, the jazz contribution dominates, despite some out-of-tempo passages in "Solitude" and "Sophisticated Lady." Henderson's eclectic integration of traditionally separate elements works well, and Rattle's lively conducting of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra demonstrates his commitment. Most of this material (some by Billy Strayhorn) didn't receive symphonic treatment from Ellington himself and is therefore doubly welcome in this very clear recording from Birmingham Symphony Hall. —Graham Colombé

Singers Unlimited

Singers Unlimited

The Singers Unlimited Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) pressing. Universal. 2008.

Sixteen, Christophers

Sovereign Brass

Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto

Stan Kenton Band leader/pianist Stan Kenton is known for his superheated, shouting brass sections and eccentric conceptualizations for big bands, and this 1952 recording shows why. The set opens with "Prologue (This Is an Orchestra!)," in which Kenton delivers a spoken-word explanation of the unit's purpose and introduces the members to the listener. The star-studded lineup includes Lee Konitz and Vinnie Dean on alto saxophones, Richie Kamuca and Bill Holman on tenor saxophones, Bob Gioga on baritone, five trumpets (including Maynard Ferguson), five trombones (including Frank Rosolino), and Sal Salvador on guitar. The CD reissue contains four additional tracks not on the original release. —John Swenson

Stan Kenton

Steely Dan

Stella Sung

Steve Goldman and the Gyor Philharmonic Orchestra

Steve Reich, Alarm Will Sound Reich's music moves along in a stately, orderly, almost mathematical way, so one wouldn't expect a wide variety of interpretive styles in different performances. Still, this recording of Tehillim, at least the third issued so far, seems sharper in focus and rhythm than the premiere ECM recording, the only one to include the composer's participation. The Desert Music sounds somewhat different here than in the premiere Nonesuch recording by Michael Tilson Thomas with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Chorus, the ensembles it was written for. This "revised chamber version" by the composer from 2001 uses smaller forces, losing something in grandeur while gaining rhythmic clarity. It's becoming obvious that Reich's music will survive his own performing career and lifetime, and here is an example of a disc with no performing ties to the composer which is still extremely satisfying. It is also very well-recorded and generously programmed, since the premiere recordings of the two works took up a disc each. Cantaloupe Music provides sung texts and lists of the performers but not a word of program notes, a liability to this otherwise admirable release. —Leslie Gerber

Steve Reich, Bradley Lubman, Todd Reynolds, Beryl Korot

Steve Reich, Michael Tilson Thomas, Chorus & Members of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Michael Tilson Thomas's advocacy of American mavericks has long been a significant facet of his career. This disc offers an outstanding example of his championship of Steve Reich, whose stature among composers of his generation only continues to increase. There's a famous story of a 1973 Carnegie Hall concert with MTT participating as one of the performers of Four Organs, during which a near riot ensued, reminding some of the heated reception that attended the legendary Rite of Spring premiere in Paris. The Desert Music—given its premiere in 1984 under MTT—marks a departure for Reich from his writing for smaller groups and calls instead for a vast orchestral ensemble and chorus. This visionary cantata reflects the composer's belief that "the particular is the nub of the universal," setting lapidary but prophetic texts by William Carlos Williams, whom Reich considers the most resonant of modern American poets. MTT clearly understands how this music conveys its effect of moving not just through time but through space; he allows the score's harmonic density to coalesce into shimmering, mirage-like chords without losing sight of its complex overlay of asymmetry against regular, driving pulses. The chorus, too, is beautifully blended—sometimes imitating the iterations of percussion instruments—as Reich's musical textures oscillate between despair and hope, fire and light. "The mind is listening," says Williams, and MTT conveys its impressions with maximum clarity. -Thomas May

Steven Goldman and The Hungarian Symphony Orchestra

Stina Nordenstam 1992, import from Japan on Warner-Pioneer records. Catalog: AMCE-517. Out of print.

Stina Nordenstam International edition of the ethereal Swedish singer/songwriter's 1994 album for East West. 12 tracks including 'Crime', featuring avant-garde trumpeter Jon Hassell & the acoustic 'Little Star' (also included on the Romeo & Julliet soundtrack). For fans of David Sylvian's Brilliant Trees. Warner.

Strauss, Dorate

Stravinsky, Mccabe, Mackerras, Lso

Stravinsky, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra The conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra offers sterling performances of two gems from Stravinsky's neoclassical period. In Orpheus, completed in 1947, Stravinsky again mines the rich lode of Greek myth for a dance score whose classic restraint, inventive scoring, and melodic freshness make it one of his most attractive works, albeit one too rarely heard outside the ballet theater, where it's joined to George Ballanchine's inspired choreography. Danses concertantes was premiered in 1942 as a concert work and later adapted by Ballanchine for the stage. It offers an altogether brighter, more extroverted side of Stravinsky's neoclassical style, with spiky rhythms, angular melodies, and an irresistible forward motion. The Orpheus players have come up with another winning disc, marred only by short playing time but enhanced by superb sonics. —Dan Davis

Stravinsky, Phan, Ketelsen, Cso, Boulez

Stravinsky, Royal Flemish Phil, Herreweghe

Stuart Davis

Stuart Davis

Stuart Davis

Sufjan Stevens The Age of Adz (pronounced Odds) is Sufjan Stevens' first full-length collection of original songs since 2005's conceptual pop opus Illinois. While the sounds on this record are distinctly "artificial" (drums machines and analog synths reign supreme), the proclamations of the songs are unabashedly visceral, sung loudly, with a backdrop of insistent orchestration. The result is an album that is perhaps more vibrant, primary and explicit than anything Sufjan has done before, incorporating themes that are neither historical nor civic, but rather personal and primal (if even a little juvenile).

Sun Ra

Sweetback

The Tallis Scholars

The Terry Myers Orchestra

Tetsu Inoue

Thelonious Monk Limited Millennium Edition. Packed in a Heavy Weight Card Wallet that Faithfully Recreates the Original Vinyl Sleeve, Right Down to the Inner Bag. The Wallet Will Come in a Plastic Cover.

Thelonious Monk 20 bit digitally remastered.

Thelonious Monk No Description Available.
Genre: Jazz Music
Media Format: Super Audio
Rating:
Release Date: 27-APR-2004

Thomas Adès, Louise Hopkins, Lynsey Marsh, Anthony Marwood, David Goode, Stephen Farr, Valdine Anderson, Mary Carewe This first release by the wunderkind composer of British music, Thomas Adès (born in 1971), documents a restless imagination combined with a knack for uncovering attractive timbres, compelling harmonies, and a vital sense of storytelling in music. There's no one voice here, as Adès experiments with each piece as a new sound world, and the success of these youthful trials supports Adès's reputation. His Opus 1, Five Eliot Landscapes—published when he was 17—shows him confident and sensitive at word setting, allowing clean articulation from bright soprano Valdine Anderson. In his rhythmically off-kilter Opus 4, Catch, we hear influences of Ligeti, but as seen from a thoughtful distance; Adès is remarkably self-aware when dipping into his broad inspirations. Still Sorrowing (Op. 7) is the most striking: the piano's middle register is muted with a strip of Blu-Tac, creating gamelan-like effects. But it's no gimmick. The piece, beautifully played by the composer, is a 10-minute wonder of pale colors and bittersweet emotion. Life Story sets a Tennessee Williams poem about pillow talk and incineration for the pop-voiced soprano Mary Carewe. This might be considered more of a "sound experience" than his follow-up CD Living Toys and his opera Powder Her Face. Yet it's vividly recorded and unmissable at budget price. —Pierre Ruhe

Thomas Dolby Out of print in the U.S., this is Dolby's 1988 album for EMIManhattan. Contains eight tracks, including the hit 'Hot Sauce', plus 'Airhead' and 'May The Cube Be With You'. 5.1 surround sound.

Thomas Dolby

Thomas Tallis, Covey-Crump Rogers, Michael George, David James, Hilliard Ensemble If you were to go to the other side of the universe from where barbershop music and doo-wop reside, you'd discover the five-voice Hilliard Ensemble singing Tallis. And if you happened to love this sort of music, you'd think this must be heaven. On the other hand, if you're not sure you'd like the Hilliards or Tallis, here's the perfect place to find out. The two sets of Lamentations are supreme among Tallis's longer works, exhibiting full mastery of choral part-writing and effective use of harmonic and textural contrast. The outward solemnity of these works is sustained by the music's underlying impassioned, penitential mood—which finds ideal expression in the otherworldly beauty of these perfectly matched men's voices, which bring phenomenal interpretive and technical skill to each line and closing cadence. —David Vernier

Tippett, Marriner, Amf

Tokyo Gakuso Orchestra

Tomasz Stanko Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko has plotted something of a musical world tour on From the Green Hill, a polyglot of styles rooted in different folk and traditional forms colliding and commingling over a bedrock of collective improvisations. Stanko's music is surely jazz, if the genre's defined as an international language and no longer simply an American art form—clearly rooted in American traditions, but a flexible flyer capable of transcending borders and incorporating the vocabulary and traditions of the musicians who create it. In that broader vein, From the Green Hill is a varied and satisfying recital, which clearly reflects the aesthetic of producer Manfred Eicher, who has been encouraging the development of post-modernist folk music and idiomatic European jazz inventions since the early 1970s. Stanko's dark, burnished sound brings to mind both Rex Stewart and Lester Bowie, as he favors broad, vocalized inflections and an expressive vocabulary of bends, growls, whinnies, and shouts. Yet, as his whimsical lead over the fat, lilting groove of bassist Anders Jormin and the airy, percussive accents and crystalline cymbal phrases of drummer Jon Christensen on "Pantronic" demonstrate, Stanko's is a decidedly lyrical approach. You can hear it on the lightly swinging "Love Theme from Farewell to Maria," as saxophonist John Surman's furry baritone italicizes Stanko's pungent phrasing. Elsewhere, the violin of Michelle Makarski and the bandoneon of Dino Saluzzi offer savory overtones from Warsaw, Paris, and Buenos Aires. —Chip Stern

Toots Thielemans & Kenny Werner Toots Thielemans is the arch romantic of jazz, an unabashed melodist who specializes in wringing joy and nostalgia from the most personal of instruments. Here he plays harmonica exclusively, foregoing guitar and whistling to concentrate on his unique ability to execute sophisticated jazz lines on the tiny instrument. He's joined by pianist Kenny Werner, a regular duo partner who's attuned to Thielemans's every nuance and impulse. They explore a moving collection of melodies that ranges from Bach's "Sicilienne" to medleys of songs associated with Sinatra, Michel Legrand, and Disney. When Werner turns to electronic keyboards, as on Bill Evans's luminously reflective "Time Remembered," he's able to provide a surprisingly lush "string" backdrop to support Thielemans's lyric rapture. Werner's also an excellent soloist in his own right, and it shows particularly in the tunes by distinguished modern pianists, like the Evans medley, Herbie Hancock's "Dolphin Dance," and Chick Corea's "Windows." —Stuart Broomer

Toru Takemitsu

Toru Takemitsu (Composer), Tashi, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa (Conductor), Hiroshi Wakasugi (Conductor)

Trapezoid

UMO Jazz Orchestra Kenny Wheeler is one of the most imaginative composers in jazz, creating pieces that are at once tranquilly sonorous and alive with creative movement, their shifting parts suddenly matching and emerging into new life. Listening to his orchestral music can be like watching rivers or clouds. He has a gift for finding the richest brass textures in a conventional big band's instrumentation, creating swaths of burnished sound, often by having the entire trumpet section double on flüugelhorns. It creates an especially dark texture with the trombones and reeds, and Wheeler's mastery of voicings, drawn as much from Hindemith as from Gil Evans, can create symphonic depths.

