Marc Copland and Greg Osby: Round and Round

"Greg Osby has a keen, focused tone on alto saxophone and a hummingbird’s phrasing, an equilibrium of hover and flutter. His style hasn’t changed drastically since the mid-1980s, when he was among the more important new arrivals on the New York scene. What has changed is his stature, and the context around his work. Mr. Osby is now a mentor and a pacesetter, one of the sturdier bridges between jazz generations. His music, for all its coiled intricacies, has gradually been absorbed by the modern mainstream. Mr. Osby turned 50 on Tuesday, marking the occasion on the bandstand. He’s at the Village Vanguard this week with … the pianist Marc Copland [and others]. … 'Autumn Wind' … unfolded with graceful purpose. … 'Round and Round,' the title track of a duo album released by Mr. Copland and Mr. Osby in 2003, was brisker and more urgent, with a minor melodic line evocative of Chick Corea" (Nate Chinen, "Bridging Jazz Generations Without Nostalgia," New York Times, 8/4/10).

View catalog record here!

Victoire: Cathedral City

"In the years since she left the Yale School of Music, composer Missy Mazzoli has made herself integral to New York’s close-knit new-music community and earned an ardent following. … And so it seems like I’ve been waiting forever for her to put out Cathedral City (New Amsterdam), the first long-player from the band she calls Victoire (ever since the Sony Corporation complained about their old name, 'Victrola') — even though it’s only been two years since the group was founded. … The scratchy recording of a firm, authoritarian (male) voice counts off, scrambled up in the background while Victoire plays Steve Reich-style rhythms with Mazzoli’s own smudgy harmonies; the nostalgic keening of the clarinet vies with the gloss of a once-futuristic synth patch. It’s in the creation of these moments that Victoire is most successful, when Mazzoli juxtaposes rock gestures or other found signifiers, and surprises us with deep, real feelings" (Daniel Stephen Johnson, "Unpop!," New Haven Advocate, 9/30/10).

View catalog record here!

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: Dazzle Ships

"[Record producer Mark] Ronson, 35, spoke with Melena Ryzik. … Q: So do you like unpacking more obscure stuff, like 'Dazzle Ships' by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark? It wasn't the hit of 1983 or anything. … A: … MNDR [Amanda Warner, who sings with the Business Intl.] told me to check out the record ['Dazzle Ships'], and I was just completely floored. It’s so weird when you hear something that’s like 30 years old that immediately you’re just like, I’ve been robbed, I could have been listening to this for the past 30 years. It’s just so elegant but a bit lo-fi at the same time. Bands like the Human League that took so long in the studio, just discovering the technology of those samplers and pitching and doing stuff with it, got it so right. In the same way like De La Soul’s first album, how do all those samples work together and they’re still in the same key? That’s only a little bit of luck and spending a load of time making it right" ("Playlist: Mark Ronson," New York Times, 10/1/10).

View catalog record here!

Mahler: Symphony No. 8; Valery Gergiev, London Symphony Orchestra

"Thanks largely to the efforts of Leonard Bernstein at the Philharmonic, Mahler became a part of the ’60s sensibility, and, thanks to the later efforts of many others, he became a central figure in the musical mainstream. … That said, even now complete single-season cycles of the symphonies are not common. … Yet just recently, in the spring of 2009, Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez led the Staatskapelle Berlin in all the symphonies at Carnegie Hall. And in the 2007-8 season Valery Gergiev conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in all the symphonies in London, performances that have mostly appeared on CDs from LSO Live. … In mid-October at Carnegie Hall, he conducts the Mariinsky Orchestra of St. Petersburg in six of the symphonies, Nos. 1, 2, 4-6 and 8. (The Eighth, the choral 'Symphony of a Thousand,' will also be performed at the Kennedy Center on Oct. 19.)" (James R. Oestreich, "Two Tributes for Mahler," New York Times, 9/12/10)

View catalog record here!

Pink Floyd: The Wall

"Pink Floyd is effectively kaput (the band released its last album of new material, 'The Division Bell,' in 1994), but Roger Waters, the band’s bassist and lyricist, is taking the landmark 1979 rock opera 'The Wall,' which he mostly wrote, back on the road in celebration of its 30th anniversary. He’s revisiting the original (and now legendary) staging of the 1980 tour — a wall will be built, brick by brick, until the performers are sealed off from the audience. (Spoiler alert: The sheer force of rock ’n’ roll nostalgia just may topple it at the end.)" (Amanda Petrusich, "Pop and Rock Listings," New York Times, 9/30/10)

View catalog record here!

