CLASSICAL
Various Composers
Romantic Flute Concertos
Anne Pustlauk; L’Arpa Festante / Korneel Bernolet
Note 1
NO26002
It’s no longer particularly unusual to hear works of the Romantic period played on period instruments. Most often, though, these performances are of works from early in that era, when the instruments being used were still very similar to those used in the baroque and classical periods. For this recording of late-19th-century flute concertos by Peter Benoit, Ferdinand Lager, and Carl Reinicke, soloist Anne Pustlauk uses several wood and wood-metal hybrid flutes, all with Boehm-system keys, while the Arpa Festante ensemble uses instruments that don’t sound radically different from those commonly in use today — in this context, it’s their approach to rhythm and vibrato that are most period-specific. The result is a genuinely unique-sounding recording; the flutes in particular have a very special tone, while the orchestra’s distinctiveness is a bit more subtle. Any library supporting orchestral or wind pedagogy would be very wise to pick this one up.
Various Composers
[Ex]tradition: Gaelic Songs & Dances from 18th Century
The Curious Bards
Harmonia Mundi (dist. Integral)
HMN946105
One of the delightful quirks of musical history is the degree to which folk and classical music have shared common ground at different times and in different places. In the 18th-century British isles, for example, the line between folk and art music was particularly porous; composers regularly used folk melodies as raw material, and folk musicians (notably Ireland’s great Turlough O’Carolan) sometimes wrote and published formal compositions. On this album, the adventurous baroque ensemble The Curious Bards range freely over that fuzzy borderline, playing sets of jigs and reels on baroque violin, viola da gamba, transverse flute, tin whistle, harp, and 18th-century cittern, while also delivering decorous interpretations and arrangements of folk-derived compositions of the era by Carolan and others. The group’s playing is admirably idiomatic, and the tunes are a consistent delight. Soprano Ilektra Platiopoulou appears on several tracks, and is also notable for her ability to convey both elegance and folkie directness.
Various Composers
Les Âges du monde: French Viol Consort Music Through the Ages
Chelys Consort of Viols; James Akers
Bis (dist. Naxos)
BIS-2733
Various Composers
Troubled Times: Music and Espionage in Renaissance England
The Queen’s Six; The Rose Consort of Viols
Signum Classics (dist. Naxos)
SIGCD978
Since its displacement by the violoncello, the viola da gamba has been entirely forgotten except by early-music specialists (of which, to be fair, there has been a growing number in recent decades), so it’s easy to lose sight of how incredibly popular it was as both a solo and a consort instrument throughout the Renaissance and well into the baroque period in England and Europe, especially France. These two lovely releases open a window on the music that would have been played by viol consorts in courtly French settings in the late 17th century and in Tudor England in the 16th (when the confluence of music and religious politics could turn deadly). Les Âges du monde consists primarily of lighthearted dance music — allemandes, sarabands, and chaconnes by the likes of Eustache du Caurroy, Jean-Baptiste Lully, and Pierre-François Caroubel. By contrast, Troubled Times features sacred vocal works by John Bull, Thomas Morley, William Byrd and others, accompanied by viol consort. This music is dark and serious, befitting the “troubled times” during which they were written — and often characterized by crypto-Catholic features designed to convey what had become forbidden religious messages. Here the spare and intense singing of The Queen’s Six is especially effective. You could hardly find two more starkly contrasting examples of the musical contexts in which the viol played an important role during this period of European history.
Garth Neustadter
Seaborne
The Percussion Collective
Pentatone (dist. Naxos)
PTC 5187525
Seaborne is a multimedia project designed to “reveal the sea in all its wonder… (offering) a meditation on humanity’s relationship with the ocean.” Scored for percussion ensemble and voice (and performed here with shimmering vitality by The Percussion Collective), the music is indeed highly programmatic, evoking mental images of sun-dappled waves, underwater caves, and rushing schools of sparkling fish. It does this primarily through well-established minimalist techniques of repetition within constraints of strict tonal consonance, but there are also moments when the textures thicken and the chords stack up to create feelings of conflict and even crisis. The music is designed to be combined with video footage in an immersive media experience, but it stands up very well on its own. My only complaint about this music is that there should be more of it; a disc that offers less than a half hour of music really shouldn’t be sold at full-line price.
