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Malakoff Kowalski:

'When I Died' from Songs With Words

SONGS WITH WORDS is the new album by Malakoff Kowalski together with pianists Igor Levit, Johanna Summer, and Chilly Gonzales. The album features miniatures by classical composers coupled with sung poems by American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Reflecting on Felix Mendelssohn’s SONGS WITHOUT WORDS, this extraordinary quartet presents a new kind of music, and possibly a whole new genre that has never before appeared in this form either in classical music, jazz, or pop.
In his liner notes, Kowalski, the Berlin-based German-American composer and singer of Persian origin, succinctly describes the album thus: “It took about five years to birth these twelve songs. They were assembled from both famous and lesser-known miniatures by Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Aram Khachaturian, Maurice Ravel, Edvard Grieg, Amy Beach, Germaine Tailleferre, Claude Debussy, and Gabriel Fauré. I kept unearthing timeless, intimate, vulnerable poems from Ginsberg’s oeuvre, and for some reason, again and again, these poems, with little or no reworking, functioned very naturally as song lyrics. The quiet, inner-directed vocals strictly followed the piano’s motifs and themes, while the piano parts, in turn, stuck to their original versions, with only the most imperceptible of alterations here and there.”

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla:

Weinberg - The Passenger

Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla is one of today’s leading ambassadors for the long-neglected music of the Polish-born Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-96). Following on from her critically lauded readings of several of his major orchestral works, Deutsche Grammophon is now delighted to present a new recording of the first of Weinberg’s seven operas, The Passenger, with the Lithuanian conductor again at the helm. The album captures the version of this “shattering Holocaust opera” (The Critic) staged at Madrid’s Teatro Real in spring 2024, a revival of the world premiere production directed by fellow Weinberg champion David Pountney (a Teatro Real co production with the Bregenz Festival, Teatr Wielki and English National Opera). 

Making her Madrid operatic debut, Gražinyte-Tyla conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Real and a cast including soprano Amanda Majeski (Marta), mezzo-soprano Daveda Karanas (Lisa), tenor Nikolai Schukoff (Walter) and baritone Gyula Orendt (Tadeusz). Violinist Stephen Waarts doubles as Tadeusz for the instrumental solo. The filmed version of The Passenger is available to stream now on STAGE+. The audio album is set for digital release on 24 January 2025, shortly before International Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January), which marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945, and honours the memory of all victims of Nazism.

Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra:

Still Blooming

Jeff Goldblum is pleased to present his new album, ‘Still Blooming’, (his fourth) set to be released on April 25th, 2025 on Decca Records.

Fresh from his starring roles in Kaos (Netflix) and the blockbuster Wicked (Universal), Goldblum continues to explore his passion for the music that he’s been performing for decades with his wonderful bandmates in The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.

This album will delight with tracks featuring his Wicked superstar cohorts Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo – as well as classics by Maiya Sykes and Scarlett Johansson.

The first single, featuring the multifaceted talent of Johansson, is ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’ – perhaps most famously recorded by Frank Sinatra in the 1960’s, accompanied by Count Basie and arranged and directed by Quincy Jones. Here, Johannson’s sophisticated and sultry interpretation of this sweet tune welcomes a new and modern audience.

‘Still Blooming’ offers a tasteful curation of beloved jazz standards from both the Golden Era of Broadway and the Great American Songbook. Here, Goldblum is the host for his talented friends, all veterans of the stage and screen, with collaborations that underscore the delicious link between jazz and pop culture.

Goldblum opens the album with ‘I Don’t Know Why (I Just Do)’ featuring the incandescent artistry of Ariana Grande, who once again demonstrates her phenomenal range.  The unstoppable force that is Cynthia Erivo infuses the wartime-era classic ‘We’ll Meet Again’ with her emotion, hope, and truth.  And Maiya Sykes, a veteran of everything from swing to soul, takes the jazz standard ‘Stella By Starlight’ to another level with her improvisational scat stylings. Thoroughly enjoying this newest musical adventure, Goldblum himself treats us to his own vocals on ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’.

Roberto Prosseda:

War Silence w/London Phil - Nir Kabaretti

The Italian piano concerto is a genre largely absent from the standard repertoire. In War Silence, pianist Roberto Prosseda helps to remedy this neglect in a programme consisting of four rare Italian piano concertos. Written between 1900 and 2015, concertos by Guido Alberto Fano, Luigi Dallapiccola, Silvio Omizzolo and Cristian Carrara will be new to most listeners, and two are world premiere recordings. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Nir Kabaretti.

