This month we review and test releases from: Karen O & Danger Mouse, Madison Cunningham, Landgren/Wollny/Danielsson/Haffner, Fumio Yasuda and Boston SO/Andris Nelsons.
This month we review and test releases from: ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/Martin Gellner, Frederik Munk Larsen, Paul Lewis, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg/Gustavo Gimeno, and Andreas Ottensamer/Yuja Wang.
This month we review and test releases from: Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel, Archi Di Santa Cecilia/Luigi Piovano, Merje Kägu Ensemble, Cuarteto Casals and Christian Balvig 6-Tet
This month we review and test releases from: Thomas Søndergård/BBC Now, Johan Versk, Lars Danielsson & Paolo Fresu, Sir Roland Hanna and Emma Johnson & Friends
This month we review and test releases from: Paul Simon, Joscho Stephan Trio, Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Vladimir Jurowski, Paul McCartney, and Seong-Jin Cho
This month we review and test: Roberto Prosseda, Residentie Orkest The Hague/Jan Willem de Vriend, Lotta-Maria Saksa, Connie Han, Calidore String Quartet, and Greta Van Fleet.
There’s something familiar about this latest album from the surfer-turned-environmental activist, who appears on the cover surrounded by artfully-arranged plastics from the sea. Trouble is, it’s not comfortingly familiar in its continuation of the feel-good Hawaiian-tinged sounds of past offerings. Rather, it’s just more of the same, with Johnson showing little sign of moving on or developing, but instead just resting on his laurels. Or his palm-fronds, or whatever.
Whether or not it was intended as such, recorded while Allman was suffering from the liver cancer that finally claimed him in 2017 at just 69, Southern Blood serves as a suitable epitaph by combining a self-written opening track with nine takes on songs by friends and acquaintances. There’s a suitably dirty and authentic feel about the set, recorded in FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals and produced by Don Was.
Is it just me, or is Van the Man having a bit of an Indian summer, seemingly banging out albums at a remarkable pace? Certainly even at 72 the old boy is showing no signs of slowing down, and this rootsy set of Chicago blues tracks, mixing covers and originals, is one of his strongest offerings of late.
Appropriately, the veteran bass player’s second album with his trio starts with a delicate, considered bass-led piece, ‘Contact’. It starts with taut, cleanly-recorded solo bass, gradually joined by the slightest of shimmers from Joey Barron’s cymbals and the odd subtle chord from pianist Marc Copland, before settling into a more familiar piano trio form. Even then, Peacock is constantly busy in the background, and Barron rock-solid.
Marc Coppey is a French cellist now 47, his talents first spotted by Menuhin, whose repertoire spans from Bach to Boulez and Carter. He plays a 1711 Matteo Goffriller cello – and here, of course, faces enormous competition in the Dvorák from the span of Casals to Fournier, Rostropovich and Isserlis.
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