Lee Ritenour goes techno/pop/rock on an album originally released on the pop Elektra label – and as such is not recommended to jazz fans with a low tolerance for the stuff. Here Captain Fingers extends his reach to play keyboards and programmed electronic drums on a few tracks, along with very competent rock guitar .

EURINGER is a counter-culture, surreal, psychedelic, art house, avant-garde, possibly posthumous concept project from Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence fame. Featuring guest vocals from Grimes, Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance) and Chantal Claret and also staring Jimmy s Mom and Dad for good measure! the record is one long song/musical/concerto, as if an underground movie was made for your ears. I wanted it to sound as if Depeche Mode hired J. Dilla and DJ Premier to drop loops while Frank Zappa produced, and then I came in and s*** all over it, said Jimmy. Now living in New Zealand full time ( the most awesome country in the world ), Jimmy shares his innermost musical insights through sixteen songs, two covers (Kate Bush s Wuthering Heights and The Doobie Brothers classic What A Fool Believes ) four guest stars and one Jimmy. … he is really hyping up this record – it better be good! He continues, I was having fun exploring my brain and I wanted to invite my friends to have fun with me immersing myself in another time and space, bit by bit, gaining its form from my daily life into a surreal stream of consciousness.

Major Lazer’s animated “frontman” might be a bearded, beret-wearing soldier-cyborg who appears to have been lifted from a lost G.I. Joe episode, but the group itself is so much more. Beyond core members Diplo, Jillionaire, and Walshy Fire, Major Lazer is a moveable feast—the product of all its principals’ musical influences, their collaborators, and the places to which they've traveled in their decade of existence. Essentials is a sprawling introduction to the band’s biggest tracks and a glimpse into the vast array of cultures it folds into its cohesive musical vision. Recorded at Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Studio in Jamaica, 2009’s “Pon de Floor” mixes dancehall and Brazilian baile funk with a few choice lines from Kingston deejay Vybz Kartel. A languid house beat underpins “Lean On,” their 2015 team-up with France’s DJ Snake and Danish singer MØ. And Bruno Mars, Tyga, and Mystic feature on 2013’s more-than-suggestive, hip-hop-inspired dance track “Bubble Butt.” In addition to those and plenty of other key singles, Essentials also includes four newer tracks: Collabs with Mr. Eazi, Burna Boy, Kizz Daniel, and Babes Wodumo weave Afrobeats and gqom vibes seamlessly into Major Lazer’s borderless sound.

Thankful Heart, Joyful Mind is the second solo piano release from pianist/ composer/ arranger/ teacher Pam Asberry, winner of the 2018 Enlightened Piano Radio “Best New Artist” award. This album is a collection of twelve Christmas carols and songs (sacred and secular) that span nine centuries and eight countries, arranged as gentle, soothing piano solos sure to calm the jangled nerves that so often come with the holiday season. The album maintains a relaxed, thoughtful mood from start to finish, making it a perfect accompaniment to a holiday dinner, an evening with friends, wrapping gifts and much more. You might even be able to get St. Nick to spend a little extra time at your place if you have this music playing on Christmas Eve! While most of the carols are familiar, they are not the songs that get played over and over all season (to the point of “if I hear that one more time….”). The album was recorded at Piano Haven Studios in Sedona on Joe Bongiorno’s incredible Shigeru Kawai concert grand piano, so the piano sound is perfection.

Warner Bros. Pictures has announced that Heitor Pereira will be composing the music for the upcoming animated feature Smallfoot. The film is directed by Karey Kirkpatrick (Over the Hedge) and features the voices of Channing Tatum, James Corden, Zendaya, Common, LeBron James, Gina Rodriguez, Danny DeVito, Yara Shahidi, Ely Henry and Jimmy Tatro. The movie centers on a Yeti who is convinced that the elusive creatures known as “humans” really do exist. Bonne Radford (The Road to El Dorado), Glenn Ficarra & John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love, This is Us) are producing the project. Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie) are among the executive producers. Smallfoot is set to be released on September 28, 2018 by Warner Bros. Pictures…

Boito’s resplendent retelling of Goethe’s Faust, a monumental work of "choral grandeur and melodic richness" (The New York Times) in one of the most impressive productions ever seen at the War Memorial Opera House. The cast includes Ramón Vargas, a tenor "in ravishing voice" (Financial Times), as the philosopher who sells his soul to the Devil; the "luminous, compelling" Patricia Racette (Washington Post) as the woman he desires; and, in the vividly menacing title role, the "seductively malevolent" bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov, a "fullbodied bass-baritone" renowned for his "wonderfully evil portrayals" (The New York Times).

Anastasiya is a young, talented violinist. Born in Ukraine in 1994, she has been performing since the age of 8. Having just recently graduated at the ZHdk Academy in Zurich, this is her first album. In this recording, she plays the "Toscano", which is one of the best Stradivari violins. Luigi Piovano conducts the strings of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Her interpretation of Vivaldi's Four Season is a unique combination of the Italian cantabile, the Slavic ardor and the Nordic limpidity.