From the late-Romantic Andante e Allegro con fuoco by Guido Alberto Fano and Dallapiccola’s early wartime concerto to the final, much later work by Cristian Carrara, this album provides a welcome overview of the piano concerto in 20th- and 21st-century Italy. All four works benefit from the playing of Roberto Prosseda, whose talents as a champion of Italian contemporary music and of undiscovered piano music make him the ideal advocate.

Alina Ibragimova - Cedric Tiberghien:

Schumann Violin Sonatas

The partnership of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien needs no introduction, having been responsible over the last 16 years for authoritative readings of the major repertoire for violin and piano. This is their latest collaboration, bringing compelling accounts of Schumann’s three violin sonatas—passionate works inspired by the calibre of musicians Schumann worked with in the early 1850s.

The critical reception of Schumann’s violin sonatas has fluctuated over the last few centuries. Written for and first performed by some of the leading violinists of the day, all three are now recognized for the masterpieces they undoubtedly are, needing no apology. ‘In a word, delicious’ was Gramophone’s verdict on Alina and Cédric’s last recording together.
 

Renaud Capucon:

Richard Strauss - Wiener Symphoniker, Petr Popelka

Violinist Renaud Capuçon pays homage to one of his favourite composers with a compilation of chamber and orchestral works from the innovative late-Romantic soundworld of RichardStrauss. Set for release digitally and on 3 CDs, the album is bookended by a new recording of the youthful Violin Concerto, which Capuçon performs with the Wiener Symphoniker and Petr Popelka, and a reading of Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”) from 2000, in which the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester was led by Capuçon and conducted by Seiji Ozawa. Renaud has also chosen to include the Violin Sonata, Piano Quartet, Sextet from Capriccio and string septet arrangement of Metamorphosen, as well as the Daphne-Etude for solo violin. 

His Richard Strauss album is released with the central movement of the Violin Sonata available to stream or download. On the same day as the album, the Lento, ma non troppo second movement of the Violin Concerto. 

“It’s a bit quirky, but I love it,” says Renaud Capuçon of Strauss’s Violin Concerto in D minor, which the composer wrote in 1882, when he was just 17. The work is relatively seldom performed – perhaps, suggests Capuçon, because it is “very difficult, comparable to Schumann’s Violin Concerto”. Traditional in form, the work is full of colour – from the dramatic opening Allegro to the mercurial finale, via the lyrical central slow movement – and reveals Strauss’s early mastery of orchestration. Under the baton of Petr Popelka, Capuçon and the Wiener Symphoniker establish a close dialogue, capturing every change in mood.

Ashley Jackson:

Take Me To The Water

Decca Records, US is honored to announce the signing of award-winning harpist, Ashley Jackson, whose evocative artistry fuses traditional classical music with the rich heritage of Black spirituality.  Ashley’s label debut album, Take Me To The Water, will launch globally on March 21, with the first two tracks, “Deep River Pt. 1” and “Deep River Pt. 2” available now across all digital service providers. Pre-order the album and listen to the tracks here.

Take Me to the Water is a masterful exploration of the transformative and spiritual power of water, featuring Jackson’s unique interpretations of iconic works by Margaret Bonds, Alice Coltrane, Claude Debussy, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Through this deeply personal and creative project, Jackson takes listeners on a musical journey that connects cultural heritage, spiritual reflection, and universal themes of renewal and freedom.

“Water is celebrated in lots of different cultures, but, despite that, you find recurring themes in those celebrations,” Jackson shares. “So I wanted to hone in on those ideas—ideals—such as love and rebirth and hope.”

Vonn Vanier:

Dawn

Montclair Records, in association with CEN/The Orchard, a division of Sony Music Entertainment has released ‘Dawn,’ the debut album by 17-year-old composer Vonn Vanier. Featuring seven original compositions for orchestra, chamber ensemble, and solo piano, Dawn highlights Vanier's distinctive musical voice and remarkable artistry. Now available on all major streaming platforms, the album marks the emergence of a compelling new voice in contemporary classical music.

The first piece from the recording, Shimmer, is now available. Listeners can stream the piece here, pre-order the album here, and watch the official video.