Marc’Antonio Ingegneri
Volume Six: The Teacher and His Disciples
Choir of Girton College, Cambridge; The Western Wyndes
Toccata Classics (dist. Naxos)
TOCC 0801
The hits just keep on coming — where “hits” means “recordings of music no one has heard, let alone recorded, since the late 16th century.” This is the sixth volume in an ongoing project by the magnificent Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, under the direction of Gareth Wilson, bringing to light the previously neglected music of Marc’Antonio Ingegneri. Ingegneri was a contemporary of Palestrina, to whom some of his work has been incorrectly attributed in the past; he was also a teacher of Claudio Monteverdi, who would become a towering figure of the late Renaissance and early baroque. The theme of the vocal works in this collection is Christ’s relationship with his disciples, and the program includes twelve topically linked motets (Ego sum pastor bonus, Ego sum panis vivus, etc.) as well as Ingegneri’s Missa Kyrie Secundi Toni for five voices; some of the motets are sung and others are performed instrumentally by the cornett and sacbut ensemble The Western Wyndes. As with the previous volumes in this series, the music is simply gorgeous, as is the singing. Any library with a collecting interest in Renaissance music should consider every recording in this series an essential purchase.
JAZZ
Steven Bernstein & Scotty Hard
ResoNation Trio/Ultra Resonance
Royal Potato Family
No cat. no.
I’m not normally a fan of jazz combos without chord instruments; too often, I find the music produced by such ensembles dry and colorless. But this project by trumpeter Steven Bernstein caught my attention. It’s actually two albums in one: the first is (as its title implies) a trio project on which Bernstein is joined by bassist Scott Colley and drummer Nasheet Watts. It’s a mostly all-originals program, with a version of the classic blues song “Sitting on Tope of the World” at the end. The group’s playing is consistently and genuinely fascinating: Bernstein plays creatively but with restraint; Colley’s approach is sometimes melodically contrapuntal, sometimes more pointillistic; Watts fills much of the empty space with tasteful and expansive patterns and flourishes. Ultra Resonance is something very different that springs from the seed of ResoNation Trio. On this second set of compositions, producer/synthesist Scotty Hard takes elements of the music produced for the original album and uses them as a basis for something much weirder. Some of those elements remain recognizable, and others are aggressively manipulated and mutated into radically new forms — often thickly textured, sometimes dubbily echoed, occasionally funky. Overall, the album is a bracing and often challenging listen.
Ron Carter & Ricky Dillard
Sweet, Sweet Spirit
Motown Gospel/Blue Note
602488384759
Joel Ross
Gospel Music
Blue Note
602488058292
Here are two very different approaches to blending gospel music with jazz, both released recently on the legendary Blue Note label. The joint project by Ricky Dillard and his New-G choir with jazz bass elder statesman Ron Carter is really simply a straight-up gospel album: extremely high energy (check out the double-time rhythm section on “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” for example) and 100% sanctified, it represents not so much a blending of jazz and gospel styles as a full ingestion of Carter’s bass playing into a rollicking, rocking, shouting church service — and as such, it’s both exhausting and thrilling, as well as an astonishing testament to Carter’s continued musical vitality at age 89. Vibraphonist/composer Joel Ross’s album comes from a different place altogether. Its title is a bit tongue-in-cheek — none of the music on this album could reasonably be said to come from “gospel” as a stylistic genre. Instead, it’s complex, contemplative, carefully composed modern jazz. But it comes with a clear programmatic purpose: Ross and his sextet are “trying to share what I believe is the good news as well as (pay) homage to where I’m coming from,” a goal borne out by track titles like “Repentance” and “Trinity,” as well as a few vocal numbers. The music varies in vibe from a bustling up-tempo swing (“Hostile,” “The New Man”) to quieter fare, often in odd time signatures (“Wisdom Is Eternal,” “The Shadowlands”). Both albums are excellent, each in a very different way.
