Classical Music 170 Items

Toronto keyboardist R. Grunwald has played on sessions for hundreds of musicians, and has served as bandleader for jazz/pop chanteuse Jill Barber and country/folk songwriter Donovan Woods for the better part of a decade. Now he's ready to step onto the public stage with his own music'alone. Oma is an evocative and deeply personal solo piano record, inspired in part by the life story of his 96-year-old grandmother, a Holocaust survivor and pianist. Drawing from Erik Satie, Nils Frahm and others, Grunwald refers to his intensely melodic compositions as 'extended minimalism.'

'After quitting piano, it was my Oma who inspired me to get back into it. She survived the 2nd world war moving from town to town, hiding from the Nazis, and the Russians in Poland. Music was the one thing that tied her young life together. This music is a tribute to her.'

Enjoy in a quiet environment.

Volker Bertelmann and Hildur Guðnadóttir hardly need an introduction - their distinct styles have graced the speakers of pretty much anyone enamored with experimental music in the last decade, and between them the two have chalked up an enviable canon of successes. Bertelmann, under the Hauschka moniker has explored the extremities of prepared piano improvisation, and Guðnadóttir has taken cinematic, explorative cello music into a new era of depth and passion, so to hear them both together is a rare and unexpected treat. Rare is putting it lightly even - „Pan Tone“ is a recording of a single concert which the duo performed on the 26th of February 2010 as part of Arctic Circle - Bubbly Blue and Green festival at Kings Place in London, and documents an event that would truly never be repeated. Sure, they could attempt to re-create the event, but the spontaneity and glorious serendipity in this particular recording is a pleasure to behold.

Bertelmann and Guðnadóttir decided to create a set of compositions which based on the idea of the ocean, and took a book of Pantones to extract exact references to the specific colors of the sea. These watery tones form the backbone of the performance and inform the direction of the collaboration, guiding us through rich blues, glassy greens and frothy whites. In listening to the music it seems incredibly appropriate that the artists should choose blue as the middle ground in their work; the ineffable lightness that Bertelmann brings to the table is a stark contrast to Guðnadóttir´s sinking darkness, and as the two styles collide we witness a plethora of tones, shades and hues. It sounds as if the two artists have been playing together for decades, and their sound is so perfectly matched you might wonder why it´s taken them this long to collaborate. All that´s left for us to do is to soak in the tidal beauty of this very exclusive body of music, to listen to it sing, bubble and crash through its duration before settling in total silence. When the record reaches its conclusion there is an unsettling calm, a sense that you have witnessed something very special indeed, and that is a feeling to prize amongst all else.

"In the Understage area of the Alexandra Trianti Hall, the musical saw in the hands of Nikos Giousef, and accompanied by piano, samplers and analog synthesizers, is transformed into a voice. ‘An otherworldly child’s voice’, ‘a Siren’s voice’ or ‘a castrato voice’, as it has been described, it easily climbs to tonic heights that the human voice can only reach with great effort." The pieces chosen for the program reflect this criterion, with works such as the aria “Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott” from the oratorio of J. S. Bach's “St Matthew Passion”, “Ave Maria” from Franz Schubert's “Ellens Gesang Iii”, H. Purcell's “Music for a while” as well as choral works like “Lacrimosa” from W. A. Mozart's Requiem and the First part (Grave) from G. B. Pergolesi's “Stabat Mater”. S. Rachmaninov's “Vocalise” is also a very interesting choice for musical saw, a song without lyrics as it is. The program also includes two works by greek composers, Ioannis Planiteros's “Ina ti”, written in the 17th century and still performed nowadays by local choirs in Zakynthos, and “ The Trawler” from Nikos Skalkotas's popular ballet “The Sea”, as a tribute to the great composer on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his death. George Katsanos, in three ambient tracks of the album, is really traveling us in the mysterious amazing music world of "Adagios from the Underground". Nikos Giousef soprano and baritone musical saw Irene Tiniakou piano George Katsanos Moog synthesizer, music box, kalimba, effects