The album's centerpiece includes two orchestral works, performed by the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Daria Novo: Rhapsody in C Minor, written in 2023, and Vanier's debut orchestral piece, Lost at Home, a symphonic poem inspired by Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

Additional compositions include works for chamber ensembles—Witching Hour and Jagged, both performed by Quartet San Francisco; Shimmer, for piano quintet, featuring pianist Brenda Vahur with Quartet San Francisco; and Bloom, for wind quintet, performed by Quinteto Latino.

Vanier's journey in music began as a chorister with the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys in San Francisco and continued through summers at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Growing up and learning his craft in San Francisco and the vast splendor of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Vonn Vanier brings to music a creative impulse, a determined work ethic and a cultural perspective that differ from those of the typical conservatory background. With Dawn, Montclair Records celebrates Vonn Vanier's debut and invites listeners to experience the artistry of an emerging voice whose talent and vision signal a compelling future in music.

Jon Balke:

Skrifum

Norway’s Jon Balke proposes a new sonic dimension with Skrifum, continuing a line of inquiry begun with Warp (2016) and Discourses (2020), solo piano albums which also processed the acoustic environment in which the music was heard. Skrifum, however, takes things a step further, as is apparent from the outset.  Where the piano music of Discourses was threaded with subtly collaged ‘field recordings’, like subliminal messages from the outside world, Skrifum is more self-contained, a deeper journey into the sound-universe of the piano itself.

Balke’s newest solo music is made with the aid of electronic audio tool the Spektrafon, live processing software which he helped develop together with technology professor Anders Tveit at the Norwegian Academy of Music.  Using this interface, Balke is now able to directly manipulate ambient audio sound from the piano in real time – pulling out frequencies and sustaining them as chords of harmonics, showers of sparkling overtones, or eerie drones. Activated and energized reverberation thus becomes new material for improvised interaction and dialogue, often with quite beautiful results.

Skrifum means “write” in Icelandic and, for all the technological sophistication employed, there is an almost calligraphic quality to the melodic lines and sounds that Balke carefully shapes along the way: writing, drawing and designing the music in the changing light and lengthening shadows cast by the processed material. “The Spektrafon’s sound feeds back in ways that demand space,” says Jon Balke. “So I take that opportunity to play mostly monophonically and to focus on every single note and its weight and position in the soundscape.”

Billy Hart Quartet:

Just

After twenty-plus years of shared activity, the Billy Hart Quartet – with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and Ben Street – is still distinguished by its stylistic openness, a consequence of setting out to embrace all the things that drummer-leader Hart likes to play. “If ever there was an example of contemporary jazz that draws extensively on all the ‘traditions’ while infusing some of the melodic clarity associated with the more challenging end of popular song, then this is it,” wrote Kevin Le Gendre in Jazzwise of the quartet’s album One Is The Other. A drummer of enormous experience, who has played through many of jazz’s idiomatic upheavals, Billy Hart, now 84, favours a ‘multi-directional’ sound approach, and his younger confrères respond accordingly, each piece subtly opening another door. The quartet is an alliance of four highly individual improvisers. As pianist Ethan Iverson has noted: “A jazz group is a sensitive mechanism. You’ve got to play together and listen hard, but there’s also a way you need to stay your own course.”

Yuval Cohen Quartet:

Winter Poems

Soprano saxophonist Yuval Cohen’s debut for the label is a thrilling offering that captures the brother of long-time ECM traveller Avishai Cohen charting innovative paths through eight originals in graceful interplay with his quartet. Pianist Tom Oren, bassist Alon Near and Alon Benjamini on drums are longtime acquaintances of Yuval’s who are not only outstanding instrumentalists in their own right, but share a deep, intuitive understanding for the leader’s musical language and improvisational approach. “I’m very fortunate to be able to play with these young guys,” says Yuval. “I’ve known them for a long time – they’re three beautiful souls and talents with whom I had a great time shaping this music together.” Throughout the album, the saxophonist demonstrates his own understanding of chamber jazz dynamics and explores a broad range of influences – from folk idioms to motif development borrowed from classical music – to lyrical and contemplative, but also energetic and uplifting results.

Gabriel Olafs:

Polar

Icelandic composer Gabríel Ólafs’ new album Polar is a work of speculative fiction in musical form. Polar provides the soundtrack to a frozen world. A world of towering mountain ranges, desolate tundra, forbidding oceans, and the monolithic remnants of a lost civilization.

POLAR: TRAVELER’S LOG - Story by Rebecca Roanhorse - Traveler's log:

The planet rises in the ship's viewscreen, a boundless world of whites and water-logged blues, skies the color of old frost. Atmospheric conditions amenable to life, but surface temperature hostile to carbon-based life. My readings say there is nothing alive here.