The Joymakers
A Texas-Sized Band
Turtle Bay
TBR26002CD
Looking at the cover of this disc, one could be forgiven for expecting a program of old-fashioned Western swing. And in a sense, that’s what it is — the music is hot jazz played in a style that developed in the desert Southwest in the 1920s and 1930s. But it’s not the fiddle-heavy, country-inflected Western swing of Bob Wills or Milton Brown; you’ll hear more New Orleans than Oklahoma here. Lots of collective improvisation (listen to the joyfully frenetic opening to “The Pay Off”), lots of propulsive yug-dugga-dugga plectrum banjo, lots of clarinet and saxophone solos. Part of what makes this album such a delight is that the repertoire is less familiar than what you normally get with trad and hot-jazz albums: sure, there’s “Stomp Off, Let’s Go!” and a sprightly rendition of “Clap Hands! Here Comes Charlie,” which was a hit for Ella Fitzgerald when she recorded it with Chick Webb’s band, but most of these songs will be delightful new discoveries for lovers of early jazz. Highly recommended to all libraries.
Leigh Pilzer
Keep Holding On
Strange Woman
010
The baritone sax is a tough instrument to play in a demure way — its sound is just too intrinsically raucous. And when it’s the lead instrument in an organ trio (a format known much more for greasy funk than for decorous swing), that natural sonic tendency just gets more pronounced. And when the saxophonist is a player as joyful and energetic as Leigh Pilzer, well, you know what to expect. Pilzer’s new album is an absolute blast; even when she’s in a relatively relaxed mode (as on “Musing Music” or the gently propulsive “What’s Up, Puppy”) she’s bursting with ideas and energy. Organist Paul Bratcher and drummer Greg Holloway give as good as they get, and the guest horn players — especially the irrepressible trombonist Jen Krupa, whose mute work on “Js and Ks” is brilliant — bring their A games as well. This is one of the most delightful straight-ahead jazz albums I’ve heard this year.
Virginia MacDonald
In Search of…
Cellar Music
CMF020124
Opening with the intriguing and melodically knotty bop workout “Last Call at Dimitri’s” (on which her clarinet and Laura Anglade’s worldlessvocals deliver the head in unison), Virginia MacDonald marks her debut as a leader with a brilliant exposition of what modern straight-ahead jazz can be: challenging but swinging, complex but lyrical, intellectual but engaging. Consider, for example, the title track, a gently swaying Latin tune with a slithering, sideways chord progression, and another original, the even more complex but powerfully swinging “Retrogression.” For standards, MacDonald gives us a lovely arrangement of “Stardust,” which begins as a clarinet solo before becoming a clarinet/bass duet — which works better than one might expect — as well as a simply gorgeous clarinet-and-piano rendition of Charles Mingus’s “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love,” in an arrangement that would not sound out of place in the middle of a classical recital. This is a truly special album that heralds the arrival of a major young talent in jazz clarinet.
FOLK/COUNTRY
The Clover Valley Boys
The Clover Valley Boys
Jalopy
JR034
It’s one thing to play old-time music in a faithfully old-time style; it’s quite another to play and record old-time music in an old-time style. For their self-titled debut album, this New Orleans-based trio seem to have gone back in time: not only do they sing old songs (the Rouse Brothers’ “Bum Bum Blues,” the Delmore Brothers’ “In the Blue Hills of Virginia,” A.P. Carter’s “Pretty Raindrops,” etc.), but they sing them with the tonal inflections of a bygone era. And the recorded sound is just as archaic — especially on “Bum Bum Blues,” you would swear that you’re listening to 78 rpm acetate transfers. What might come across as an annoying affectation at the hands of lesser musicians is instead purely charming in this case. Their repertoire comes from out West as well as the Deep South; there’s more than a hint of Western swing on some of these tracks, especially when Coleman Akin breaks out his steel guitar. This album is a sheer delight from beginning to end.