This program of the trumpeter's compositions marks two events: Wheeler's 70th birthday and the 25th anniversary of Finland's UMO Jazz Orchestra, a first-rate big band, conducted by Kari Heinila, that brings its own luster to the trumpeter's charts. That brilliance is as apparent in the smaller instrumental groupings of one or two horns with rhythm section—like the flute and alto of "Blue for Lou"—as it is in the stately brass chords that introduce the 24-minute "One More Time Suite." Wheeler is the most frequent soloist on the suite, his trumpet and flügelhorn both reflective and passionate, but there are also solo and lead spots for several members of UMO. Wheeler is particularly fond of matching his horns with soprano saxophone timbres, and Jouni Jarvelo joins him in a lovely exchange in the suite's fourth movement. Similarly, Pepa Parvinen offers a beautiful introductory statement to the limpid "Sea Lady" before handing the line over to Wheeler. Norma Winstone's crystalline voice is used for words and melodies on "Only a Dream" and "Sea Lady," but it's even more impressive when she's improvising wordlessly, or being an integral part of Wheeler's orchestrations, soaring high above the horns with a distinctive, brilliant transparency. —Stuart Broomer

Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco

VARIOUS

various artists

Various Artists

Various Artists Live From The Village Vanguard

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Various Artists The Toba and Karo from North Sumatra developed complex instrumental traditions. The Toba, one of the few societies to use tuned drums to carry a melody, combine them with gongs and oboe-like instruments, creating dynamic melodies and rhythms. The Karo ensemble features expert drumming full of snaps and pops. The Ono Niha people from the island of Nias perform ornate choral songs called hoho, which use only four tones and embody their oral tradition. Unknown outside of Indonesia, these 1990 digital recordings include extensive notes. 72 minutes. "Its variety—in sound, feel, and purpose—is astonishing and inspiring." - Rhythm Music

Various Artists These 1993 and 1994 recordings present the virtually unknown choral singing of Ngada and Manggarai of the island of Flores, an island east of Bali. The sounds, performed mainly at funerals and agricultural rituals, range from highly dissonant harmony to some rare instances of Indonesian counterpoint. Extensive notes and map. 73 minutes. "The 30 tracks on this CD and the 77-page booklet that accompanies it are as educational as they are enjoyable."-Rhythm Music

Various Artists

Various Artists

Various Artists Listening to Choice Picks makes one wish for days as a gambler, one who bet in 1990 that Alison Krauss would hit it big. That year, Krauss was crowned with an International Bluegrass Music Award as Female Vocalist of the Year, but it took five more years and three more female vocalist awards before she became an international star. These 20 tunes chronicle and celebrate the IBMA's first decade, but Choice Picks is no mere vanity project. It serves as an aural landscape portrait of bluegrass in the 1990s, a decade that not only sent Krauss and her contemporary leanings to the pop charts but also wooed Ricky Skaggs and his stanch traditionalism back to the fold in 1998, the year he was awarded both Album (Bluegrass Rules!) and Instrumental Group of the Year. So it's apropos that Skaggs's roaring "Get Up John" and Krauss's vulnerable "I've Got that Old Feeling" are present here, and it's equally apt that Hot Rize's sweet vocal harmonies are here on 1991's Song of the Year, "Colleen Malone," and that Del McCoury, whose band amassed a record 23 awards, is here churning through "Cheek to Cheek with the Blues." True bluegrass enthusiasts might well have all these tracks on the original albums, but for the generalist—or those in search of a primer—Choice Picks is exactly what its title says. —Andy Bartlett

Various Artists In the 1960s, jazz musicians signed to the Blue Note label often appeared on each other's albums in various all-star groupings. Then the tradition faded—at least until the late 1990s. New Directions revives the tradition, featuring several of Blue Note's brightest stars—vibraphonist Stefon Harris, pianist Jason Moran, tenor saxophonist Mark Shim, and (relative veteran and nominal group leader) alto saxophonist Greg Osby—reinterpreting classic material drawn from the Blue Note archives. While the choices lean toward the boogaloo side of the catalog—Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder," Horace Silver's "Song for My Father," Joe Henderson's "Recorda Me"—the arrangements are closer in the spirit to the cool cerebralism of Wayne Shorter. Moran is the most immediately original of the young players here; check for his inside-out solo on "Sidewinder" and the piano-vibes duet on Sam Rivers's "Beatrice." But the unsung heroes of the session are bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, who play hot and cool, hip-hop and postbop, all in the same blue note. —Rick Mitchell

Various Artists

Various Artists When Sting collaborated with Cheb Mami on the Brand New Day track "Desert Rose," he created a surprising demand for Arabic crossover pop. This collection provides a suitable next stop for those whose taste was whetted by that collaboration. Egyptian singer Natacha Atlas opens the album with "Mon Amie la Rose," a maudlin little French tune she twists through her wringer until it is utterly transformed. "Desert Rose" turns up as a frisky remix by Victor Calderone, while Rachid Taha and the trance choir, B'Net Marrakech, appear in the compelling, orchestrated "Qalantica." Mami is heard on his own on one tune, but is eclipsed by the gut-shredding Khaled, the undisputed king of Algerian rai. The harder-edged electronic outings are standouts, while the tracks that are the Arabic equivalent of adolescent pop don't hold up nearly as well. This compilation, however, mostly eschews the dross in favor of tunes that go the distance. —Christina Roden

Various Artists Toon Tunes: Funny-Bone Favorites is the sort of record that can be unsettling to those of us who approach the world with egalitarian, "are we really all that different" mindsets. Could so many people be clamoring for a compilation of cartoon themes, some of them aggressively irritating, others completely unrecognizable? Count out the kitsch factor and things get really scary. Keeping that in mind, what Funny-Bone Favorites presents, however, is enough to keep us tuned in. As this 36-track screwball marathon wears on, every third song or so is familiar, even if it doesn't exactly deliver us in front of the TV sets of yore and plant a giant bowl of Honeycomb in our hands. Four of the first five jingles—"The Flintstones," "The Jetsons," "George of the Jungle," and "The Bullwinkle Show"—cut, thanks to modern-day cable access, through great generational swaths, getting even Grandma in on the swing of things. Popping up like wrong turns for drivers in memory lane, though, are tracks like "Pinky and the Brain," "Dexter's Laboratory," and "The Ren & Stimpy Show." On the flip side, hipsters hoping to raise their retro-cool factor will like reaching back to plucky, late-'60s-sounding gems like the theme to "The Banana Splits" (Tra-la-la!"), but may be resistant to dusting off the really old ditties—"Bozo the Clown," "Mickey Mouse March," and "Donald Duck" among them. Forgetting all campiness, and even moving away from cartoon land momentarily, two solidly musical excuses for owning this disc can't be denied—the themes to "Peanuts" and "The Pink Panther." Buy it because they're on it, or because the "Huckleberry Hound" song haunts you. —Tammy La Gorce

Various Artists No Description Available.
Genre: Jazz Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 9-SEP-2003

Various Artists This stylistically diverse and imaginative 2004 tribute includes collaborations by artists from Seattle, Vancouver and Japan – called "impressive and very cool" by The Guardian, Poor Boy received four stars from All Music Guide.

Various Artists, Jonathan Elias, Jon Anderson

Various Modern Classical

Vince Guaraldi Trio The first time you listen to this disc you will undoubtedly be transported directly back to your childhood. Charles Schulz's Peanuts characters will go toe-tapping and funky-dancing through your mind's eye. Play it a few more times, though (ignoring the dialogue snippets, if you can), and you will begin to truly revel in Guaraldi's wonderful, humorous, deep piano playing. You'll hear why he's such an influence on new age ivory tickler George Winston, but you'll also realize that Winston's holiday music never quite sparkles with the underlying passion, and humor, that twinkles in these grooves. Buy it for the nostalgia—keep it because it will remain one of the most enchanting albums in your holiday collection. —Michael Ruby

Vocal Ensemble Cantatrix

Vocal Union

W. A. Mozart, Kurt Streit, Gerald Finley, Concentus Musicus Wien, Arnold Schoenberg Choir Beethoven called Mozart's Requiem "wild and terrible," and that's what we get in Harnoncourt's new recording. Ominous dread hangs from every note of the dark opening measures, the Rex tremendae and Confutatis are driven with terrifying strength, and the supplications of the Lacrimosa, with their weeping stabbings of the orchestra, are freighted with emotional power. The Tuba mirum duet of bass soloist and trombone has a beauty almost never achieved in other readings. Nor does Harnoncourt overstep the stylistic boundaries of this classical-era work; rather, the intensity is heightened for being in the idiom of its time. Call it a Romantic reading of a Classical piece that looks forward to a more unbuttoned era. The soloists couldn't be better; the orchestra is first-rate, the chorus, sensational, singing with a sense of color, line, and emotion,. Harnoncourt uses the Beyer edition of Süssmayr's completion of the work, and Mozart's unfinished original manuscript can be accessed via a CD-ROM track, which scrolls as the music plays. This release gets my vote as the best Mozart Requiem on disc, all the more impressive for being a live concert performance in excellent sound. —Dan Davis

Wayne Hancock Playing the too-country for commercial radio side of the field, Wayne Hancock makes some of the loneliest Hank Williams-styled C&W since, well, since ol' Hank himself. Moving easily from hillbilly bop ("Double A Daddy") to dancehall honky tonk ("Juke Joint Jumpin'"), Hancock has the old-school twang down cold. He succeeds most, though, when he takes that old sound and fits it into his own modern life, as he does on the exquisitely drawn title track, where he details why pulling off to a motel whenever the highway weather gets bad makes his heart swell with fond memories. —David Cantwell

Witold Lutoslawski, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Los Angeles Philharmonic, John Shirley-Quirk Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) went through many changes in his career, but it was always in the service of his own style—which is, in the end, indescribable. This is an excellent disc that details some of the later transformations in Lutoslawski's thinking. The Symphony 4 (1992), which opens the disc, really highlights the composer's gift for melody, despite his atonal characterizations elsewhere. The work, while moving and dramatic, is extremely intense. Symphony 3 (1972-83) mixes tempos and interrupts moods constantly. Les Espaces du sommeil (1975) is a mixture of the concrete and abstract that creates an eerie, dreamlike scenario. This is one of Lutoslawski's masterpieces. —Paul Cook

Wynton Marsalis Septet

Yes Propelled by the timeless hit "Roundabout," Yes' fourth album, Fragile, became an instant classic and is undoubtedly one of prog-rock's finest moments. It was the first Yes record to feature Rick Wakeman on keyboards and the first to display the inimitable artwork of Roger Dean. And it's now been remastered by the incomparable team of Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman at AcousTech Mastering. Typical of Kevin and Steve's work, this version of Fragile is warmer, richer and airier than the 1971 original. Rediscover a classic. By far the most successful and enduring progressive rock group ever, Yes have been navigating the sonic stratosphere for more than three decades. Weathering myriad personnel changes and as many musical trends, their popularity has endured like granite. As Q Magazine put it, Yes are "the long haired dads of Radiohead." "...If you've only heard this as a CD or god forbid as an MP3 file, this reissue will be a revelation...Gray and Hoffman avoided the trap of excessively boosting the bottom end in a vain attempt to add what's not there, and they also avoided lifting the top to also try and add what's not there. Instead, they concentrated in the middle, where they finessed the rich textures that were on the tape. So when you hear the opening 'pling' of 'Roundabout,' you'll hear it with a velvety-richness missing on the original...Combine the midband richness, improved overall transparency and eerily black backgrounds and one has to declare this reissue a complete success." Music = 8/11; Sound = 8/11 - Michael Fremer Track Listing 1. Roundabout 2. Cans And Brahms 3. We Have Heaven 4. South Side Of The Sky 5. Five Per Cent For Nothing 6. Long Distance Runaround 7. The Fish (Shindleria Praematurus) 8. Mood For A Day 9. Heart Of The Sunrise

Yes Like the prog-rock movement that spawned them, the band name Yes was only supposed to be temporary. But Yes have long outlived prog, spanning five decades, some 14 members, and, at one point, essentially two separate outfits on opposite sides of the Atlantic. This five-disc box set chronicles the musical high points of one of the most successful, if unlikely, careers in all of rock. While contemporaries like ELP and King Crimson often distilled their jazz, classical, or avant-garde influences into potent, often jagged sonic shards, Yes thrived by infusing influences as diverse as Stravinsky, Lennon and McCartney, traditional jazz, the Fifth Dimension, and Paul Simon with their own restless, endlessly ambitious musicianship, then letting them simmer into musical landscapes often as vast as they were lyrically impenetrable. All the band's early staples are here ("Yours Is No Disgrace," "Starship Trooper," "I've Seen All Good People," "Roundabout") along with intact swatches of the epics Close to the Edge, Tales from Topographic Oceans and Relayer. But the later chapters are equally rewarding: the improbable 1980 replacement of departed Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman by the Buggles' Trevor Horn and Geoff Downs on Drama; the return of Anderson (with Horn and and new guitarist Trevor Rabin sharing producer's duties) for the surprising, megaplatinum success of 90125 and its chart-topping "Owner of a Lonely Heart"; rewarding, diverse '90s outings like Talk and The Ladder. It's a compelling musical vision that's almost utopian, sprinkled with a half-dozen previously unreleased tracks and the epic 1972 reworking of Paul Simon's "America." Chris Welch and Bill Martin's comprehensive and insightful notes are introduced by film director and longtime Yes fan Cameron Crowe, who reminisces about his early days writing about the band. -Jerry McCulley

Yes Who'd have thought it? Magnification is the strongest, freshest set of new Yes material in a long time. Having thoroughly exhausted the world's supply of classically inclined rock keyboard players, the four remaining members of Yes have dispensed with that perennially bothersome ivory-tickling slot altogether. And so Messrs Jon Anderson, Alan White, Chris Squire, and Steve Howe have enlisted the temporary services of soundtrack composer Larry Groupe, whose cinematic orchestrations lend a thoroughly modern aura to the band's sonic palette. Anyone expecting smugly complacent, stagnant, stuck-in-the-1970s prog rock will be thoroughly disappointed by the emotionally engaging ambition, revised logic, and sensibly channeled material. "We Agree," "Dreamtime," and, particularly, the melodic "Give Love Each Day" are standout tracks on an album that—as the title suggests—really does hold up well to close scrutiny. —Kevin Maidment

Yo-Yo Ma, Bright Sheng, David Wilde, Mark O'Connor Born in Paris of Chinese parents, educated and anchored in America, performing on every continent, Yo-Yo Ma is a true citizen of the world by heritage, disposition, and choice. Dauntlessly adventurous, he has explored musical styles from baroque and classical to bluegrass, jazz, and electronic; now he has embarked on a study of the cultural traditions of the peoples along the historic Silk Road that brought Asia and Europe together. This disc is the first step on that journey of discovery; it is fascinating, and Ma is the perfect guide. Sheng's Seven Chinese Tunes are beautiful and each has its own character; the cello is tuned down for sonority. Wilde's lamentatious The Cellist of Sarajevo honors the cellist who played in that city's streets every day to commemorate the dead. Tcherepnin's rhapsodic Suite in three contrasting movements has a distinctly Chinese flavor. O'Connor's Appalachia Waltz was originally written for three instruments; with double stops and drones, it sounds perfectly self-sufficient. Indeed, Ma's playing throughout is stunning: it often seems impossible that one man and one instrument can create such a wealth of sounds. His tone is invariably pure and beautiful, sonorous as an organ on the low strings, radiant on top; he negotiates the most hair-raising pyrotechnics with apparent ease, his palette of colors is unlimited, and he is at home in every style and idiom. He even gives the fiendishly difficult Kodály sonata—with its incredible sound effects and fireworks—musical and emotional expression, making it sing, speak, shout, whisper, dance, and cry. —Edith Eisler

Zombies, The Zombies This Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) recording offers high-resolution sound and is playable on both standard CD players and SACD-compatible devices.