Not even you... for very long, anyway.

I am sorry, traveler, but you are doomed. We know that death comes for us all, the tragedy of our small lives intolerable. But here you are, tolerating it. I estimate your lifespan in increments – joys and sorrows, dreams and dreads reduced to mathematical calculations.
The algorithm gives you three days, maybe four before your technology fails and this frozen world claims you forever. It is a handful of hours slipping through loose fingers.

But cheer up! Death is not upon you yet. Let us see what there is to see while we still have eyes to see it, hands to touch it, skin that desires, and a tongue that tastes.

So, traveler, land this failing ship, for there is nowhere else in the universe to go. Your directive is clear, and the way back is lost to the time that has already passed to bring you this far. From here, your journey flows in a single direction: forward, as all life flows.

Until death intercedes to stop it.

This place is a kaleidoscope of restless storm-grayed ancient seas. They rock and heave with the secrets of the origins of life. Is that not what you seek, too? These secrets? They exist here in this stretch of rolling nothingness, in the echoes of aging whalesong.

Somewhere just beyond your ken. But search for them, anyway. Drift in the ebb and flow of loss and gain and loss, again. It is not so terrible, this loneliness.

Rainer Bruninghaus:

Freigeweht

Released in 1981, the debut of the legendary keyboardist from Eberhard Weber’s Colours band and later the Jan Garbarek Group, Freigeweht presented Rainer Brüninghaus as a highly original and idiosyncratic sound sculptor in his own right, accompanied by ECM stalwarts Kenny Wheeler on flugelhorn and drummer Jon Christensen as well as oboist Brynjar Hoff. In a review of the album from the year of its release, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung traced Rainer’s influences and minimalist designs back to Steve Reich, calling Brüninghaus “the most imaginative musician to employ minimal art in the realm of jazz. (…) Though he neither uses minimal art as ideology nor as replacement for a rhythm section, but in a more playfully constructive way, as an element that can undergo change.” Jon Christensen adds uncompromising propulsion to Brüninghaus’s lyrical themes, which are evocatively fleshed out by Wheeler and Hoff’s contemplative tones. (The Luminessence edition of ‘Freigeweht’ arrives in a tip-on gatefold accompanied by new liner notes).

Fotina Naumenko:

Bespoke Songs

Acclaimed soprano, Fotina Naumenko, hailed for her “radiant voice” by the Boston Globe has received her first individual Grammy® nomination, in the category of Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, for her newest release, Bespoke Songs. The world premiere recording features 4 works for soprano and mixed instrumental ensembles commissioned by Naumenko from four composers, each based on lyrics by female authors. Bespoke Songs is available on New Focus Recordings (FCR410) and to stream on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify and other leading streaming services.

The album takes its title from the opening cycle of twelve pieces, Bespoke Songs by Jonathan Newman. The lyrics for this cycle – sung in English, French, Hebrew, Korean, Swedish and Russian – are poems by female authors taken from different time periods across two millennia, strung together into a cohesive narrative about love with newly-commissioned texts by Michigan-based poet Kristina Faust. 

Francois Couturier - Dominique Pifarely:

Preludes and Songs

François Couturier and Dominique Pifarély, defining figures in creative music in France, renew their special connection on Preludes and Songs, an album of sensitive interaction, improvisational flair, and wide ranging artistic reference. Almost three decades have elapsed since the last ECM album by the pianist and violinist (Poros, recorded in 1997), and although there have been shared musical adventures in the interim, this  recording amounts to a reassessment and realignment of their duo work: “The idea was not to go back to where we first stopped,” Dominique Pifarély explains, “but to start from the point that each of us had reached during this long pause. Therefore we had to really pay attention to each other’s musical personality, since we had built different ideas and forms meanwhile. We absolutely wanted to respect each other’s route, and find a passage to each other.”

Julia Hulsmann Quartet:

Under the Surface

Julia Hülsmann’s quartet resurfaces with a fresh Norwegian voice on horn in tow and presents an attractive batch of originals that finds the group thoughtfully exploring common ground with a knack for adventure. As on past outings, each quartet member contributes music to the session, the leader herself being responsible for half the programme. Saxophonist Uli Kempendorff’s introduction to Julia’s trio on 2019’s Not Far From Here already brought a new dimension to the group’s interplay – this sense is again amplified and expanded upon through the addition of Norwegian trumpeter Hildegunn Øiseth, who joins the quartet on trumpet and the supply articulating goat horn for five cuts. Spellbinding lyricism and playful rhythmic and melodic interaction conspire throughout Under The Surface – a gem in Julia Hülsmann’s increasingly impressive ECM-oeuvre.