Oneohtrix Point Never: Returnal

"Oneohtrix Point Never … generally forgoes percussion altogether, instead creating beautiful, glistening caverns of space. … For his set, which was essentially one long, mostly improvised composition, Mr. Lopatin primarily played a synthesizer routed through a sea of effects pedals, holding fatty notes until they bent or became distended. Fading in and out of focus were guttural burps and sharp sirens, high sounds that suggested birdcalls and something that sounded like a steel drum played underwater, among other noises. Sometimes he tilted tentatively toward the microphone and opened his mouth, adding a dollop of vocals to the mix, though rarely enough to steer the tide. The engrossing, occasionally hallucinatory recent Oneohtrix Point Never album, 'Returnal' … is less obscure than this show was, taking cues from frothy 1980s electro and the meatier, less embarrassing end of early New Age music" (Jon Caramanica, "Floating and Bobbing in an Oceanic Swell of Sound," New York Times, 8/30/10).

View catalog record here!

Bill Kirchen: Word to the Wise

"If you tried to fit all the famous rock and roots rock musicians Bill Kirchen has played with into Cafe Nine, there wouldn’t be much room left for fans of Kirchen’s guitar playing; he’s one of the most distinctive, pure-Fender Telecaster tone guitar sounds in modern music. You’d have … Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe … Paul Carrack … Dan Hicks … not to mention the late Norton Buffalo. … Kirchen takes the Cafe Nine stage at 8 p.m. sharp this Sunday. … 'You’re going to hear a bunch of stuff from my new CD, 'Word to the Wise,' … said Kirchen. … The album pairs Kirchen in musical duets with a series of artists, including Costello, Lowe and Buffalo, the great Bay Area harmonica player — best known as a member of Steve Miller’s band and for his work with Bonnie Raitt — who recorded his contribution, 'Valley of the Moon,' before succumbing to cancer last year. Kirchen … was born in Bridgeport but moved at 6 months old" (Mark Zaretsky, "Telecaster Titan Kirchen Coming to Cafe Nine," New Haven Register, 10/15/10).

View catalog record here!

Jason Moran: Ten

"Mr. Moran, a pianist of high-concept designs and ground-level assurance, was named a MacArthur Fellow this week. … This year he released 'Ten' (Blue Note), a superb mile marker for the Bandwagon, his working trio (sometimes quartet) over the last decade, with the drummer Nasheet Waits and the bassist Tarus Mateen. No group in jazz has a more flexibly sturdy sense of itself" (Nate Chinen, "Jazz Listings," New York Times, 9/30/10).

View catalog record here!

Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca

"'Bitte Orca' (Domino), Dirty Projectors’ newest LP, is largely considered its most accessible, although tracing its complex melodies and rhythms — borrowing from avant-garde, indie-rock and contemporary rhythm and blues traditions (more Mariah Carey than Sam Cooke) — is still largely impossible" (Amanda Petrusich, "Pop and Rock Listings," New York Times, 9/9/10).

View catalog record here!

Jascha Heifetz: Greatest Hits

"The singularity of George Gershwin is an inexhaustible topic. … He is Russian, he is Jewish, he is American. He composes for Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, Hollywood, Carnegie Hall. He is an American in Paris. In Vienna, he is the rare American composer for whom Alban Berg greatly matters. This fluidity of personal identity and musical style promotes a singular fluidity of interpretation. Rhapsody in Blue is equally Gershwin playing with Paul Whiteman's band and Leonard Bernstein playing (at much slower tempos) with the New York Philharmonic. … Jascha Heifetz arranged six Porgy numbers for violin and piano [two are on this CD]. For me, Heifetz's recordings of these pieces, so creatively re-imagined, are among his highest achievements. … Heifetz knew Gershwin; he had hoped for a Gershwin violin concerto. When Gershwin died, Heifetz said, 'We should be ashamed that we didn't appreciate this man when he was here in our midst'" (Joseph Horowitz, "The Singularity of Gershwin," The Unanswered Question, 9/28/10).
View catalog record here!