This sonically spectacular disc features three of Aaron Copland's most beloved Americana scores. Drawing on American folk themes, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring originated as ballet music, but they have found a larger life as light classic staples. They are briskly conducted by Louis Lane and played with élan by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. —Sarah Bryan Miller

This music is hardly recognizable as that of America's greatest composer of ballet music. These are very early works of a composer fresh from Europe and from studying under Nadia Boulanger, who taught Copland to rely on folk sources for his music. This, for Copland, meant jazz. Grohg (written in 1922-25, revised in 1935) was Copland's first orchestral work, inspired by the German film Nosferatu, about a sorcerer bringing corpses alive to dance for his pleasure. If the only Copland you're interested in is the one who wrote Appalachian Spring, then this isn't for you. Still, the music is engaging and instructive. —Paul Cook

The material covered on Copland the Modernist offers an important—and highly enjoyable—counterweight to the icon of folksy Americana that the composer is usually made out to be. And though such works as Appalachian Spring and Rodeo have kept Copland high on the list of the 20th century's most popular composers, his achievement extends well beyond the familiar beauty of those musical landscapes. Michael Tilson Thomas, who has evolved into arguably the finest American conductor of his generation, has a special affinity for American maverick composers, and the selections here represent Copland as a probing artist who made his own impression straddling the popular-classical divide. In fact, Copland's later experiments in serialism were simply a natural development of his restless curiosity, of which these early assimilations of jazz into a symphonic idiom are excellent examples. Tilson Thomas manages at the same time to convey the heady inspiration from European models and the sense of embarking on a brave new world that went into the Short Symphony and Symphonic Ode (composed for the Boston Symphony). This is spectacular, spiky, incisive playing by a great American orchestra of a great American composer. —Thomas May

Atlanta Symphony and Chorus

While working on the Second Symphony, Kernis recalls the collective national fixation on images of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. For the composer, these "exerted a kind of fascination and sense of horror at what seemed to be a purely technological war, one that was heavily manipulated by the government for the media." One specific image that haunted Kernis came from the cover of The New York Post, which documented the accidental bombing of an apartment building in Iraq. "Something about the immediate annihilation without warning gave me the sonic image of pulverizing and obliteration" an image with which the Symphony reaches its climax. Kernis describes an overarching narrative structure to the three-movement work, centered on a metaphor of humanity facing the brutalizing machine: "The work is very linear, with the long line put forward in three different contexts in each movement. In the first, the line is set against an unyielding mechanical, rhythmic profile, giving the sense of a wave threatening to overtake the melody. The second movement winnows essentially to melody and accompaniment (with some areas of counterpoint), while in the third the stark line is mostly exposed alone against the wave of percussion. Equally important is the gradual stripping away of layers as the piece goes on." The String Quartet No. 1 takes its name from the subtitle of its slow second movement: "musica celestis." This is also the name Kernis applies to what has become perhaps his best-known work to date. In the tradition of Samuel Barber's similarly extracted Adagio for Strings, Musica Celestis is an arrangement of that Quartet movement for string orchestra (with double bass added), completed in 1991. Kernis ascribes his inspiration to the medieval concept of the music of the spheres, "which refers to the singing of the angels in heaven in praise of God without end." He cites his discovery of Hildegard of Bingen, yet Musica Celestis evinces a broader range of influences: from English pastoralism and the Barber Adagio to the radical simplicity of Beethoven's Heiliger Dankgesang from Op.132 all framed by a sonority reminiscent of Lohengrin's "silvery blue" A major harmonies.

Giuseppe Sinopoli, Reiko Watanabe, Dresden Chamber Orchestra, Andrea Luchesini

Berg's Violin Concerto is atonal—yes, it's the "A" word, but you shouldn't let that keep you from getting to know this modern masterpiece; it's actually very listener-friendly. The music tells a story. The first movement is a character sketch of the young, flirtatious Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler and architect Walter Gropius. She died tragically of meningitis, and the second movement depicts the horrifying onset of her illness, her death, and her transfiguring apotheosis. Dedicated "to the memory of an angel," it's one of the most heartfelt and moving tributes imaginable. Stravinsky's much more abstract Violin Concerto is about being a violin concerto. Both works, modern classics, are exceptionally well played and recorded by Itzhak Perlman and Seiji Ozawa. Regarding Berg, this was a landmark recording of Perlman's both in his career as a performer and in the history of the work itself. For Perlman, generally perceived as a heart-on-sleeve traditionalist of the "old school," this venture into musical modernism confounded his detractors while at the same time introducing many new listeners to a work that, though difficult, has since come to be regarded as one of the touchstones of the Romantic concerto repertoire. Stravinsky's concerto is less controversial though no less well-played. In sum, these performances are landmarks in the Perlman discography. —David Hurwitz

Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) is recognized today as the most important 20th century composer from Argentina. Influenced early by Bartók and Stravinsky, he rejected the use of electronically produced music; rather, he relied on the instruments of South American folk music to expand the expressive language of his operas, ballets, film music, and chamber & piano works. His Piano Concerto No. 1, written in 1961, had a tremendous success worldwide and remains one of his best-known works. Pianist Martha Noguera was born in Buenos Aires, and is currently resident in Rome. Her repertoire is considerable, and includes contemporary as well as classical works.

Alexander Nemtin's brave realization of the "Preparation for the final mystery" (from Scriabin's magnum opus, Mysterium) enables us to hear its awe-inspiring conception in all its glory. Working from sketches, Nemtin presents a convincing manifestation of Scriabin's thought. The intensity of this piece is unremitting. To listen straight through is an exhausting but ultimately uplifting experience, one aided by this thoroughly committed performance from Ashkenazy and his Berlin forces. Even though the harmonic language is extremely concentrated, the progress of the work remains involving, natural, and, above all, gripping. The music is frequently hypnotic, often breathing an all-encompassing, pantheistic mysticism. The soloists, particularly the soprano Anna-Kristina Kaappola and the pianist Alexei Lubimov, are superb. The recording aptly conveys the requisite sense of space, while simultaneously allowing every detail to come through. The coupling, Nuances, comprises a selection of Scriabin's pieces orchestrated to form a ballet. Ashkenazy's performance highlights the elusive nature of this music, as in the flighty fourth movement or in the twilight world of the 12th. A treat for all fans of mature Scriabin, sumptuously recorded and expertly played and sung. —Colin Clarke

ensemble telemaque

Andrzej Panufnik (b. 1914) is one of Poland's greatest composers of symphonies. His music has ranged across most of the fads of tonality and atonality of this century, but at the heart of it is a powerful sense of unity. His Sinfonia Sacra (1963) is, so far, his masterpiece. It's a mix of strong nationalism and Christian mysticism. It also begins and ends with the most incredible brass choirs you'll ever hear. His Arbor Cosmica, or The Cosmic Tree, (1983) is a loose twelve-tone work for twelve strings- -it's completely different from Sinfonia Sacra, but it also represents Panufnik's range of inventiveness. —Paul Cook

London Symphony Orchestra

Stepeh Aron

"Something of a phenomenon." — The Strad

Drawing from two sides of the musical spectrum—Tango and Baroque—comes Lara St. John's newest recording, featuring the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and Eduardo Marturet. The disc features Vivaldi's seminal work, the Four Seasons, which is the top-selling classical work of all time, paired with The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, Astor Piazzola's tribute to Vivaldi. There is tremendous interest in this orchestra, and this is the first time it has recorded with the Ancalagon label following successful recordings with the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Robert Lindberg Two BIS recordings (BIS-CD-210/BIS-CD-290) combined as a BIS Twins No. 6 pack.

Bryden Thomson/ London Symphony

It seems as though every year, mystic Estonian composer Arvo Pärt delivers a new, thoroughly riveting composition. This year, it was Kanon Pokajanen. From the canon of repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church, Part created an a cappella masterpiece, a minimalist work that builds itself gradually, yet completely, upon haunting voices, harmonies, and volume. On this disc, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir delivers a gripping performance, with gorgeous sound quality. It's more than 80 minutes long, but thoroughly rewarding. —Jason Verlinde

Kristjan Jarvi Dynamic conductor Kristjan Järvi celebrates the 75th birthday of iconic composer Arvo Pärt with Cantique. Järvi leads the Rundfunk Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin and the RIAS Kammerchor in performance of Pärt s 1971 masterpiece, Symphony No. 3, plus the world premiere recordings of the orchestral and choral version of his Stabat mater and Cantique des degrès for choir and orchestra.

Cantique represents the culmination of a lifelong friendship between Kristjan Järvi and Arvo Pärt, whose families have been friends since the 1960s. Symphony No. 3 is a major symphonic masterpiece of the late 20th century and is dedicated to Kristjan s father, Neeme Järvi. In 2008, when Kristjan Järvi was the music director of the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich in Vienna, he commissioned an orchestral and choral version of Pärt s Stabat mater which he premiered with Pärt in attendance.

Nicol Matt, Amadeus-Chor

Patrick Beckman, Richard Stoltzman Pianist/composer Patrick Beckman's celebration of the Mississippi basin, Big Muddy Suite for Clarinet & Piano, is as musically diverse as the region it depicts. Beckman's last album Street Dance (2008, Produced by Bob Lord), was praised by Gramophone Magazine, stating '[His] craftsmanship is remarkable, and Beckman has the pianistic chops, as it were, to bring it all off.'

He is joined forces here by Grammy-award winning clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. Big Muddy is a romping chamber suite that defies traditional genre classification, blending classical, jazz, rock, and R&B into a unique and blissful musical experience. Stoltzman and Beckman take the through-written piece to greater depths with their improvisational flourishes throughout. The multi-dimensional Big Muddy is rounded out by exclusive photo and video footage from the Boston studio sessions, plus PDF study scores of the music heard on this CD.

