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A. Everard (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Aug 01, 2015
Like Cassandra Wilson’s Coming Forth By Day [reviewed here], this album marks the centenary of Billie Holiday’s birth – and while one might expect James’s voice to be less well suited to the music most associated with the singer than Wilson’s, in fact exactly the opposite is true. Whereas Wilson’s set sounds mannered and highly constructed, James’s has a more sincere feel to it, not least due to the relaxed interplay between his voice, Jason Moran’s piano, John Patitucci on bass and Eric Harland’s controlled, expressive drumming. The band sounds tight and intuitive – listen to the bluesy opening of ‘Fine And Mellow’ to appreciate that – and the perfect foil for James’s warm, rich voice. At the risk of labouring the point, this album’s gospelly, plaintive take on ‘Strange Fruit’ moves in a way Wilson’s widescreen epic reading entirely fails to.
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jul 01, 2015
192kHz/24-bit ALAC/FLAC, CKD 479 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) Most collectors will have discovered the Mozart Divertimenti and Serenades via Decca and its mono/stereo LP series with various Viennese ensembles, from the time of Willi Boskovsky. Linn’s enjoyable programme with the SCO players – pairs of clarinets, horns and bassoons – has more of an ‘outdoors’ style, fresh and open.
A. Everard (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jul 01, 2015
See what they did with the album name? Hmmm – but obvious title aside, this is a striking set, combining the talents of guitarist Young with the piano of Marcin Wasilewski (whose trio also contributes bass and drums) and saxophonist Trygve Seim, to form a quintet clearly locked together and understanding each other’s every move. It works well, from the reflective opener, ‘I Lost My Heart to You’, through to the rather more upbeat ‘Bounce’, for which Young swaps acoustic for electric – and an electric with a lovely hollow-bodied tone – and the changing paces of 1970. The appeal is extended by a typically up close and personal ECM recording, though at times it does seem a little ‘hot’, with a bit too much sax breathiness and cymbal splash. However, it’s always interesting and involving, and the musicianship on offer here is peerless.
A. Everard (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jul 01, 2015
I guess when you get to your 12th studio album you might be forgiven for running out of steam a bit, but this latest package from jazz diva Diana Krall has been received with somewhat mixed reviews, since its belated release due to the singer/pianist’s illness. It’s a bit of an oddity, comprising mainly of ’70s ballads by the likes of Randy Newman, The Carpenters and Elton John, and with not much sign of the piano fireworks Krall has brought to bear on some of her previous outings. It may be the familiarity of so much of the material, or that these new recordings don’t bring too much we didn’t already know, but this does seem something of an exercise in treading water. Even a new song by Paul McCartney doesn’t help much, a duet on Georgie Fame’s ‘Yeah Yeah’ is only 50% successful(!) and, while the sound is workmanlike, even that doesn’t really stand out.
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jul 01, 2015
You don’t get a booklet PDF with this download so you’ll need to see the web page for full track details. Obviously, there’s the Chopin Cello Sonata and the Grand Duo he co-wrote with cellist and friend Auguste Franchomme. Track 9 is a Nocturne by him, track 8 his setting of Chopin’s Op. 15:1.
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jul 01, 2015
192kHz/24-bit ALAC/FLAC, CKD 462 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) This first instalment in a new Sibelius cycle with the BBC’s Welsh Orchestra has prompted a mixed response. Criticism of the sound from Cardiff’s Hoddinott hall strikes me as spectacularly wrong (Gramophone) as – at 192kHz/24-bit at least – this is an extremely fine, natural orchestral presentation.
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jun 01, 2015
Elizabeth Roe is a young Chicago pianist with already an impressive CV. Well worth hearing, she’s also half of a piano duet (see here). Here, she rounds out her programme with two solo ‘night pieces’ – Barber’s Nocturne ‘Homage To John Field’ and Britten’s Notturno written (1963) as a test piece for the very first Leeds Pianoforte Competition. Both main works exist in definitive recordings: John Browning’s (for whom the Barber was written) with Szell/Cleveland on Sony; and Richter’s with Britten/ECO on Decca.
A. Everard (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jun 01, 2015
We’ve only just been introduced, and already 32-year-old Cuban-born Ms Pacheco is sitting at her piano in just her drawers – what is one to think? Actually, Marialy Pacheco already has six previous releases under her belt (not that she’s wearing one), and is an acclaimed classical and jazz pianist. This is simply her first album for the Neuklang label, and finds Pacheco going back to her Havana roots, accompanied by Colombian bassist and drummer Juan Camillo Villa and Miguel Altamar. It’s a tight little trio, able to kick back on tracks such as ‘Cambodian Smiles’ or motor through ‘En El Camino’, while the album centres around the pianist’s three-part ‘Cuban Suite’, exploring the country’s dance styles. And the ‘klang’ here is certainly impressive: yes, the piano is rather spotlit, but the bass and drums are resolved well, and this is a very attractive-sounding set.
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jun 01, 2015
You can of course sample tracks at HRA and read the booklet PDF (texts dangerously close to ‘Pseuds’ Corner’ territory) before thinking of buying, which is probably just as well for the compositions of this Russian Orthodox Bishop (Metropolitan), born in 1966. There’s a Concerto grosso and a fugue on B-A-C-H – ‘the sense of the infinite contained in these four notes continues to excite’, we are told – but the rest is vocal: an ultra-conservative Stabat mater, which I admit I quite enjoyed, Songs of Death (after Lorca) and De Profundis, a 24m Psalm settings piece. The Concerto grosso is pure Baroque-pastiche, the fugue like an old Stokowski Bach transcription. While nothing will frighten the horses, it’s depressing to find this sort of sub-Pärt ‘me too’ music, copying its ‘sawing’ motifs and liberal use of tolling bells, being written today.
A. Everard (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jun 01, 2015
44. 1kHz/24-bit WAV/FLAC/ALAC, Naim CD210 (supplied bywww. naimlabel. com) So what’s with the Hitchcockian title? Well, London-based trio Troyka tells us the title of its new album comes from guitarist Chris Montague’s fear of birds – this ‘escalated into an album set in a fictionalised London: a post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare in which people have contracted a form of avian flu that is slowly turning them into human-size birds’.

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