The Nash Ensemble:

Debussy: String Quartet & Sonatas

Currently celebrating its 60th-anniversary season, The Nash Ensemble here delivers accounts of Debussy’s String Quartet & Sonatas. Besides that early quartet and the three sonatas which date from the composer’s final years, the programme also includes a rare outing for David Walter’s chamber ensemble arrangement of the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Scored for twelve players (single strings and winds, plus harp and crotales), this is an idiomatic version which loses none of the mastery and languor of the orchestral original. This album again demonstrates the truth of The Sunday Times’s evaluation of the Nash ‘chamber music royalty’.

Benjamin Lackner:

Spindrift

Back with a newly formed quintet, gathered together for a particularly fruitful 2024 session in Southern France, the German-American pianist Benjamin Lackner now presents a different side of his composer-approach that should go a step further in exposing Lackner as a force to be reckoned with in the contemporary jazz world. Trumpeter Mathias Eick is the sole returnee from Lackner’s debut Last Decade and heard here in striking dualism with Mark Turner’s idiosyncratic saxophone dialect, forming a key-characteristic of the interplay that permeates Spindrift. The horn-duo and pianist are joined by the nonpareil bassist Linda May Han Oh and French drummer Matthieu Chazarenc, who was part of Lackner’s trio before the pianist’s tenure with ECM.

“I spent the last two years writing nearly 100 tunes and experimenting with two or three voices in each song,” Lackner outlines the process that led to new material. “I would write the tune, record a demo version that same day and then let it rest for a week before deciding on whether it was a keeper or not. The closer we got to the recording the more I started editing my list down and I showed up in the studio for the recording with about 20 songs. We chose the nine we deemed the best for the session. I was really blown away by how the musicians approached the music with such openness and spontaneity, despite a lot of the music having been far more written out than on Last Decade.“

Seong-Jin Cho:

Ravel - The Complete Solo Piano Works

Having loved Ravel since childhood, Seong-Jin Cho has chosen to mark the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth by recording his complete solo piano music and the two concertos. He is joined in the latter by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons, following acclaimed live performances with them as part of his ongoing focus on the French composer. Cho’s insightful readings of Ravel, on stage and in the studio, underline his status as one of today’s most elegant and accomplished pianists, ten years on from his Chopin Competition victory.

Deutsche Grammophon releases the first of two albums, Ravel: The Complete Solo Piano Works, today. (digitally and on two CDs). The second album, containing the two piano concertos and a deluxe edition will soon follow!

Seong-Jin Cho has always felt a close connection with the French piano literature and found himself fully immersed in Ravel while studying at the Paris Conservatoire. Discussing the challenges of the solo works, he points to the composer’s orchestral sound and meticulous attention to detail. “Ravel really knew what he wanted, so I try to follow his specific markings,” he says. “Miroirs, for example, is incredibly technically demanding. It’s so sensitive and dramatic, full of imagination and colour – it’s almost impossible to apply every marking, but I try my best!”

Recent reviews suggest he knows exactly how to realize Ravel’s wishes. Following a recital in Madrid in March, Scherzo hailed Cho as “perhaps the finest Ravel interpreter of our time”, while after his Edinburgh Festival recital, The Scotsman wrote, “With what seemed like impossibly perfect precision, the first half of all Ravel heard Cho in a contrasting and extensive range of colour, coupled with a sense of flow that allowed the music to breathe with ease and warmth.”

Maria Duenas:

Paganini - 24 Caprices

María Dueñas finds the perfect balance between artistry and technique as she tackles an icon of the repertoire for her second Deutsche Grammophon album. Having earned rave reviews and a 2024 OPUS KLASSIK Young Talent of the Year award for her DG debut, Beethoven and Beyond, the Spanish violinist now turns to Paganini’s legendary 24 Caprices. She couples these with a selection of later works inspired by Paganini, presenting music by composers ranging from Berlioz to Gabriela Ortiz. Dueñas is joined in chamber pieces by Boris Kuschnir, pianists Itamar Golan and Alexander Malofeev and guitarist Raphaël Feuillâtre, and in orchestral caprices by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Mihhail Gerts. 
 

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