Parkanyi Quartet Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

In this century, few composers have been as well-equipped to perform their own works as Benjamin Britten. An accomplished pianist and conductor, he was used to working in front of the microphone and was able to record most of his own works, some more than once. Despite the continuing popularity of these scores with other conductors, the composer's own versions have held up very well. Britten's account of the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, recorded in 1963 with the London Symphony, shows a masterly touch. Many of the subtler details of the writing emerge in this performance, which, for all the felicities of expression and nuance it achieves, moves along rather smartly. It's a spirited treatment, quite modern-sounding in places, with the LSO clearly having great fun. The recording, made in Kingsway Hall, is very bright and exhibits a touch of brittleness at the high end. —Ted Libbey

More music of mourning. Hindemith wrote his Trauermusik in London the day after King George V died in 1936, and he performed it himself the next day in a broadcast memorial concert. Solemn, sad, devotional, and resigned, it is tonal and very beautiful. Britten's orchestration of Lachrymae has more color than the much earlier piano version and lets the viola melt in and out of the texture. Penderecki's Concerto is also very somber and mournful. Opening with a disembodied, sighing viola solo, its single continuous movement is divided by stark contrasts of tempo, mood, character, and texture; alternating between agitated solo cadenzas, crashing percussion, intense climaxes, and singing lamentations, it ends in sighing fragmentation. Kashkashian, who presented the concerto's American premiere, plays it as well as the other works with intense expressiveness, easy brilliance, and a colorful, varied, unfailingly beautiful tone. —Edith Eisler

Berlioz Featuring: Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14// 1. First movement: Reveries-Passions (15:02)//2. Second movement: Un Bal (6:27)//3. Third movement: Scene aux champs (19:16)//4. Fourth movement: Marche au supplice (4:38)//5. Fifth movement: (10:13)-Songe d'une nuit du Sabbat-Dies Irae-Ronde du Sabbat-Dies Irae et Ronde du Sabbat ensemble//6. Overture-Le Corsaire (7:43)//7. Overture-Le Carnaval Romain (9:17)

Inspired by the film Dancer in the Dark's Broadwayesque emotional sweep, Björk stretches herself with orchestral mood swings and a darker, more experimental palette. The result is the most difficult record she's made since her Sugarcubes days, but a few listens reveal the thrilling heart of a truly multifaceted and immensely brave composer. —Matthew Cooke

Rene Jacobs, Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin, RIAS - Kammerchor, Jaap ter Linden, Paolo Pandolfo, Kenneth Gilbert, Moroney, Davitt

The cover photo on this disc—a black-and-white, uncaptioned close-up of a grieving figure—resembles nothing so much as a Calvin Klein Obsession perfume ad, or perhaps a Joy Division record. ECM clearly wishes to underline the proto-modernism and obsessive despondency that sets Gesualdo famously apart from his Renaissance contemporaries. Fortunately such canny marketing is backed up by the Hilliard Ensemble's gorgeous renditions of the legendary count's irresistibly dark, utterly fascinating music. —Joshua Cody

This is one of the finest discs of Latin American orchestral music that you're ever likely to hear. The real discovery is Orbon's Tres Versiones Sinfonicas, a stunning three-movement suite that sounds a bit like Copland but with a more highly developed sense of form. If the first movement doesn't blow you away, then nothing can. Turn it up very loud, and let it rip! The other works are all well-known (except Estevez's Venezuelan landscape poem), and it's safe to say that these performances match or surpass the best of previous versions. The Venezuelan orchestra is a world-class ensemble, and Dorian has captured them in sound of supreme naturalness. —David Hurwitz

Yo-Yo Ma and guests This enchanting, flavorful CD finds the ever curious Yo-Yo Ma traveling to South America, and Brazil in particular. The music varies from classical to samba to bossa nova; the combinations range from guitar, flute, and cello to female voice (the remarkable Rosa Passos), cello, guitar, percussion, piano, and bass; to simple cello and piano; to cello and two guitars. The overriding element is rhythm; each selection has a beat which is both infectious and sensual, but the contexts are splendidly varied. "Dansa brasileira" has a Debussy-like, impressionistic flavor, "Dansa negra" is sultry with an easy melody, "1 x 0" is a dance scored for guitar, percussion, and cello with a solo clarinet riff. It's impossible to get bored or tired listening to this creative CD; it's unique—just like Yo-Yo Ma himself—and endlessly surprising. It may not be quite what we'd call "classical" music, but it is many kinds of music, and they all will delight. The other musicians are as impressive on their instruments as Ma is with his cello, and that's saying a great deal. —Robert Levine

Continuum

Leonard Bernstein Antonio Ruiz-Pipo, Ned Rorem, GiullioRegondi, David Bernstein, Agustin Barrios, Brian Head

In this live recording, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg proves again that she is a violinist and performer sui generis. Her pairing of a familiar favorite with the premiere of a brand-new work is as audacious as her playing, and she puts her very personal stamp on both. The Concerto by Clarice Assad grew out of the long association between the violinist and guitarists Sergio Assad, Clarice's father, and his brother Odair. The piece, written for Sonnenberg, is tailored to her strengths, her fiery temperament and her mercurial personality. Tonal and beautiful, its dreamy, long-breathing melodies offer the soloist ample opportunity to display her ravishing, infinitely variable tone; the lively, exuberant dances and excursions into the highest register exploit her masterful, brilliant technique. No composer could wish for a more persuasive advocate. Sonnenberg's approach to the Tchaikovsky is highly idiosyncratic, but also fresh and illuminating, especially in its unusual lightness and caressing capriciousness. Her tone ranges from throbbing intensity to floating, weightless delicacy; her romantic abandon, tempo changes and rhythmic liberties are unrestrained. Though she takes risks with a true virtuoso's fearlessness, even the fastest passages are models of clarity and her intonation is flawless. The orchestra supports her wonderfully, and brings out all the colors in Assad's shimmering, sparkling orchestration. —Edith Eisler

Dawn Upshaw here explores outstanding examples of the past century of French song, adding a brief detour into Spanish with a haunting gem by Osvaldo Golijov. The recital's centerpiece is Fauré's La Chanson d'Eve, a cycle of 10 exquisitely fashioned songs whose delicate subtlety and carefully weighed balance between light and shade are beautifully realized by Upshaw and her excellent accompanist, Gilbert Kalish, whose rippling piano in "Eau vivante" captivates. The pair also excel in the spare, mysterious "Crépuscule" (Twilight). Threaded throughout the disc are five songs by Olivier Messiaen, whose blending of spiritual faith and sensuous feeling often reaches ecstatic heights, as in the wildly virtuosic coloratura singing and keyboard demands of "Prière exaucée" (A Prayer Granted). Upshaw makes much of the sensuous close of the disc's opening song, "Le Collier," and the tenderly languorous "Amour oiseau d'étoile" (Love, Star-Bird). The elusive songs of Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis are given their full due as well, nicely set among Messiaen's more unbuttoned fervor. Upshaw fans and lovers of French song won't want to miss this. —Dan Davis

The tracks are: 1. Moderato: Allegro non troppo - Largamente - Moderato, 2. Allegretto, 3. Largo, 4. Allegro non troppo.

This is a very exciting reading of this troubling work, with the ironic dance moments strongly underlined and a truly Russian flavor in the many exposed wind solos. It is, in general, a grand, operatic performance, with the strings singing brilliantly, and each movement packing a wallop. The work's underlying darkness is never slighted, even when there's a boastfulness in the presentation of the grand sounds. The first movement's fugue seems positively Classical in its formality, contrasting with the two big false climaxes. Sadly, the Kirov Orchestra's playing is under par—perhaps they got emotionally caught up in the experience of playing a symphony banned by Stalin in 1935 and forgotten for 30 years—and the recording is filled with distortion in the big moments in the final movement. For a great performance of this work, check out Ormandy's. —Robert Levine

Dimitri Shostakovich

Dale Warland Singers

Pierre Boulez's Sony recordings of Varèse's music long ruled the roost until Riccardo Chailly's complete set with the Concertgebouw for Decca. This Chicago remake, for all its precise orchestral playing, doesn't challenge either of them. Both the Sony Boulez and Decca Chailly have a sense of enthusiasm and a feeling for the wildness with which these avant-garde works burst upon the scene in the 1920s. Amériques, for example, should knock your socks off, with its sirens piercing through the orchestral textures, but they're relatively tame on this expansive reading, in which Boulez seems to lavish more affection on the quiet opening section. Déserts is also more measured than it should be, the resulting precision bought at the cost of intensity. Virtually anything Boulez conducts is worth hearing, and this disc certainly reveals much about the scores, but hopes that this master of modern music would top his earlier recording aren't fulfilled. —Dan Davis

This is an oddly cool performance of one of the most overtly sentimental—indeed, gushing—pieces in the violin repertoire. In an effort simply to present, rather than interpret, the music, Hahn seems to have gone overboard—she plays with little portamento and vibrato, she keeps away from the music's soul. All that having been said, the playing itself is faultless, her tone lovely, and by the last movement her virtuosity is truly impressive. The classic performance remains Menuhin's, but Hahn and Davis and his LSO have much to offer here. Vaughan Williams' gorgeous-if-sappy "The Lark Ascending" is played ravishingly, with more overt feeling than the Elgar, and again the LSO add greatly to the pleasure with the woodwind section—and clarinet in particular—shining brightly. —Robert Levine

Angel of Light is Einojuhani Rautavaara's seventh symphony. Written in 1994, Angel of Light is a slowly unfolding sonic landscape of misty impressions and elevated language. It has no program, but the music does evoke a serene mood and is very hymn-like. This is one of Rautavaar's most "user-friendly" symphonies. Annuciations (1976-77) employs a large wind orchestra and concertante brass quintet, as well as an organ. The spectrum of sound Rautavaara gets from this combination has to be heard to believed. Rautavaara's music is the shimmer of the aurora borealis. Spooky. Enlightening. —Paul Cook

Conspirare, Company of Voices Taking up a theme as old as music itself, six modern composers turn their attention to death, the loss of loved ones, and remembrance. Two works: We remember them by Donald Grantham and Eliza Gilkyson's Requiem are here receiving their first recording.

The music of Elliott Carter is one of the best connections that New Music has to Ives and his generation, including Cowell and Nancarrow. Carter, as catholic in his spools of influences as was Ives, wrote many acclaimed chamber works before his Piano Concerto, played here by Ursula Oppens. But the concerto takes the full weight of the chamber works and sends them loudly and intricately to a higher level, with a more developed hugeness. The Variations for Orchestra are likewise powerful illuminations of previous Carter works, but they too roll so many influences—many of them mainstream—into the mix that the breadth of music alone is staggering. Carter loves the long, large dips and dives, as well as the emergent loudness and lushness that an orchestra can heave much more strongly than a chamber group. But these pieces also show the flip side—that Carter is an astute composer in regard to granular details. —Andrew Bartlett

2009 GRAMMY Award winner: Best Chamber Music Performance

In Mendelssohn as in everything else, violinist Jascha Heifetz plays with brilliance and an edgy intensity that impart a feeling of urgency to the music even in its most poetic moments. He brings dazzling technique and heart-on-the-sleeve Romanticism to his searing interpretation, and is brilliantly backed up by Charles Munch and the Bostonians. The recording is spacious, clean, and tonally quite accurate, though Heifetz is a bit closely miked. —Ted Libbey

at Rollins College

Ensemble Intercontemporain

Gavin Bryars writes for specific instrumentalists and singers rather than for performers in general—a powerful motivating force that—as Handel, Mozart, Britten, and others, including Bryars, have shown—often inspires great music. Bryars is a mature, thoughtful composer whose versatility—he writes for several different instrumental and vocal combinations here—never inhibits his originality. And his originality never comes at the expense of accessibility. The music is tonal yet unpredictable, intelligent yet unpretentious. "Incipit Vita Nova," for male alto and string trio, is a response to the birth of a friend's child. Its simple beauty and sensitive instrumental scoring sets the tone for the entire album. "Glorious Hill," commissioned by the Hilliard Ensemble, is a triumph of text, texture, timbre, and of the unique expressive power of the human voice. There are many rewards on this album, from the stirring, sometimes disturbing, always enticing music, to the all-around, top-of-form performances. —David Vernier

The latest volume in BRIDGE'S award-winning survey of George Crumb complete works presents a new recording of a major Crumb cycle and the premiere of a new composition for two pianos. Makrokosmos I and II have come to be regarded as landmark compositions in the piano repertoire, requiring the pianist to display a virtuoso's control of both the keyboard and the inside of the piano. In addition, the performer is asked to whistle, speak, and sing, while simultaneously playing some of the most dramatic and fantasy-filled piano music of the late twentieth century. Robert Shannon, a leading exponent of Crumb's music, gives the 67 minute cycle of 24 "zodiac" pieces a spectacular reading. The duo piano team, Quattro Mani, has also had a long association with Crumb's music, and can be heard playing Crumb's music on BRIDGE 9105, a disc that received `Best of Year' honors from Fanfare, and highest ratings from France's Repertoire, and the USA's ClassicsToday.com. ! In 2002, Crumb composed "Otherworldy Resonances", a 10 minute quasi-passacaglia for Quattro Mani. Based on a hypnotic four-note motif, this 10 minute composition marks Crumb's return to writing piano music after a hiatus of nearly 15 years. Both of these recordings, as with the rest of this series, were supervised by the composer.