Sophie Wellington
Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still
Adhyâropa
AR00184
Fiddler, guitarist, singer, and flatfoot dancer Sophie Wellington is back with another album of old-time and newer-time folk songs and tunes. This time the focus is on her guitar playing and singing: she has arranged both traditional and more contemporary songs for flatpicking guitar, including a brilliant setting of the classic fiddle tune “Scolding Wife,” an unusually quiet and contemplative take on “Jack of Diamonds” (combining harmonics and subtle string bending in unusual ways), and an equally quiet version of Peter, Paul & Mary’s Folk Scare classic “Autumn to May.” On some of the uptempo fiddle tunes her guitar playing is accompanied by the rhythmic tapping, scraping, and stomping of the flatfoot dancing she learned while growing up in Virginia. There’s an essential delicacy to the music on this album that is unusual in the context of old-time music, and that may, to the casual listener, partly obscure the virtuosity behind these performances. Don’t be fooled; Sophie Wellington is a master.
Pharis & Jason Romero
These Are the Days That Turn into Years
Lula/Free Dirt (dist. Redeye)
LULA267
Every time I look at a picture of Pharis and Jason Romero, all I can think of is the fire ten years ago that destroyed their workshop, in which some of the finest banjos of the 21st century had been built. Luckily, they were able rebuild and now record in their new space. You can hear some of those banjos here: notice the dark, rich-toned instrument bubbling beneath the tight vocal harmonies on “Last Call,” for example, and also on “Left My Home.” Pharis is an exceptional songwriter and singer; this is an all-original program, and honestly, every song is a gem. There’s nothing particularly forward-thinking about their approach to contemporary folk music, and yet somehow everything they perform sounds simultaneously old-school and fresh. Fiddler Trent Freeman and pianist Clinton Davis, alongside several other guest musicians, bring extra dimension and depth to their sound. Recommended.
ROCK/POP
Various Artists
Armagideon Time: When Punk Met Dub 1978-1984 (3 discs)
Cherry Red (dist. MVD)
CRCD3BOX212
Another in the Cherry Red label’s ongoing series of carefully curated and packaged box sets documenting the history of pop music (especially in the UK), Armagideon Time is an unusually exciting one that focuses on an understudied and underappreciated phenomenon: the confluence of punk rock and dub/reggae in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From the beginning of the punk juggernaut in the mid-1970s, punks and English Rastafarians shared a feeling of alienation from British society, and that led to many instances of an unlikely melding of harsh, aggressive punk rock and dreamy, mystical dubwise reggae. The Sex Pistols’ John Lydon was hired by Island records to travel to Jamaica and recruit artists for a new roots reggae imprint; the Clash recorded not only reggae covers (most notably Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves”) but also original reggae songs, sometimes with dub mixes; and as this exceptional collection demonstrates, that melding of influences expanded widely across the scene and found highly disparate expressions. From the punkier side you’ll find XTC’s “Super Tuff,” the Jam’s “Pop Art Poem,” and a 12″ mix of Boomtown Rats’ “House on Fire”; from the reggae side, you’ll find pure roots-and-culture material like “Throw Away Your Gun (Dub)” by Prince Far I, the Twinkle Brothers’ “Free Us (Dub),” and Steel Pulse’s discomix version of “Prodigal Son.” And you’ll find lots of stuff that occupies the weird and messy territory in between. As always, the booklet provides both a useful overview essay (by Jah Wobble!) and even more essential track-by-track commentary. For all libraries with a collection interest in pop or world music.
Banco de Gaia
Maya: 20th Anniversary Edition (expanded reissue; 3 discs)
Disco Gecko (dist. MVD)
GKOCD014
British producer and electronic musician Toby Marks has been doing business as Banco de Gaia for several decades now, putting out music that draws on a wide variety of global and ethnic styles and putting elements of all of them to work in the creation of sweeping, cinematic exercises in funky eclecticism. On a typical Banco de Gaia track you might hear snatches of vocal found sound, Indian percussion, thumping house beats, desert blues guitar, and/or breakbeat samples. What tends to characterize all of them is a sense of sustained forward motion over a long period — listening to a Banca de Gaia track is a bit like taking a long train journey through a funky landscape. Much of his music would be just as welcome in the chill-out room as on the dance floor. On this three-disc reissue of his 1994 album Maya, the second and third discs consist of outtakes, demos, live versions, and remixes of the original material by the likes of Haj Ali, Temple Hedz, and Eat Static, each of whom puts a unique imprint on what was pretty unique music to start with. It’s back on the market now because the original reissue, released in 2014, sold out almost immediately and fans have been clamoring for a repress ever since. Check it out and you’ll see why.
