Chaka Khan is set to return with her first album in 12 years. The full-length is dubbed, Hello Happiness, and is due for arrival on February 12th.
Hello Happiness serves as the long-awaited follow-up to 2007’s Funk This. It’s being released through Diary Records, the new label co-founded by Major Lazer member and Grammy-nominated producer Switch.
The forthcoming LP spans a total of seven “empowering” songs, including the previously released “Like Sugar”. It also features today’s unveiled title track, on which Khan celebrates “the life-affirming power of music” by successfully returning to the warm groove and strut of her disco roots.

Douglas Riva is an American pianist and a scholar of Spanish music. He studied with with Alicia de Larrocha and worked with her in producing a complete edition of Granados' works. Ms. de Larrocha is a master of this music, and her CDs are available on more expensive record labels. But Mr. Riva plays beautifully, with virtuosic technique, and with sensitivity to this highly-charged romantic score.

None of the more than 30 albums recorded by singer Morgana King beginning in the mid-'50s were embraced by the size of the audience that bought tickets to see the first two chapters of The Godfather film trilogy, in which King acted in the role of Mama Corleone. But it would be wrong to assume she had more impact as an actress than as a vocalist. Her acting roles, few and far between, were chosen with care, but did not have the resonance of some of her finest recordings.

Shirley Horn has made a remarkably strong and consistent series of records for Verve. On May the Music Never End, her 12th record for Verve, there are two big changes: the absence of Horn's longtime musical partner bassist Charles Ables, who passed away in 2001, and the addition of a pianist to take the place of Horn's quite capable playing. Ed Howard fills in admirably on bass and George Mesterhazy does the same on piano, except for on two tracks ("Maybe September" and "This is All I Ask") where Ahmad Jamal takes over.