Perhaps the most ambitious of album tributes to George Gershwin on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, Gershwin's World earns its title by encompassing not only jazz versions of key pop songs from his catalog and a version (with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra) of his Prelude in C-Sharp Minor but also reminding us of the composer's sources in everything from Ellington, W.C. Handy, and stride pianist James P. Johnson to Ravel. Those four are represented by versions of key pieces that affected Gershwin, in a bid to place his achievement in a context that is often discussed but perhaps too little listened to. This is an album that could have been a massive, pretentious failure; instead, with the likes of Wayne Shorter and a nearly unrecognizably torchy Joni Mitchell on hand, it's as close to a triumph as this type of thing reaches. —Rickey Wright

Lorna Haywood, James Rainbird, David Syrus, Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House - Covent Garden

Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra

Eric Le Sage

Leonard Slatkin's recording of the Resurrection Symphony was one of Telarc's early digital triumphs—an outstanding achievement, both technically and musically. The account is noteworthy for the powerful, disciplined playing of the Saint Louis Symphony, as well as for Slatkin's clear, intelligent presentation of the score and the excellent solo contributions—25 years after she recorded the piece with Walter, here again is Maureen Forrester, singing as beautifully as ever. It reaches a very satisfying climax in the final movement, and Telarc's pickup does not let Mahler down. —Ted Libbey

Gustav Mahler

Ligeti, Boulez

Reinbert De Leeuw, Schonberg Ensemble This first of a projected five-disc series of Ligeti's music is a perfect introduction to the sound-world of the man who is arguably our greatest living composer. It opens with Melodien, a one-movement, 13-minute piece that begins with swirling, high-pitched winds whose sinuous lines turn into a flowing stream of iridescent instrumental colors. The Chamber Concerto, completed a year earlier, is for 13 instrumentalists treated as virtuosic soloists. Each of its four movements has a distinct profile, from the polyphonic first movement, where the instruments play at different speed, to the chorale-like second, hammering third, and the final presto that builds from a menacing ostinato to the siren squeal of the clarinet at the close. Aimard is the superb soloist in the Piano Concerto. He just about owns this piece, having recorded it with Boulez and Eotvos a decade ago. It's in five movements of endless inventiveness, particularly the second, which moves from desolate quietude to energetic outbursts and peters out with a quiet wind phrase. Mysteries of the Macabre is a reworking for solo trumpet and chamber orchestra of arias from Ligeti's opera, Le Grand Macabre. An essential disc of indispensable music, brilliantly performed and recorded. —Dan Davis

Composer/former Buggles keyboardist Hans Zimmer helped pioneer the fusion of traditional orchestral music with synthesized sounds that both seamlessly mock and supplement the traditionally acoustic. What listeners sometimes mistake for a symphony orchestra in full voice is often but shrewdly manipulated digital samples. Thus, this concert performance (recorded at the 2000 Flanders Film Festival) adds a welcome, truly organic dimension to the best of Zimmer's canon. The composer is featured as a performer (with Dirk Brosse conducting the fine efforts of the VRO Flemish Radio Orchestra), as are many of his frequent collaborators; Lisa Gerrard adds her distinctive vocals to the included Gladiator excerpts, while guitarists Pete Haycock and Heitor Pereira add their familiar flourishes to cues from Thelma and Louise and Mission: Impossible 2, respectively. Reworked music from The Lion King and The Power of One supplement the already familiar, but it's Zimmer's haunting, emotionally compelling "Journey to the Line" (from The Thin Red Line score) that is the collection's unlikely high point. —Jerry McCulley

Biber, Mak, Goebel

This disc of three of Henri Dutilleux's most often recorded works suffers only in regard to the relative weakness of the orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Jukka-Pekka Saraste's conducting skills are excellent, and he gets right two important aspects of the Symphony No. 2—its brilliant imagistic spells and occasional homage to Stravinsky's French years. An earlier disc on Philips (438 008-2), now out of print, with Semyon Bychkov and the Orchestre de Paris, takes the same three works and gives them a more aggressive and spatially lush reading. Problems also arise on the Finlandia disc in Métaboles, where the Toronto group gets all the notes right but can't catch the work's elusive spirit. Find the Philips if you can. —Paul Cook

Here are Henri Dutilleux's two concertos together on a disc of outstanding, well-recorded performances. Tout un monde lointain... is a cello concerto, the elusive title (from Baudelaire) unfortunately diminishing the popularity that it rightfully deserves. Written (and recorded) by Rostropovich, it's played here with breathtaking virtuosity and lyric beauty by Truls Mork. His opening soliloquy is lightly accompanied by struck cymbals, and a ghostly pianissimo orchestra immediately tells you this will be special. The e brilliant playing by soloist and orchestra confirms that expectation. The Violin Concerto, commissioned and recorded by Isaac Stern, also has a poetic title reflecting Dutilleux's intention—a work that develops, tree-like, into branches that grow and renew themselves. It's full of captivating moments, not least the third interlude, a cadenza written to sound improvised. It's a lyrical but energetic work, with blazing orchestral timbres that support Capucon's luminous violin. Separating the concertos is the brief but highly effective 3 Strophes sur le nome de Sacher, a solo cello piece played with expertise by Mork. An invaluable disc of modern masterpieces. —Dan Davis

This album, which catapulted Polish composer Henryk Gorecki to into the international spotlight, takes texts born in pain and turns them into statements of affirmation through the use of music that ebbs and flows in mystic minimalism. The clear voice of soprano Dawn Upshaw, singing the Polish texts, is a large part of the success of this particular recording, but the music, contemporary without either dissonance or movie-music mawkishness, clarifies and uplifts the words. This is a moving and essential element of the modern repertoire. —Sarah Bryan Miller

Gerard Schwarz handles this music as if born to it, although the music of Howard Hanson does tend to play itself once it gets going. The works on these discs are three of Howard Hanson's masterpieces, especially his Symphony 4, his Requiem Symphony. It is stately, moderated, and unabashedly romantic. It may be Hanson's best symphony. "The Lament for Beowulf" is a choral tone-poem based on the famous English epic. The suite from the opera Merry Mount shows Hanson being at once playful and somber. This music is very user-friendly and is about as conservative as you can get. Recommended. —Paul Cook

Cincinnatti Pops Orchestra

Les Noces is a screaming, shrieking, flat-out masterpiece. Leonard Bernstein himself has referred to it as Stravinsky's greatest work, and listening to this incendiary performance, it's awfully hard to disagree. Scored for voices, four pianos, and percussion, the work provided the inspiration for the entire career of Orff (of Carmina Burana fame), but it's so much better as sheer music than anything Orff wrote. And what a cast! The pianists for this performance include Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, Cyprien Katsaris, and Homero Francesch, four certified virtuoso performers, while the singers of the English Bach Festival Chorus really cover themselves with glory in both works. A stunner. —David Hurwitz

In a way that oddly prefigures the stance of the "holy minimalists" so currently popular, Stravinsky declared that a motive behind composing his Symphony of Psalms was his "eagerness to counter the many composers who had abused these magisterial verses as pegs for their own lyrico-sentimental 'feelings'." The result issued in one of the 20th century's most perfect choral masterpieces. For all its objective austerity (violins, violas, and clarinets are exiled from the score), the piece is awash in fresh new sound colors and rhythmic vitality (with some family likeness to those Stravinsky explored in Les Noces and Oedipus Rex), ending in a poem of praise (Psalm 150) that radiantly answers the uneasy waiting of the middle movement (Psalm 40). Pierre Boulez maintains the necessary level of diaphanous precision, though he is a measure too sensuous, forceful, and even fast compared with Stravinsky's own visionary account of the work, enveloping the final "Alleluia" in an undeniably beautiful but seductive sheen. Boulez also offers a finely etched, incisive reading of Stravinsky's wartime Symphony in Three Movements that is strong on its astringent ironies. The composer's interests were clearly geared to the symphony more as an exploration of possible sound worlds than to its traditional form, even in his most neoclassical period, as in the ritualistic gestures of the Symphonies of Wind Instuments. It's a nice snapshot of earlier Stravinsky, though this disc would be even more compelling if it had instead included the Symphony in C to make a compendium of his best symphonies such as can be found on Georg Solti's Stravinsky collection. But listeners familiar with only the great Stravinsky ballets have a goldmine left to discover in these works. —Thomas May

This is an outstanding disc of Stravinsky's choral music, beginning with a visceral performance of Les Noces that captures the raw barbarism of the score. If you like Orff's Carmina Burana, this is where it comes from. A series of tableaux depicting a peasant wedding, Les Noces is a revolutionary work—and it sounds it in this blazing performance. The Mass is revolutionary in a different way, returning to earlier music traditions like Gregorian chant. It can sometimes sound too ascetic for its own good, but Reuss's superb chorus and wind band invest it with the warmth and color it needs to make its full effect. The Cantata, written four years later in 1952, is a prime example of Stravinsky's late neo-classicism. Based on medieval English texts, its small chorus and soloists, sparely backed by a chamber band, rebuke the work's neglect through their incisive performance. — Dan Davis

Deutshe Symphony Orchester

Stravinsky, Chailly, Landgridge, Pope, Ramey

Choir of Trinity College Sixteenth-century Gesualdo and 20th-century Stravinsky? What are they doing together on the same disc? Each composer's "uncompromising modernism" and position at the "forefront of the avant-garde" bring the two into a kind of cross-generational alignment. But the truth is that Stravinsky found something personally appealing both in Gesualdo's staunch individualism and in the unique sound of his music, which owed much to its startling harmonies and unorthodox chromatic effects. Stravinsky championed Gesualdo's music, expressing concern that this "academically unrespectable composer" and his work needed to be saved from musicologists. The Choir of Trinity College offers an amazingly effective musical and historical juxtaposition, allowing us to hear an uncanny connection between two religious works physically separated by 300 years, but seeming to have emerged from a common spiritual source —David Vernier

Stravinsky often generated an equivalent of musical depth through successive clashes of instrumental color, and the Symphonies of Wind Instruments is a celebrated example of this technique. Robert Craft brings out this aspect in a flowing yet dynamic reading. Stravinsky's melodrama Persephone, a collaboration with the novelist André Gide, is graced here by the voice of the lovely French actress Irene Jacob as the narrator. —Joshua Cody

Phoenix Bach Choir, Kansas City Chorale

Two of the works recorded here are world premiere recordings: "Made in America" and "Tambor." The first uses "America the Beautiful" as its first melodic theme, and bits of it appear throughout the work. Tower interweaves the melodic fragments with many other original tunes, and she colors the work in what could be called the American idiom, with wide-open spaces. There is a central section of a darker nature, but the work ends in glory. "Tambor" is dominated by percussion of all kinds - drums, blocks, etc. - and is an exciting, propulsive work. There are long periods of solos for percussion instruments that act almost as mini-cadenzas. The Concerto for Orchestra is a terrific work that uses the sections of the orchestra as solos, duets and in bunches. Standout moments are a remarkable tuba solo, a dueling duet for trumpets, and a part for the cellos alone. It's a flavorful, fascinating work. Leonard Slatkin leads the Nashville Symphony in excellent performances. —Robert Levine

Tracks: 1. Conceto in D Minor for Harpsicord, S. 1052 ~~2. Concerto in A Minor for Violin, S. 1041 ~~3. Concerto in C Minor for Oboe and Violin ~~4. Concerto in D Minor for three Violins

Sir Neville Marriner's account of Bach's first three Brandenburg Concertos—a studio recording from 1980—is surprisingly sturdy. It holds up well against considerable competition, and serves as a fine example of modern instrument interpretation and style. Articulation is remarkably clean—a testimony to the exceptional skill of the Academy's musicians—tempos are bright, there's abundant energy, and nothing is overdone. This is a good first choice, especially if you prefer modern strings and winds. —David Vernier

There is no dearth of recordings of the Bach Orchestral Suites, but this new one goes right to the top of the list of recommended performances. Pearlman and his Boston Baroque play on period instruments but there is never any stridency in the strings, none of the odd pressured quality that can creep into "historically informed" readings. The 3rd and 4th suites, the most heavily scored, are given truly rousing readings, with the trumpets and timpani making a joyful noise and the oboes and bassoon audible and very welcome in the mix—-the recording is well-balanced. The first suite has prominent wind parts as well, and Pearlman weaves them in and out of the orchestral fiber effectively, as the music indicates. The tricky Suite No. 2 is often presented as a type of flute concerto, but Pearlman has the solo flute backed up by multiple strings in the grander passages and reduces them to solos when the flute has its own melodic line. And most importantly, he realizes that the movements of all the suites are dances, and so the music, in its own, French Baroque way, swings. The recording is as fine as the performances, which is to say, remarkable. —Robert Levine

John Carollo

This 1989 release became an unexpected surprise hit, primarily because of the extraordinary tone poem The Wound Dresser. Written to Walt Whitman's poem of the same name, it deals with Whitman's musings on the Civil War. There is hardly a hint of Adams's traditional (and usually blithe) minimalistic impulses here. This is the "dark" side of the composer that is to surface later in his opera The Death of Klinghoffer. Fearful Symmetries, the companion piece here, is more typical of Adams; it's a junkyard rattle of catchy rhythms and clever orchestral textures—a work made almost trivial by The Wound Dresser. —Paul Cook

Of the music by the four reigning minimalists in this country (Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley are the others), that of John Adams is perhaps the simplest, constructed on punctuated—and percussive—chords riding above coherent melodies. This is probably why Adams has had such success with his two operas. Harmonielehre is a sustained orchestral piece in three sections—triptychs framing a slow second movement of unusual somberness, given the gaiety of the opening section. Part III, called "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie", is a sprightly fairy tale of shimmering, glissando-like textures underscored by a dignified flowing melody. —Paul Cook

