Check Our Catalog “Josh Rouse has never stayed in one place for very long, but El Turista — his third album as a Spanish citizen — suggests he isn’t leaving the Mediterranean anytime soon. Roughly half of El Turista is performed in Spanish, and far more than that bears the country’s influence, from the strum [...]
Monthly Archive for October, 2010
Check Our Catalog “Tenor Jonas Kaufmann possesses an operatic and concert repertory that spans several centuries, taking in Monteverdi and J.S. Bach and reaching into the twentieth century with works by Schoenberg and contemporary composers. The vast area in between includes Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Berlioz, Schubert, Wagner, Gounod, Mahler, Puccini, and much else.”–All Music Guide
Check Our Catalog “Who better to tell the tale of controversial Filipino political figure Imelda Marcos in notes and beats than the former Talking Head and the funky DJ? David Byrne (above) and Fatboy Slim call on a star-studded, mostly female cast of dozens to track Marcos’s life from pageant queen to “iron butterfly.’’ Five [...]
Claudia Quintet: Royal Toast
Posted in Avant-Garde Jazz, Jazz on Oct 27th, 2010
Check Our Catalog “Claudia’s timbres, eerie and winsome in equal measure, prove its greatest strong point. The combination of clarinet, accordion and vibraphone fashions an electric whistle and whir that squares the circle between 90s indie science frictioners Stereolab and 60s proto-proggers Soft Machine, making it clear that Claudia is a jazz group questioning the [...]
Check Our Catalog “Sometimes promoted as the successor to Luciano Pavarotti, Peru’s Juan Diego Flórez is actually a very different kind of tenor, and one of a sort that has not been seen much in recent years: his voice is light, extremely athletic, and suited above all to the bel canto tenor roles of the [...]
Peter Ostroushko: When the Last Morning Glory Blooms
Posted in Bluegrass, Country, Folk, Traditional Folk on Oct 27th, 2010
Check Our Catalog “There’s a quiet elegance and an undeniable timelessness embedded in the ten songs that comprise When the Last Morning Glory Blooms, as if Peter Ostroushko didn’t so much write them as discover them, lying around undisturbed for a hundred years, on yellowed sheet music atop a forgotten parlor piano in some dusty [...]
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Posted in Alt Rock, Indie, Movies, Soundtracks on Oct 27th, 2010
Check Our Catalog “Beck revisited his slacker-punk roots with the songs he wrote for Scott’s band Sex Bob-Omb; though they’re performed by Michael Cera and the other actors in the film…Meanwhile, Broken Social Scene are Crash and the Boys, the rival band whose “I’m So Sad, So Very Very Sad” lasts a whopping five seconds. [...]
Check Our Catalog “Soprano Christine Brewer has a terrific voice for Strauss — large, warm, colorful, with a velvety legato and the ability to soar over the orchestra — and in this release, she tackles three of the most tempestuously charged scenes from his operas.”–All Music Guide
Bryn Terfel: Bad Boys
Posted in Operas on Oct 27th, 2010
Check Our Catalog “The Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel rose with astonishing speed to the top ranks of international operatic stardom in the 1990s. He is known for a big, warm voice, intelligent and dramatically apt portrayals.”–All Music Guide
Tomas Luis de Victoria: Lamentations of Jeremiah
Posted in Choral on Oct 27th, 2010
Check Our Catalog “The Tallis Scholars are entirely devoted to the performance of Renaissance choral music. Through scholarship, musicianship, and the careful cultivation of a distinctive vocal sound, they have established themselves as the leading exponents of that particular repertory.”–All Music Guide