Banda AL9
Hey! Hey! We’re Banda AL9
Wicked Cool
WKC7711501
We usually think of power pop as a product of either the 1970s (think the Raspberries, the Rubinoos, Cheap Trick) or the 1980s (think Dwight Twilley, the Shoes, Cheap Trick), but the music of Brazilian brother duo Banda AL9 reminds us that power pop’s roots are deeply embedded in the 1960s. Hey! Hey! We’re Banda AL9 brings together new versions of material already familiar to their passionate cult following as well as some new songs, one of them written for them by Steven Van Zandt (a.k.a. Little Steven, of E Street Band fame and the founder of Wicked Cool Records). The program is 36 minutes of pure pop bliss: tight harmonies, chiming 12-string guitar arpeggios, handclaps on the backbeat, and hooks hooks hooks. Matheus and Thiago Khouri sing every line as if their lives depended on it, and you’ll be singing right along with them. This is perhaps the best driving-with-the-roof-down album I’ve heard in five years. Don’t miss it.
Discovery Zone
Library Copy Do Not Remove
RVING Intl/Plancha
RVNGNL131/ARTPL-258
With a title like Library Copy: Do Not Remove, you just know I had to review this one. This album has its origin in an immersive sound creation put together for live performance in the Zeiss-Groß Planetarium in Berlin. Its goal is pretty ambitious: to lead the listener to consider the natural world’s immanence even in the context of electronic simulation. Over the course of the program’s seven tracks, you hear human voices being both replicated and manipulated, field recordings of insects and flowing water, and electronic music that ranges from the unsettling to the blissfully lyrical. The centerpiece of the album is its title track, a spoken-word piece that will put Boomer and Gen-X listeners in mind of Laurie Anderson, with a healthy dollop of Jorge Luis Borges. I’ll leave you to discover the rest — it’s different from anything you’ve ever heard.
Boy With Apple
Navigation
Welfare Sounds & Records (dist. Redeye)
CDWSR195
One of the most exciting musical discoveries I’ve made this year is the Welfare Sounds & Records label, which is based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Everything I’ve heard from them so far has been intriguing, and I’m especially delighted by the music of Boy With Apple. They operate in sort of a shoegaze/dream-pop vein, producing a sound that is as swirly and dense as that of My Bloody Valentine but as melodically engaging as the Cocteau Twins. “Sorrow, comfort, love, and hope are the emotions at the core of both our lyrics and our atmosphere,” they say, and I don’t think I could put it better. Of course, you won’t be able to decipher the lyrics very well: on “Feeble” they’re singing about something “sweet” and about how it something-or-other through their fingers, but you don’t have to know what it is to swoon along with the gently soaring chorus; “Contact High” is relatively spare in texture, built on acoustic guitars and tambourine, but the vocals are so heavily layered and reverbed that it’s virtually impossible to suss out the words. No matter. Just let yourself be immersed in blissful, non-directive sound.
WORLD/ETHNIC
Ghetto Priest
Bright Soul (digital only)
Holyvoudoo Spiritual High Culture Music
No cat. no.