Harmonium is John Adams's breakthrough work. After experimenting with a number of different styles, he settled on consonance and simplicity, and became famous upon the work's premiere in 1981. It exemplifies his music—a listener-friendly West Coast minimalism using tasteful, keyboards-enhanced instrumentation and having a generally mellow sound. Adams harmonizes seemingly disparate parts: dense, complex, death-obsessed poems by two very different writers, one by the worldly John Donne and two by the reclusive Emily Dickinson, sung by a choral group rather than soloists. And he makes it work. Unlike the newer Nonesuch recording, this reissued ECM Harmonium retains a sense of something fresh, beginning at a barely perceptible pianissimo, growing through the meditations of "Negative Love" and "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" to the ecstatic, erotically charged crescendo of "Wild Nights," and settling back into calm. Images of artificial forms of transport, including boats, run through the poems. Yet, considering the cover shot of barnacle-laden rocks on the seashore, one imagines Adams's music as portraying, instead, the shifting moods of the ocean itself. Indeed, it is the perfectly natural kind of elevation that Adams's oratorio celebrates, and that Edo de Waart and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra remain expert at conveying. —Robert Burns Neveldine

Of all the so-called minimalists working today, John Adams is the only one with any good ideas left. Witness this delightful release. The key to Adams's creativity is that he isn't bound by theoretical constraints on what "minimalism" should be. Century Rolls (1995) is a commission by Emanuel Ax, and it was inspired by the composer's listening to a CD recording of an ancient player piano. Century Rolls doesn't duplicate that sound, but it is, instead, an unexpected romp across new rhythmic territory. As for Mr. Ax, he comports himself very well, particularly in the difficult first Movement, which requires deft coordination of all forces involved. The brief Lollapalooza (1995) is more recognizably minimalist but with considerable orchestral color and shifting moods. And Slominsky's Earbox (1996) is a powerfully full-orchestra-driven canter. All this is to say that the CD is one of the best releases of Adams's career, and it will appeal to a very wide audience. —Paul Cook

To clear up one thing first: this is not about the El Niño weather system that hits the western Pacific every few years. Instead, this is a rather beautifully done Nativity Oratorio by John Adams, filled with his trademark dancing minimalist rhythms and tuneful melodies. The text is in Spanish, English, and Latin, and comes from both New World and Old World sources, all centering on the birth of Christ. Particular kudos must go to the three principals: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano; Dawn Upshaw, soprano; and Willard White, baritone. Even though there are moments when White's baritone threatens to dominate, they aren't significant enough to forestall any pleasure in the overall work. And while there are moments of drama here, they aren't nearly as spooky as those in The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams's other clear masterpiece. But El Niño is definitely a masterpiece and a must for anyone's collection of contemporary music. —Paul Cook

This is a splendid addition to the Adams discography, one that follows him from New England to California. Dharma at Big Sur is a concerto for electric violin. It begins by evoking the West's sun and easy living, but this is more than a musical piece of nature-painting. It rambles ambiently for a while before landing in an Indian raga, jazzy mode and ends with a type of heavenly good-naturedness. The electric violin is played by Tracy Silverman; a sixth string allows for the sonorous tones of the cello. The other work, presented on a second CD (so as to avoid culture shock?) is My Father knew Charles Ives, which, while apparently untrue, lets us know that Ives's New England sound and his wacky one-on-top-of-the-other methods will be found here, and, indeed, they are. It pays homage to some of Ives's music (the trumpet from his "The Unanswered Question" is clear here), but more than that, in its various sections ("The Lake;" "The Mountain") it evokes the nature of New England as picturesquely as Ives does, and parallels Adams's California in Dharma A pair of fascinating works, at times a bit thorny, but well worth it. —Robert Levine

John Adams's El Dorado is in some ways program music, with a twist. It's an imaginary accompaniment, he writes in the liner essay, to a diptych with the unmolested nature of the New World in one panel and that same world with man in it in the other panel. Certainly Adams's characterization of the piece's drama is apt, as it indeed bursts with fierceness at exactly the point where man comes to believe in dominating and subjugating nature, where any hint of the romantic tradition crashes headlong into a more radical revision of both minimalism and percussion-charged late-20th-century orchestration. The piece is aimed at the same subject occupying so many composers in 1992, the collision of worlds 500 years earlier in the Americas. Adams follows this big, broad-shouldered work with an orchestration of Franz Liszt's La Lugubre Gondola and a reduced arrangement of Ferruccio Busoni's Berceuse Élégiaque. Both are funereal works, elegiac in their temperament and brimming with a dramatic depth that compliments El Dorado's rises and crashing falls beautifully. —Andrew Bartlett

Leave it to Christoph Eschenbach and the Houston Symphony to deliver one of the more impressive classical discs of 1999: a pairing of the violin concertos of John Adams and Philip Glass. Hearing the works of these two American music mavericks side-by-side is a study in contrasts: Adams's postmodernist composition from 1993 is filled with spooky overtones, as the violin threads its way through the piece, always at the forefront. It doubles as a ballet (the NYC Ballet cocommissioned the piece), yet never forgets the traditional violin-concerto form. Glass's composition from the late '80s is less complex. It, too, is based around a traditional structure of three movements, but these are passages we've heard from the composer for the last decade, though never quite so well assembled.

Gidon Kremer has recorded two earlier discs featuring both the Adams and Glass concertos, but the sonics (especially on his Glass disc) are less impressive than they are here. Robert McDuffie's violin isn't as piercing as Kremer's—a shame during the eerily gorgeous second movement of Adams's piece—but there's a pleasant balance to this new disc, and the Houston Symphony sounds fantastic. All in all, it's a great package of two contemporary classical-music compositions everyone should hear. —Jason Verlinde

Long a favorite of amateur choristers, John Rutter's three-movement Gloria is by turns touching and thrilling, alternating soaring vocal lines with contemporary harmonies, catchy rhythms, and the power of the Phillip Jones Brass Ensemble. The premiere recording, with Rutter himself conducting his Cambridge Singers, is filled out with 10 of his short anthems, including the sprightly "O Clap Your Hands," the serenely beautiful "A Gaelic Blessing," and "The Lord Is My Shepherd" movement from his Requiem. —David Horiuchi

Beginning with the last piece on this CD, we have a brief Wedding Canticle, a graceful, lovely melody sung smoothly by the choir and underpinned by the odd but also gentle combination of flute and guitar. The middle work, Shadows, is a song cycle composed in 1979 and consisting of eight songs based on 16th- and 17th-century poems; the subject matter is sleep, death and dream-states. Baritone Jeremy Huw Williams colors the text well, and the guitar accompaniment is fluid and interesting, but the cycle is not particularly compelling. The Mass of the Children, however, which takes up most of the CD, is a beautiful, affecting work. It begins with a lively tune and moves at once into a well-blended "Kyrie"; the "Benedictus" is rich and full, with both children's and adult's choirs joining together. The "Agnus Dei" incorporates William Blake's "The Lamb" into the usual text, with the kids' voices intoning it with charm, and the final "Dona nobis pacem" is warm and peaceful. This is a fine program, and even if the Song Cycle is not up to the standards set by the Mass and Canticle, there's still enough here that is superb, and the performances are excellent. —Robert Levine

Jon Phelps

This disc is obviously aimed at the world-music audience, if one judges from its title and the subtitle, "Folk-Inspired Music for Guitar." But that shouldn't dissuade listeners interested in more serious music. Isbin has collected original pieces and arrangements from Spain, Latin America, Appalachia, Ireland, Israel, and Greece—all of them quite lovely. It's really amazing to hear, for example, the "Londonderry Air," better known as "Danny Boy," in such a sympathetic arrangement by the late Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. She plays with such technical mastery that you wind up taking it for granted, while appreciating her songful delivery of this highly varied program of music, which was mostly first intended for the human voice. The uncommonly attractive booklet, including photos of Isbin as a world traveler, is another asset to this fine program, as is Teldec's realistic recorded sound. —Leslie Gerber

The tracks are: 1. - 4. Symphony No. 103 in E-flat Major, Hob 1:103 ("Drum Roll"), 5. - 8. Symphony No. 104 in D Major, Hob 1:104 ("London").

Huelgas Ensemble This dazzling CD offers huge Renaissance pieces performed by the always spectacular Huelgas Ensemble under Paul van Nevel. The taste for complex polyphony was at its peak in the late 16th century. The Italian composer Alessandro Striggio amazed the civilized world with a motet in 40 parts, driving the Englishman Thomas Tallis to compose one even more complex in the same number of parts to honor Queen Elizabeth. It still hasn't been surpassed in formality and stringent creativity. Other works on this CD are a Gloria by Gomez in 12 parts, a Qui habitat by Desprez in 24 voices, and a lush 16-part work by Giovanni Gabrieli, among others. Van Nevel and his group (and the superb engineers) keep every line clear, with round tone balanced throughout all the vocal ranges, with the long, melodic lines flowing so naturally that the listener never gets lost. The Desprez reminds me of some works by Antoine Brumel, with imitation so close and frequent that the effect is that of a pulsating organism. The CD opens with a 35-voice piece by the contemporary composer Willem Ceuleers (a member of the Huelgas Ensemble, born in 1963), and while its harmonies certainly are not Renaissance, it is in spirit the kind of polyphony on the rest of the CD. Perhaps listening to this 71-minute CD in one sitting would be too rich; it's a feast to be savored. —Robert Levine

This collection of Krysztof Penderecki's music encompasses one of New Music's most intense, even extreme pieces: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Played in the extreme registers by 52 string performers, this piece came off in every way as a careening lamentation. Decrying the bombing of Hiroshima at a time when it was still a historical blue ribbon on the war chest of the U.S., Threnody was unforgettable for its vast ranges of sound colors, from the quietest and most brittle to the most raging, swirling bruises imaginable. UNESCO officially selected the composition as one of the finest works of 1961, emblazoning Penderecki's name and the composition's flagrant intensity around the musical globe. The remaining pieces on the CD make this a stunning collection, much of it having functioned as the musical background for The Shining. —Andrew Bartlett

WUCF

Atlanta Symphony Orchstra and Chorus

As its title indicates, this 1985 recording marked Barbra Streisand's return to her Broadway roots (significantly, she had dropped her pop-period Guilty perm and returned to straight hair). The CD contains a broad selection of show tunes, from Guys and Dolls's "Adelaide's Lament" to Sweeney Todd's "Not While I'm Around." But let's face it: this may also be one of Babs's most dated albums, due to typically '80s synthesizer-heavy arrangements that simply don't work with the material. Company's "Being Alive" is scarred by a preening alto sax, while West Side Story's "Something's Coming" features what sounds suspiciously like syndrums. But—and it's a pretty big "but"—Streisand sounds more buttery than ever ("Send in the Clowns" may be one of her finest '80s moments), so much so that she often manages to overcome the cheesy production. Now that's a singer. —Elisabeth Vincentelli

Certain composers have suffered rather weird fates, from Lully's lethal foot infection—he jabbed it while beating time—to the accidental shooting of Anton Webern (or was it a murder conspiracy?). That fact is just one of the many seeds that have germinated into the fictional case (re)presented in Rosa: The Death of a Composer, the first in the ongoing series of collaborations between leading Dutch avant-garde composer Louis Andriessen and director-librettist Peter Greenaway. The result is a Chinese box-like dramaturgy, many-tiered, self-referential, and frankly too complex to summarize handily but which involves hippophilia, an abusive relationship, geometric obsessions, multiple nudity, old-fashioned Westerns, and art's slippery, illusory nature. Greenaway has in fact created a film from the original 1994 stage production—but even without its stylized bleed of visuals and streaming text, the bizarrely arresting quality of this one-of-a-kind opera comes across on Nonesuch's premiere recording. Andriessen's score is a fascinating melange of nervous minimalism—preempting the style's tendency toward predictability—fierce Stravinskian rhythmic displacements, frosty harmonies that gather like a miasma, and half-jazz, half high-opera vocalism. Most impressive of all is how Andriessen avoids the kind of standard-issue postmodern pastiche that's the usual payoff but instead actually creates a believable sound world for the story's unique mix of parody and menace. Longtime Andriessen interpreters Reinbert de Leeuw and the Schönberg Ensemble give the score a biting, disturbing edge, while Marie Angel surmounts the outrageous demands (not just vocal) made on her without faltering. The anti-romantic Andriessen is a seriously undervalued composer—he lacks the star power of Glass or Reich—but his intensely probing visions of music and its place in culture (as in De Materie) open labyrinths of discovery. —Thomas May

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Schoenberg Ensemble Amsterdam, Reinbert de Leeuw, Leeuw DONAUESCHINGER MUSIKTAGE 2006/

Ensemble Recherche, Fbo, Freiburger Barockorch. DONAUESCHINGER MUSIKTAGE 2006/

The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford

Phippe Lefebvre

1988 release including (then recent) sixvocal & chamber works by American composer Mel Powell (1923-1998)

Daniel Lentz, Peter Garland, Jim Fox, Michael Jon Fink, Rick Cox, Michael Byron

Mile Davis

Mile Davis

This is Esa-Pekka SalonenÂ’s debut live recording from the Walt Disney Concert Hall and his first recording as the principal conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic on DG. The central piece, StravinskyÂ’s Le Sacre du printemps was conducted by Salonen on the inaugural night of the Hall in 2003, a masterpiece that becomes something of a miracle within the outstanding acoustics of the Walt Disney Hall. This recording captures the energy, beauty and musical power of this extraordinary collaboration.