"4 years ago we launched our first album "The Third Age", 2 years ago "Super Troll Blaster" guided us to infinity and beyond, today we proudly present to you or third full length album "The Uruk Hai""

In the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, two groups of sonatas composed for a violin and a harpsichord accompanying them can be distinguished. The first of these are works where the harpsichord plays only the role of basso continuo. The second group includes violin and harpsichord works in which Bach definitively breaks with the tradition of basso continuo, giving the two parties autonomous meaning. This category includes 6 Sonatas marked in the catalog of the composer's works with positions 1014 to 1019, of which the first three have been recorded on this record by excellent instrumentalists, Aleksandra Bryła and Maria Banaszkiewicz-Bryła. The unusual composition techniques employed by Bach reveal a somewhat different image of the composer, devoid of ordinary seriousness or severity.

Within days of the first performance, Beethoven’s favourite pupil, Carl Czerny, had written that “on its own, the idea of introducing the chorus with Schiller’s Song of Joy was very finely conceived and equally finely executed (albeit at undue length), but it would be far better suited to a fantasy. As an instrumental composer Beethoven is such a great and unique figure that human voices fetter him more than they exalt him.” Also present at the concert, which featured not only the Ninth Symphony but also sections of the Missa solemnis, was Joseph Carl Rosenbaum, an official in the Esterházy household. His impression of the occasion was rather more succinct: “Overture and three Hymns with Kyrie and Ode to Joy; lovely, but tedious.” Altogether annihilating was the verdict of the composer, conductor and violin virtuoso Louis Spohr: the symphony was “monstrous and tasteless”, while Beethoven’s grasp of Schiller’s Ode was “so trivial that I cannot even now understand how a genius like Beethoven’s could have written it. I find in it another proof of what I had already remarked in Vienna, that Beethoven was wanting in aesthetical feeling and in a sense of the beautiful”. Even Wagner was ambivalent: in his Artwork of the Future, he extolled the Ninth as marking “the redemption of Music from out her own peculiar element into the realm of universal Art”, but in a letter to Liszt he described the final movement as “the weakest part” ofthe symphony.

"Some time ago Dorothee Mields asked me if we could perhaps performsome songs by Friedrich Hollaender. A glance at the fragile manuscript of his Lieder eines armen Mädchens (1921–24) revealed many similarities with the songs of the seventeenth century. The printed editions and manu- script scores that have come down to us from the early Baroque contain very little information and yet they conceal within them whole worlds of musical expression. And then the year 2018 arrived, with its linking lines going back to 1618 and the outbreak of the Thirty Years War and to 1918, the end of the First World War. We have placed the First World War with in the context of the period from 1914 to 1945, resulting in a further Thirty Years War. Both of these periods ended in extensive changes to existing political systems."

For many years Marek Szlezer has dreamed about making recordings of young works by Szymanowski, noticing in them special beauty, extraordinary expression and exceptional atmosphere. This passion is easily seen in the enthusiastic, expressive play of the pianist, perfectly building form and with extraordinary naturalness creating tension.

The modern-day appreciation of Francesco Bartolomeo Conti takes a decisive turn in the direction of his church music with this early eighteenth-century composer’s Missa Sancti Pauli given an ideal recording on Glossa by György Vashegyi, the Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra. Conti was a Florentine who worked for much of his career in the Imperial Court in Vienna, generating much attention there – the ever-observant JS Bach and Zelenka were both known to have been attracted by his music. Curiously, it was liturgical works like this 1715 Missa Sancti Pauli which kept Conti’s name known until near to the end of the nineteenth century rather than the operas, oratorios and cantatas with which he delighted the Viennese Court and which have hitherto been receiving the attention of artists and record labels today. If Conti’s church music is less fledgling Classical than his dramatic fare, there is much in the way of melodic tunefulness and concertato style – for both voices and instruments – to combine with fugal-imitative writing reminiscent of the stile antico.

Veteran Norwegian Dark Metallers AETERNUS are ready with "Heathen" - their long awaited, eighth full-length album. The seven-track album is a no-bullshit, straight to the point, heavy hitting attack on your ears and souls, from one of the true legends from the Bergen metal scene. The album was recorded at Bergen’s Conclave & Earshot studios, produced by Herbrand Larsen (ex-Enslaved), and is set for release by Dark Essence Records on October 12th.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine’s lifelong love of the blues, combined with her determination to uncover and commission works by black composers, has led to this album of pieces soaked in the blues tradition of the 19th-century Deep South. From the riotous opening “Blues (Deliver My Soul)” by David Baker to Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s bold Blue/s Forms for Solo Violin and Errollyn Wallen’s modernist “Woogie Boogie,” plus music by Billy Childs, William Grant Still, and more, it’s a dazzling, sophisticated collection. Barton Pine has this music in her blood, and she relishes the blues’ rich vein with playing of rhythmic freedom and ravishing beauty—and an incredible sense of fun.