Allan Sherman: My Son, the Celebrity

"Not long ago it would have been inconceivable that Allan Sherman would ever seem timely or topical again. In the early 1960s, after a failed career as a television producer, he became the pudgy king of Borscht Belt-style song parodies, setting yuks about suburbia and clichés of Jewish life to the tunes of 'Streets of Laredo' and 'Frère Jacques.' His high point came in 1963. … But in the wake of 'Mad Men,' nothing from the Kennedy era looks the same, and Sherman’s albums … can be read as both lighthearted crowd pleasers and glimpses into a culture of rat-race conformity. He even sounds like a young Don Draper in 'When I Was a Lad' from the album 'My Son, the Celebrity,' in which Sherman, in his flat sing-speak, describes ladder climbing at an advertising firm: 'I learned who was going out with whom, and who had the keys to the powder room/For the key to the powder room, you see, is the key to the structure of the agency'" (Ben Sisario, "Playlist," New York Times, 9/5/10).

View catalog record here!

Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 4 ("Los Angeles," 2008)

"[T]he Los Angeles Philharmonic and its former music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen … gave the premiere in 2009. Now they offer an eloquent performance of the somber Fourth. … Though his first three symphonies are written for full orchestra, the Fourth uses only strings, harp and percussion. It is an example of what Mr. Pärt calls tintinnabulation, a slow, introspective style, with the strings playing in a high register, that often evokes the pealing of bells. The solemn, shimmering haze of string chords and delicate chimes that opens the symphony reappears throughout the three movements. The serenity, meditative moods and glacial pace of most of the first two movements are replaced by a seething tension in the finale, 'Deciso,' in which anxiety underpins the rhythmically intense conclusion. … The disc also includes fragments from the hauntingly beautiful 'Kanon Pokajanen' (1997), an a cappella choral piece set to an Eastern Orthodox text" (Vivien Schweitzer, "CD Review," New York Times, 10/10/10).

View catalog record here!

El Ten Eleven (self-titled)

"Springing with glowing rhythms, ETE’s work champions intelligent, circuitous songwriting while using short runtimes. The duo uses only two primary tools — Dunn on a majestic double neck bass/guitar combo and Fogarty on drums — while accenting their compositions with a complicated system of loops and pedals. They have so few instruments for practicality purposes. 'If we didn’t have all the looping, there would have to be other musicians,' says Dunn. 'We’ve really made it so that we sound like a six-person band, but there’s two of us and that’s really freeing.' While those sonics can be heavenly, El Ten Eleven treats its music with a refreshingly down-to-earth perspective. 'We don’t even listen to post-rock, but one of the things we dislike about it is the lack of humor. A lot of those bands seem really self-absorbed and pretentious, not to knock anybody,' says Dunn. 'We take our music seriously, but you’ve got to have a sense of humor, don’t you?'" (Reyan Ali, "Practical Alchemy," New Haven Advocate, 9/9/10, p. 42).

View catalog record here!

Janáček: Kát'a Kabanová; Charles Mackerras, conductor

"Charles Mackerras, an Australian conductor who played a crucial role in establishing Janacek’s operas in the West; made important discoveries about vocal ornamentation in Mozart operas; and was an elegant conductor of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas … died on Wednesday. … In 1947 [he] met a Czech musician who persuaded him to apply for a scholarship to study conducting in Prague. His teacher there was the eminent conductor Vaclav Talich, and it was while watching Talich prepare a performance of Janacek’s 'Katya Kabanova' that Mr. Mackerras found himself 'completely and utterly bowled over,' he said in a 2009 interview with Opera Britannia. Mr. Mackerras gave the British premiere of 'Katya Kabanova' at Sadler’s Wells in 1951 and helped bring the rest of the composer’s operas to Western houses, where they are now firmly established. He also made a renowned set of Janacek recordings for Decca" ("Charles Mackerras, Elegant Conductor, Dies at 84," New York Times, 7/15/10).
View catalog record here!

Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses: Junky Star

"Most musicians might expect to win a Grammy before an Oscar, but it didn't work that way for Ryan Bingham. The rootsy singer-songwriter picked up an Academy Award last March for penning 'The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)' with T Bone Burnett. The spirit of that haunting ballad is alive on Junky Star, Bingham's stellar third album. With Burnett back as producer, this is rich alt-country terrain. While there are shades of that other Ryan — Adams — the gravelly-voiced Bingham is more of a cross between Bob Dylan and Nebraska-style Bruce Springsteen, making tracks like the harmonica-spiked 'The Wandering' and the evocative title tune truly addictive" ("Music," People, 9/13/10, p. 64).

View catalog record here!