To capture the full sound experience of this concert, DG delivers this recording on a hybrid SACD. This release is certain to be a superior musical experience if not the new reference recording of this classical music milestone. Other pieces on this release are Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain and Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite—works that benefit greatly from the superb acoustics at the Walt Disney Concert Hall as well as the highest possible recording sound quality.

This CD was recorded at the 2004 London Proms; the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Yuri Termirkanov, and the acclaimed Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky are ideal protagonists in this dramatic Russian repertoire. The St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra is the oldest symphony orchestra in Russia and for the first time in the orchestra's history, they were able to select their own director. Yuri Termirkanov was appointed Artistic Director and Principal Conductor.

Written two years before his death in 1987, Morton Feldman's Piano and String Quartet is a shimmering, pristine musical event. Contrasting Aki Takahashi's widely-spaced piano arpeggios with Kronos Quartet's extended chords, Feldman allows lingering sounds from either the piano or the strings to haze over many of the piece's near-silences. Kronos plays their parts with tremulous fragility, often making pointedly clear the viola's musical valley between the leading violins and the trailing cello. By the time Feldman composed this piece, he was deeply committed to extended works—chamber pieces that could telescope motifs and worry their tonality so that it warbled between hauntingly atonal and familiarly tonal singing. This is a powerful, evening piece, one that can set an extravagantly crystalline musical mood. —Andrew Bartlett

Here is one of the great contemporary masterpieces for voice. Three Voices was composed for Joan La Barbara, a singer and performer of avant-garde music in the tradition of Cathy Berberian or Jan DeGaetani. In live performance, the singer stands next to two loudspeakers that play two prerecorded tapes of her voice, to which she synchronizes herself. At the center of the work is a setting of the poem Wind by Frank O'Hara. The various vocal patterns on either side of the poem were inspired, as in all Feldman's late music, by the patterns on Oriental carpets, and you actually can hear the slow modification of shape and form as the music proceeds. It's a remarkable work, and La Barbara's performance is definitive. —David Hurwitz

Quiet and expansive, Morton Feldman's Coptic Light isn't your typical classical CD. Performed by Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony, these works by the late composer, atmospheric and tension-filled, are ready to erupt at any moment. Classical music that moves at a snail's pace and sounds exciting? You bet. —Jason Verlinde

Rorem made a splash when his Symphony 3 came out in 1958, fairly sealing Rorem's reputation as a major American composer. However, Rorem never pursued the image the public wanted of him, keeping instead to music in smaller settings—songs, choral settings. Here we have three works for orchestra that, if they lack ambition, are nonetheless fine examples of Rorem's ability to write coherent melodies. String Symphony (1985) is nothing short of a masterpiece. But where String Symphony is melodic, Sunday Morning, based on the famous Stevens poem, is more discordant. It's still a gem. — Paul Cook

Writing in CD Review, Peter Golub has noted of Rorem's "Poems of Love and the Rain": "Most importantly, the composer has given us-regardless of its overall structure-an astonishingly beautiful collection of songs. STOP ALL THE CLOCKS (first version) and THE AIR IS THE ONLY (second version) are among the finest American art songs ever written. Beverly Wolff's performance is stunning. She unleashes the full range of her considerable musical and emotional power. Combined with Rorem's pianism, it makes for a compelling listening experience.

The Prince Consort 'The Prince Consort represents everything that is fine about young music makers in this country.'Sir Thomas Allen, Patron

The dynamic Prince Consort comprises five singers and a pianist, all of whom are drawing major international attention for their solo endeavours. Brought together by their love of singing this repertoire, Anna Leese, Jennifer Johnston, Andrew Staples, Jacques Imbrailo, Tim Mead and Alisdair Hogarth are a compelling combination. Their debut album 'Ned Rorem On an echoing road' will consolidate their success and establish them as a celebrated ensemble.

Ned Rorem is one of the most widely-recorded living American composers, who Time Magazine called 'the world's best composer of art songs'.

'Ned Rorem On an echoing road'features songs that are lyrical, beguiling and unaffectedly simple, intriguing, melodic and intimate. They have echoes of French, English and American song repertoires whilst being distinctively Ned Rorem.

New York magazine called Evidence of Things Not Seen 'one of the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly collections of songs I have ever heard by any American composer'.

The Prince Consort is fast emerging as a fresh, exciting and versatile ensemble. Their performances are characterised by wide-ranging programmes and polished presentation, which showcase different combinations of voice and piano, from solos to small groups in piano-accompanied song.

The singers in the Prince Consort are each award-winning and critically acclaimed performers in their own right and create a beautifully balanced blend together.

The Prince Consort received a rave review from Anna Picard in The Independent, for their 2009 Wigmore Hall debut: '...a vivid, compelling performance.

The Prince Consort 'The Prince Consort represents everything that is fine about young music makers in this country.'Sir Thomas Allen, Patron

The dynamic Prince Consort comprises five singers and a pianist, all of whom are drawing major international attention for their solo endeavours. Brought together by their love of singing this repertoire, Anna Leese, Jennifer Johnston, Andrew Staples, Jacques Imbrailo, Tim Mead and Alisdair Hogarth are a compelling combination. Their debut album 'Ned Rorem On an echoing road' will consolidate their success and establish them as a celebrated ensemble.

Ned Rorem is one of the most widely-recorded living American composers, who Time Magazine called 'the world's best composer of art songs'.

'Ned Rorem On an echoing road'features songs that are lyrical, beguiling and unaffectedly simple, intriguing, melodic and intimate. They have echoes of French, English and American song repertoires whilst being distinctively Ned Rorem.

New York magazine called Evidence of Things Not Seen 'one of the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly collections of songs I have ever heard by any American composer'.

The Prince Consort is fast emerging as a fresh, exciting and versatile ensemble. Their performances are characterised by wide-ranging programmes and polished presentation, which showcase different combinations of voice and piano, from solos to small groups in piano-accompanied song.

The singers in the Prince Consort are each award-winning and critically acclaimed performers in their own right and create a beautifully balanced blend together.

The Prince Consort received a rave review from Anna Picard in The Independent, for their 2009 Wigmore Hall debut: '...a vivid, compelling performance.

This is a classic recording of these two works, led with grand authority by Fritz Reiner. The Chicago's brass and wind section play gloriously throughout, and the final movement of Scheherazade (we learn from the original producer [1960] in an accompanying essay) was recorded in one take—an almost unheard-of feat. This fast movement is taken at breakneck speed, with no loss of clarity or power, with the strings in the hands of magicians. Stravinsky's Nightingale has never sounded so exotic, so bristling over with color, since this 1956(!) recording under Reiner, and the wonderful surprise with this new release of old material is the revamped sound: the original "Living Stereo" was a fantastic breakthrough in recording, and this new SACD format has returned the spatial relationships to something so "real" that it comes as close as I've ever heard to a true concert hall experience. Simply glorious. —Robert Levine

This is deluxe Respighi. These tone poems were specialties of Eugene Ormandy, who recorded them with the Philadelphia Orchestra at least twice in stereo, once for Sony and again for RCA. Neither of those versions is really competitive sonically, so it's great to hear this superlative orchestra play the music under a knowing conductor in fully modern (if not quite perfect) sound. Ricardo Muti is no mere Ormandy clone, however. To the orchestra's natural opulence, he adds an extra dash of discipline and a firm grip on the rhythmic tiller. The result is both lushly Romantic and exciting—really these three tone poems have never been better conducted. —David Hurwitz

Here is a truly delightful disc, one that may well change a lot of people's notions regarding what kind of composer Respighi was. Yes, he was a master at creating sparkle, atmosphere, and grand effects in his orchestral music, but he had an intimate side as well. And he wore his heart on his sleeve. This disc presents a cross-section of his music for that most intimate and expressive of vehicles, the string quartet, consisting of the Quartet in D (1904-07), Il tramonto (1914)—which sets Shelley's The Sunset as a "lyric poem" for mezzo-soprano and string quartet—and the Quartetto dorico of 1924, the year Respighi's most famous work, Pines of Rome, received its premiere. Respighi was an accomplished violinist and violist. From 1903 to 1908, he was a member of the Quartetto Mugellini, so he really knew how to write for string foursome.

That facility is already apparent in the Quartet in D, as hedonistic a piece of chamber music as you are likely to find. The models are Borodin and Debussy—right down to the fact that this work, like the Debussy quartet, is cyclical in construction. The writing is almost too luxurious, too tender, too heart-on-the-sleeve for its own good. It's the work of a young man, but my ... what a knockout! Il tramonto is a little 15-minute scena decked out in the lush harmonies and agitated rhythms of Puccinian arioso. It's quite an effective pairing of voice and strings, and Respighi's treatment of the text shows that he possessed a natural feeling for drama. The Quartetto dorico, by contrast, is leaner and more astringent, one of those forays into the antique style that characterized Respighi's later output. The influence of Gregorian chant is apparent in the quartet's unison opening theme in the Dorian mode (hence the work's title), and the writing is superbly accomplished—vivid and varied, yet tightly constructed and thematically unified. A masterpiece.

The Brodsky Quartet gives top-drawer accounts of all three pieces, distinguished by superb intonation and ensemble, a marvelous feel for Respighi's musical language, and warm expressiveness throughout. Anne Sofie von Otter makes a stylish contribution to Il tramonto, her singing restrained yet telling. The recording is exceptionally well engineered and gets top marks for detail, atmosphere, and immediacy. —Ted Libbey

Patrick Moraz

Whitman's poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" was his elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln. Hindemith's setting, subtitled "A Requiem for Those We Love," dates from 1946. It was conceived as a tribute to FDR and the Americans who fought and died in World War II and perhaps also as a lament for the destruction of German culture. The composer himself—whose music was banned by Hitler's regime thus forcing his emigration from Germany—had both public and private reasons for writing this piece, and the result is extremely moving and approachable. It's a true modern counterpart to Brahms's German Requiem. Robert Shaw commissioned the music and simply "owns" it. This is a definitive performance. —David Hurwitz

One of New Music's most fascinating achievements has been the importation of music performance to physical places where performance hasn't yet happened. Iannis Xenakis, for example, scripted large works for musicians spread throughout an audience. Trombonist Stuart Dempster and accordionist Pauline Oliveros ventured into unexplored territory more definitively with Deep Listening, a CD that took them into the massive, 14-foot deep Fort Worden Cistern to record their performance. As a concept, deep listening involves vastly elongated tonalities that draw cavernous echoes into the music. Dempster's trombone sails like the largest hull tanker to make music, and Oliveros's accordion plays magical tones that barely seem from the real world. Panaiotis, who performed as the third member of the Deep Listening Band after this CD, provides stretched voice, whistling, and found sounds. Meditative with all the urgency of avant-garde music, Deep Listening is an entrancing, seamless wonder. —Andrew Bartlett

Pauline Oliveros and the Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency July 2005

Robert Kabara (violin), Radovan Vlatkovic (French horn) Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki received his first major recognition in 1959 at the Warsaw Autumn festival with the premières of his works Strophen, Psalms of David and Emanations. However, the piece that truly brought him to international attention was the staggeringly intense Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. Penderecki has won many prestigious awards and accolades including GRAMMY® awards in 1987, 1998 and 2001. These two concertos were written over thirty years apart, and show different facets of this composer s art. The horn concerto is a world première recording.