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the street date for this one for months now. Ghetto Priest is one of the most exciting artists currently working in a contemporary roots reggae style, and his new solo album is simply brilliant. It opens with a bang, with his take on Bunny Wailer’s “Bright Soul,” a simultaneously joyful and regretful call to repentance aimed at disciples who “reach the River Jordan and (then) turn back.” The triumphal horns provide a righteous rebuke, while the lyrics plead with the listener to align with the will of Jah. Elsewhere, Ghetto Priest celebrates the demise of Babylon, remembers the contributions of famed Rastafari prophet Marcus Garvey, and offers an anthem of thanks and praise. None of these themes are new; lyrically, these roads have been traveled by many of his fellow singers and players of instruments. But Ghetto Priest brings a fresh and modern sound to these familiar ideas, even as he pays tribute to his predecessors and keeps his sound deeply planted in roots-and-culture tradition. Bright Soul has my vote for Best Reggae Album of 2026. (And as the rest of this month’s World/Ethnic section shows, it has stiff competition.)
Various Artists
Horace Andy: The Voice in Sound
Echo Beach
EB226
Though the cover credits Horace Andy, The Voice In Sound would more properly be characterized as a various-artists compilation. For this collection, the folks at Echo Beach invited a wide variety of artists and producers to create dub versions of previously-recorded Horace Andy tracks. Thus, we have Dubmones (better known as reggae/dub interpreters of classic Ramones songs) putting their unique stamp on “Wicked Babylon Must Go Down,” Rob Smith dubbing up the legendary “Cuss Cuss” and giving it a touch of wobbly dubstep bass, and Lee Groves putting a subtly junglist rhythmic layer over “Money Money.” Andy himself is still there, of course: his unique tenor voice is present on every track, floating in and out of the mix in a dubwise style. The Voice In Sound ends up being a celebration of both Andy’s impressive legacy as a vocalist and the new traditions of dub production being created by some of the world’s best producers.
Tomawok
Wake Up
Self-released
No cat. no.
France’s reggae and dancehall scene has been a fertile source of exciting new artists for decades now, from the early work of Massilia Sound System in the 1990s to more recent entrants like Blaize Fayah and Jahneration. Tomawok has been on the scene for almost a quarter of a century now, having experimented with ska, hip hop and grime before settling into his current dancehall style. He chats almost entirely in French, and good on him for that. He favors a speed-rap style and can ride a riddim like nobody’s business; on Wake Up he brings in guests Mr Lexx (who chats in a rockstone style that contrasts nicely with Tomawok’s tenor voice and more melodic approach) and Seuss Mace (a Kansas-city based artist who brings a more hip-hop flavor to the title track), and throughout the album nicely balances party anthems with songs of a more conscious orientation. It’s another solid contribution from one of France’s brightest dancehall reggae stars.
Dactah Chando
Reset (digital only)
Achinech Productions
APLP2601
One of the things that sets Spanish singjay Dactah Chando apart from the reggae competition is his ability simultaneously to work in a deeply old-school roots-and-culture style and to incorporate modern and non-reggae elements without watering down his old-school sound. Consider, for example, the jazz flute solos on the swinging “Enemies” — they bring a unique flavor to the song, but it never sounds anything like reggae-jazz fusion. Consider also the sometimes almost heavy-metal-sounding lead guitar playing that crops up on tracks like “Times” and “Conform” — again, they help Chando create something new without cutting ties to the deep roots of his overall style. Working with a crack horn section, bringing a heavy dubwise vibe to much of the production, and singing alternately in Spanish and English, Dactah Chando continues to show himself one of the premier artists on the international reggae scene.
D-Operation Drop
Sound Therapy (vinyl & digital only)
Dub-Stuy
DS-LP003
The Dub-Stuy label is based in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn (which is affectionately known as Bed-Stuy), but its reach is global. On the label’s latest release, the Italian duo D-Operation Drop team up with chatters Rider Shafique (UK) and Jahdan Blakkamoore (US), American singer Johnnygo Figure, Senegalese-Italian vocalist Galas, and several others to create a globe-trotting celebration of contemporary reggae and bass music. The title track fuses roots reggae and modern dubstep sounds, while “Small Talk” brings Italian songstress Marina P (known for her work with Mungo’s Hi Fi) on board for an exercise in heavyweight steppers reggae. The program offers a rich and heady mix of dubstep, steppers, and roots reggae — often mashing up various influences within individual tracks to create a new and unique fusion. Highly recommended to all adventurous reggae collections.
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