Vijay Iyer: Solo

"It’s the pianist alone, tagging his heroes and playing some of his own music. It’s a recital, and the kind of record most serious jazz pianists get around to at some point. It’s more serious than many. … His music makes you ask important questions about what that tradition really is and who defined it. … Mr. Iyer’s piece 'Patterns' might be most representative of his own style, a journey over hill and dale over a nine-beat rhythm. And he comes closest to successfully Iyerizing an old piece of music on a version of Monk’s 'Epistrophe,' on which he builds the song’s moving harmony into his flow without breaking pace. Ellington is a different matter: On 'Black & Tan Fantasy' Mr. Iyer uses stride figures in the left hand to support solo blues choruses that move forward from Ellingtonia to post-bebop. … Across the album, rather than making his style paramount, he’s showing you that he can play in more than one way. He’s also repping for what he respects" (Ben Ratliff, "New CDs," New York Times, 9/5/10).

View catalog record here!

Kele: The Boxer

"'Forget where you’ve been,' Kele sang as he started his set at Webster Hall on Wednesday night with 'Walk Tall,' the song that also starts his solo album, 'The Boxer' (Glassnote). 'Cut your ties to the past and wave it goodbye.' … 'The Boxer' commits to dance music. Kele played and programmed the album largely on his own, abetted by the Brooklyn producer XXXchange, assembling songs that draw on trance, techno and house. They’re pop songs, with as much melody as beat, full of refrains made for singalongs. The lyrics take up love, regret, starting over, self-doubt and self-help: 'You are stronger than you think' Kele sang as 'Rise' built from quietly plinking percussion to exultant trance chords. Kele’s voice adds some of Bono’s resonance to the postpunk yelp of the Cure’s Robert Smith, so Kele can straddle desperation and bravado in choruses like 'I could have given you everything you wanted'" (Jon Pareles, "In the Present and Still Dance-Ready," New York Times, 9/9/10).

View catalog record here!

Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin

"At the close of Schubert's 'Die Schöne Müllerin' — the most beloved of all song cycles — a young, itinerant mill worker, rejected in love by the beautiful daughter of his employer, decides to throw himself into the mountain stream that has guided him to his destiny. The treasury of recordings is dominated by such giants as Aksel Schiøtz and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but the past few months have brought forth several aspiring suitors. The recording by Jonas Kaufmann (on Decca) is a monument among them — a first foray into Schubert lieder by the finest German tenor since Fritz Wunderlich. Kaufmann, who has recently sung Lohengrin at Bayreuth, is every inch the romantic lead, offering intense, dusky vocalism and broad phrases of heroic cast; the playing of the experienced pianist Helmut Deutsch adds the extra interest, regal in manner but subtle in its awareness of Schubert's complicated emotional landscape" (Russell Platt, "Classical Notes: Miller Time," New Yorker, 9/13/10, p. 6).
View catalog record here!

Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs: God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise

"Much of his music deals with striving, escape and with finding a better place in life. This theme is clearly exemplified, for example, in 'Beg, Steal or Borrow,' from God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise. 'You've been howling at the moon like a slack-jaw fool; And breaking every rule they can throw on; But one of these days it's gonna be right soon; You'll find your legs and go and stay gone. Young man full of big plans and thinking about tomorrow; Young man going to make a stand; You beg, steal, you borrow. ...' Asked why this thread runs through his music LaMontagne says, 'I think that's because for so much of my life I felt that. There's a real sense of desperation when you grow up in poverty. The desperation gets stuck inside of you and if you can't find release it can kill you. You can make bad choices and find yourself in a downward spiral or you can find something that gets you out of it. Music did that for me" (Ellen Sterling, "Ray LaMontagne: Digging Deep and Doing What He Does," Huffington Post, 9/2/10).

View catalog record here!

Great Strauss Scenes (Christine Brewer, soprano)

"As captured here Ms. Brewer’s voice is glorious. She sings with abundant sound and wondrous colorings. It is not that common for a big-voiced dramatic soprano to combine such easy power with such alluring vocal beauty. She brings distinctive interpretive touches to extended scenes from 'Elektra,' 'Die Frau Ohne Schatten' and 'Salome,' and exudes vocal charisma. … On the recording Ms. Brewer is mesmerizing in the final scene from 'Salome.' While conveying the character’s erotic depravity, she sounds seductive and shimmering. … Mr. Runnicles, an acclaimed conductor of Wagner and Strauss, draws exceptional playing from the Atlanta Symphony, rich with mellow sound and controlled intensity. The recording is filled out with strong performances of orchestral pieces from Strauss operas: the Moonlight Interlude from 'Capriccio' and the Dance of the Seven Veils from 'Salome'" (Anthony Tommasini, "On the Disc, Not the Stage," New York Times, 9/5/10).

View catalog record here!