This beautiful, touching cycle of five love songs on poems by Pablo Neruda was composed by Peter Lieberson for his wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. They were first presented in Los Angeles in May, 2005. This recording, coming as it does just months after Hunt Lieberson's untimely death, is a fitting tribute to her art. The songs are as arrestingly lovely and moving as are her performances of them. It will be a long time before another singer dares undertake a performance that might try to bring something new to the music. Scored for mezzo-soprano and a bevy of instruments (not all of which ever play at once—flutes, oboe, English horn, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, various percussion, harp, piano and strings—the songs are all "approachable" modern music, filled with both drama and a distinctively Spanish flavor. The songs range from a sensual appreciation of the beloved and a fear of separation to a peaceful but very sad evocation: "My love, if I die and you don't." Lieberson clearly composed them with great love for his wife; we the listeners benefit from that love in the direct, candid music and performances. This cycle may just be the Four Last Songs of the 21st century. A must. —Robert Levine

To see the future of classical music, just look to the projects of Pierre Boulez. Whether conducting Bruckner, Mahler, or one of his own compositions, he continues to surprise, embellish, and reinvent the shape of music today. Sur Incises gathers three Boulez works that each focus, at least in part, on a singular instrument. The world-premiere title track uses three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists to create a dense, atonal, but very pianistic universe of sound. On repeated listenings, the abstract piece becomes more rewarding; you eventually pick up on Boulez's keen eye for tonal colors and shadings. On Anthemes 2, the piercing sounds of Hai-Sun Kang's violin are sampled, manipulated, and relayed back to her via electronics. Here, you won't find the lush Impressionism that Boulez hints at with Sur Incises, but you will find a fascinating interplay between organic and synthetic sounds. Messagesquisse for six cellos achieves similar results; the solo cello of Jean-Guihen Queyras is echoed and hinted at by five other cellists. As on their acclaimed recording of the composer's Répons, the Ensemble InterContemporain sets a high standard for these works, and DG does an excellent job with the recorded sound. These pieces may lack some of the musical magic of Repons, but they're no less fascinating. —Jason Verlinde

Ensemble Avantgarde

Performances of de la Rue's Requiem and des Prez's Mass-Hercules Dux Ferrariae and Deploration

Pierre Jalbert

Ralph Losey and Chip Weston

André Previn recorded this symphony twice, the first time around for RCA with the London Symphony Orchestra. That was, and is, a very fine performance, but this one is finer still. His tempos have slowed somewhat since that first version, but the truth is that you'd never notice unless you listened to music with a stopwatch. Vaughan Williams said that of all of his symphonies, this one was his personal favorite, and it's easy to understand why. The music has a very personal tunefulness and vigor, while the orchestration has a subtlety that clearly reflects the composer's period of study with Ravel. If you don't come away from this excellent performance thinking that the slow movement isn't among the most beautiful pieces of music in the universe, then listen again. —David Hurwitz

Richard Strauss

Robert Ashley

Florida State University Flute Ensemble

Carole Farley, Philippe Quint, Jeffrey Khaner, Simon Mulligan, Wen-Sinn Yang Jose Serebrier conducts the music of Ned Rorem, featuring: Carole Farley, Philippe Quint, Jeffrey Khaner, Simon Mulligan, Wen-Sinn Yang, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Hugh Keelan These symphonies by two major American composers have only appeared once on vinyl in the early 1950s, then later on the same CD (Albany Troy 256). Both recordings were in mono with Eugene Ormandy helming the Philadelphia Orchestra ... and they are far and away superior to these works from Koch International. While the New Zealand SO is a grand ensemble, they really have no feel for Harris's nostalgia or his kaleidoscopic textures. The Schuman fares a bit better, but it's clear that the NZSO hasn't performed either of these symphonies much, if at all. The recorded sound could also have been a little less flat overall. The Ormandy, though, was a high watermark, and it's just hard to beat Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra under any circumstances, even in mono. —Paul Cook

Sam Rivers and the Rivbea Orchstra

Sam Rivers Trio

This fifth installment in Naxos's Barber series is conducted by 2003 Gramophone Artist of the Year Marin Alsop. This disc features the richly romantic Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a `lyric rhapsody' for soprano and orchestra, sung by Karina Gauvin, who has rapidly established a reputation for excellence internationally. Her charismatic performances fuse a brilliant voice, with an elegant style, and masterful interpretation. The Second Essay for Orchestra is widely regarded as the tightest, most incisive of the three compositions bearing this title; some even consider it a single movement symphony more than an essay—it is densely packed, and more happens in its scant ten minutes than in some works which sprawl for half an hour. The rarely-recorded Toccata Festiva for organ and orchestra which, with its fast, furious opening fanfare and virtuosic cadenza, is a veritable tour deforce for the soloist.

This disc is drawn from the concerts inaugurating the new organ in Philadelphia's concert hall, a fine instrument well-captured by the engineers. But along with the sense of occasion, organist Olivier Latry and the orchestra deliver stunning playing of a stimulating program. Barber's celebratory overture is an apt opener, full of color and sparkle. The Poulenc is especially notable for the intensity soloist and the orchestra bring to one of the finest modern concertos in the repertory. Saint-Saëns' Symphony is almost on the same level, slightly marred by a sluggish slow movement but with plenty of excitement elsewhere. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this disc is the playing of the orchestra, full of life and vitality. The sheer sound of the Philadelphia strings is captivating enough, but the fetching wind solo turns and section work remind us of the continuing greatness of this ensemble. Latry too, is outstanding in the Barber and Poulenc works and an incisive presence in the Saint-Saëns. — Dan Davis

Westminster Choir dir. Joseph Flummerfelt

Sam Rivers and the Rivbea Orchestra

That these symphonies are not more famous than they are simply amazes me. Prokofiev understood the nature of symphonic writing, and after the dainty cuteness of Symphony 1, he was ready to make his own mark. The Symphony 3 (1929) begins with a brash sense of alarm, then becomes quieter, more operatic in nature. And the composer's weird clashing harmonies are throughout the piece. Two versions of the Symphony 4 (1940) exist. This is the original version, which is shorter than the latter 1940 version. Neeme Järvi and the SNO have recorded the entire series for Chandos, and these are the ones to have. —Paul Cook.

Concertgebouw Orchestra

The likes of Yo-Yo Ma, Sam Bush, Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell, and Mark O'Connor can be heard on Heartland, a compilation featuring the best tracks from Sony's ongoing Appalachian-themed series of CDs. Individually, these folk and classical stars have little in common, but when they meet to play these new bluegrass-meets-chamber-music arrangements, the results are pure magic. It's hard to pinpoint these Americana-tinged tunes—they could fit in either Carnegie Hall or a grange hall—but they're all great; this is as much Aaron Copland's version of roots music as it is Bill Monroe's. Whether on fast-and-furious breakdowns such as "Death by Triple Fiddle" or on mellow, almost New Agey instrumentals such as "Sliding Down" (featuring Bela Fleck on the banjo), these musicians excel. Guest vocals by James Taylor and Alison Krauss break up the instrumentals, though instrumental virtuosity is the real highlight of this disc. If you like what you hear on this sampler, check out the Grammy Award-winning Appalachian Journey next. —Jason Verlinde

It was with this critical work, Tehillim (the Hebrew word for psalms), that Steve Reich demonstrated that minimalism had the power to break out of its groupie ghetto and appeal to a broad audience of music lovers. In creating a masterpiece both expressive and approachable, Reich used the oldest trick in the book: he turned to a biblical source—exactly the sort of thing that composers have been doing since the dawn of recorded music. The result is remarkable in every way, and the music's popularity in performance speaks for itself. This recording, effectively with the work's "original cast," is unlikely to be bettered. It belongs in the collection of anyone who cares about the most important music of our time. —David Hurwitz

Steve Reich's take on what's popularly been called minimalism has been to illuminate the nature of musical phrases played in staccato fashion on various instruments and then variously "phase shift" their lines into new, contrapuntal relationships. This music can either delight or annoy, and Reich has done both in his time. Fortunately, on this disc the music itself is neither too complex to play nor too difficult to follow, and it could stand as an excellent primer for Reich's early minimalism. What genuinely triumphs on this disc is Octet (of 1979/80). It's an athletic work that brings various instruments into and out of play in carefully cadenced rhythmic patterns that are typical of Reich's very best writing. For Reich fans, though, there might not be anything new here; newbies, however, should be quite taken. —Paul Cook

Steve Reich These pieces, written more than a decade apart, show the changes that occurred in Reich's music. Six Marimbas is a re-scoring of Reich's Six Pianos (1973), one of his most mechanically oriented pieces. The continuing rhythms are quite exhilarating, but some listeners find this music monotonous. I don't, but even I prefer the Sextet from 1985, which has more harmonic movement than Reich's earlier works. In either case, the music will appeal mostly to those who like rhythmically oriented percussion music, here composed by its greatest master. For many of us, Reich transcends the "minimalist" label and writes real music of lasting value. Try some. —Leslie Gerber

Steve Reich

Steve Reich This new CD of Steve Reich's music pairs two unusually scored pieces. "You Are (Variations)" is set for three sopranos, an alto and two tenors, with flutes, oboe, English horn, two marimbas, clarinets, four pianos, vibraphone and strings. The texts, in Hebrew and English, are philosophical meditations: "You are whoever your thoughts are," "Say little and do much," etc. The resulting work is fascinating, the textures unique and fresh, the experience haunting and captivating, with the voices used as another significant instrumental part. Equally fine is the second work, "Cello Counterpoint," scored for eight cellos (seven pre-recorded and one played "live" by soloist Maya Baiser), which is noteworthy for its complex rhythms, use of counterpoint, and handsome lyrical solo cello line floating above it all. Reich fans will love this; the uninitiated will want to give it a try. —Robert Levine

Threshold of Night presents the Austin-based choral group in a program of premiere recordings of new works for voices and strings by the award-winning young British composer Tarik O'Regan. These peices- setting texts of British and North and South American writers - explore teh ecstasies of heaven and the challenges of life on Earth. O'Regan's is a music of polarities, sometimes contained with a single piece. The works here range from the dense and propulsive to the airy and meditative. Settings of 2 poems by Emily Dickinson, both commissioned by Conspirare, bookend the program. The title work, Threshold of Night (setting one of Kathleen Raine's Three Poems of Incarnation), earned O'Regan the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters Award in the Liturgical category. Written for Advent and completed on the eve of the first annivesary of Hurricane Katrina, its blues-inflected harmonies echo that community's need for guidance in the wake of disaster.

Takemitsu (1930-96) is Japan's greatest composer. He had a diverse musical career, which included work for films. His music partakes of aspects of postmodernism—serial construction, atonal modalities, unusual instrumentation—and all of it hypnotic. The works on this disc are for a chamber-size orchestra and are illuminated by the smaller forces. From Me Flows What You Call Time (1990) brings to mind a set of delicate, atonal wind chimes. Twill by Twilight—In Memory of Morton Feldman (1988) reflects Feldman's juxtapositions and separations, but with a bit more color. Requiem (1957), Takemitsu's first orchestral work, is stunning and very beautiful. —Paul Cook

Takemitsu, who died in 1996, wrote everything from movie music to Beatles arrangements to avant-garde chamber music. In his best works, he draws simultaneously on the traditional idiom of Japan and the most advanced contemporary techniques. All this music was written (or, in one case, arranged) for flute solo, and Patrick Gallois proves a most satisfying interpreter, getting into the composer's skin and playing with a most convincing sense of inner quiet. One misconceived idea mars the disc, though. Takemitsu had good reasons for producing three versions of Toward the Sea, a lovely and imaginative piece. But even when separated by other pieces, they don't make for satisfying listening on one program. (Given the choice, I would have picked the orchestral version for its added color.) Still, with such fine performances and sound, there's enough music on the disc to make it worth picking up if the idiom appeals to you. —Leslie Gerber

Toru Takemitsu

Silvestrov's Requiem for Larissa is a poignant tribute to the memory of his late wife, a bitterly-wrought mourning piece that transcends his individual grief to strike a universal chord. Its seven movements are played without pause, utilizing a large chorus and orchestra, piano, and a synthesizer. Its text is the traditional, though fragmented, Latin Requiem, along with an excerpt from a grim poem, "The Dream," by the Ukranian poet Taras Shevchenko. This last constitutes the haunting fourth movement, the sung words, a "farewell to earth," set to a slow pianissimo folklike melody that stays in the memory. The next movement, the Agnus Dei, includes extended Mozartian solos for violin, its postlude a moving depiction of unearthly peace. The final two movements are a reprised variation of what has come before, from the hieratic opening drenched in sorrow to a Tuba mirum that rages against the dying of the light. The last sounds we hear are the gentle rustlings of the wind, as Nature washes away grief. Silvestrov's sound world is unique, as is this modern masterpiece. Not to be missed. —Dan Davis

Byrd was the most prominent—and greatest—of the group of Elizabethan composers that included Tallis, Gibbons, Weelkes, and Morley. His three Masses are among the finest liturgical creations from any era. Byrd's collection of Latin motets, published in 1589 as Cantiones Sacrae (Sacred songs) contains one outstanding example after another of his inimitable style—long, interweaving lines and artfully crafted phrases that arrive at brief resting places, then build again until reaching a final, climactic, soul-satisfying cadence. Byrd's music is always full of intense human feeling, whether joy, despair, hope, or prayerful contemplation—and in each setting always seems to find perfect expression. The men and boys of The Choir of New College, Oxford have a centuries-old tradition of performing this kind of music—and it shows, especially in transcendent works such as "Ne irascaris Domine" and "Vide Domine afflictionem." —David Vernier

LAGQ Los Angeles Guitar Quartet

Schuman's music belongs to the era that spawned Roy Harris (his teacher), Howard Hanson, and Aaron Copland. Schuman's Symphony No. 3 is a clear homage to Harris, broken rhythms and all. The Symphony for Strings (1943) comes at a time when Schuman's voice is finally his own. What could come off as exceedingly dry is here given a performance of great depth by Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Schuman's Symphony No. 8 (1962) is truly modern, making extensive use of atonality and creating a series of stormy images—something that never appears in the music of Hanson, Copland, or Harris. A major re-release by Sony. —Paul Cook

William Thomas McKinley

Sir William Walton and Edith Sitwell