The story of six soulmate musicians meeting at the intersection of classical composition, pop, electronic and minimal music begins in 2016 with their celebrated performance at the Cologne Philharmonie. After follow-up performances at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn as well as the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Gregor Schwellenbach, Daniel Brandt, John Kameel Farah, Paul Frick, Erol Sarp and Kai Schuhmacher made a guest appearance at the invitation of Radio Berlin Brandenburg in the iconic Haus des Rundfunks in Berlin's Westend on February 2, 2019. "Live im Haus des Rundfunks" documents the first half of this evening, in which the individual composer-pianists introduced themselves to the audience in solos, duos and trios. This carefully choreographed set served as an electrifying prelude to the grand finale, the 20-minute collective mantra of Steve Reich's 1973 composition Six Pianos, a studio recording of which has already been released on the 2016 record Steve Reich "Six Pianos" – Terry Riley "Keyboard Study #1" (FILM LP/CD 002).

In celebration of Specialty Records’ 75th anniversary, a new Sam Cooke compilation featuring tracks from his Specialty catalogue focusing on his pop-leaning tracks plus the live recordings from the legendary 1955 Shrine Concert that has never been available on vinyl before. 3x10″ released in a triple-gatefold jacket, featuring replica flyers and other ephemera included as inserts in the packaging.

In The Early Months Of 2020, When The Covid-19 Outbreak Ravaged His Home Country Of Italy, Prolific Composer Brunobavota Did What We All Would Eventually Do: Isolated Andwaited. What Followed Was A Year Of Fear, Anxiety, And Dread.Eventually, Fear Gave Way To Fatigue, And The Anxietymetamorphosized Into Nervous Energy. The Compulsion Tocreate Became More Powerful Than The Compression Andweight. And So Were Born Apartment Songs And Apartmentloops.Representing Two Separate But Intersecting Paths Of Bavota'screative Journey, Apartment Songs Is A Suite Of Sparse Soloacoustic Piano Works, While Apartment Loops Are Expansiveexplorations For Synthesizers And Outboard Effects Processors.Though In Theory The Two Sets Should Sound Disconnected Andunrelated - Given Their Disparate Creative Approaches Andinstrumentation - It's Bavota's Uncanny Sense Of Melody Andspace That Easily Unites Them As Two Halves Of A Singularvision.

»In June 2017, I was due to perform in Moscow when I met Kirill Gilels, the grandson of the famous pianist Emil Gilels. He listened to what our Phoenix Mastering® restoration process, can achieve, and made the decision to entrust us with the results of several years of research: he gave us a list of dates and places of the previously unreleased recordings of his grandfather. In Berlin, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, we came across a treasure trove, stunning in terms of both the quality and consistency of Emil Gilels’s playing. We were fully aware that he was one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century. It was in Amsterdam where at last, we succeeded in extracting this fabulous recital from 1976 at the Concertgebouw – recordings that had fallen into oblivion. We were allotted a studio where we listened to the tapes one by one, we did not utter a word, so overcome were we by the beauty of what we heard.« (F. D’Oria-Nicolas) Considered one of the most important pianists of the twentieth century, he was a pupil of H. Neuhaus. He wins the current Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels and takes on an international stature. In 1955, he was the first artist to be welcomed in the United States since the war: if the public, somewhat circumspect of Carnegie Hall, in New York, accompanies his entry on stage of a troubled silence, it is under a thunder of uninterrupted applause that he will refuse to leave the stage!

Tancade is the solo debut by experimental cellist Gaspar Claus. Following on from his previous soundtrack work and a wealth of collaborations (incl. Bryce Dessner, Sufjan Stevens, Jim O’Rourke), Claus brings forth a collection of pieces which free the cello from its own limitations. Majestic and adventurous, stormy and radiant, dreamy and rigorous, Tancade defies categorisation, evoking chamber music suspended in the fourth dimension, the soundtrack of an experimental film or the strange folk music of an undiscovered tribe.