CLASSICAL
Various Composers
Philharmonica
Le Consort
Alpha (dist. Naxos)
1011
The three composers featured on this delightful program reflect the sound of chamber music in London in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Interestingly, the three composers represent three separate tiers of fame, from the very well known (Henry Purcell) to the relatively unknown (Neapolitan transplant Nicola Matteis) to the downright obscure (“Mrs Philharmonica,” whose identity is a mystery and whose works are presented here in world-premiere recordings). The unifying format of these pieces is the trio sonata, though there are plenty of structural digressions, from Matteis’ puckish “Diverse bizarre sopra la vecchia sarabande o our ciaccona” to Purcell’s brief “Two in One upon a Ground.” Apart from opening a valuable window on the history of a major musical center of the period, this disc also offer the chance to hear a truly remarkable young period-instrument ensemble at the height of its powers.
Arvo Pärt
Tractus
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir; Tallinn Chamber Orchestra / Tōnu Kaljuste
ECM
2800
Arvo Pärt
Essential Choral Works (compilation; 4 discs)
Various Ensembles / Paul Hillier
Harmonia Mundi (dist. Integral)
HMX 29004087.90
I realize I’ve been recommending a lot of Arvo Pärt recently, but don’t blame me — there’s been a bumper crop of new and important releases. On the “new” side we have Tractus, featuring the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir performing a program of less-frequently recorded works, several of them in new versions. Selections include the Greater Antiphons, Cantique des degrés, L’Abbé Agathon, and a new arrangement of Pärt’s Vater Unser setting for choir, strings, and piano. This ensemble has always had a particular affinity for Pärt’s work, and Manfred Eicher’s production creates the perfect spaciousness and ambient color. The conductor Paul Hillier is also a longstanding collaborator with Pärt and has produced multiple standard-setting recordings of his work over the years. The Essential Choral Works box brings together most (though oddly not all) of the material from four recordings made by choirs under the direction of Paul Hillier between 1996 and 2010: I Am the True Vine, De Profundis (minus the Magnificat setting from the original release, perhaps because the same work is performed elsewhere on the set), Da Pacem, and Creator Spiritus. Hillier’s interpretations of Pärt’s music have been justly praised over the years, and if your library doesn’t already hold the original releases collected in this box this is an excellent opportunity to snap them up at a discount — the performances are consistently excellent and the music itself, of course, is quietly stunning.
Saverio Mercadante
Quartets for Flute and Strings
Mario Carlotta; Mario Hossen; Marta Ptulska; Attilia Kiyoko Cernitori
Dynamic (dist. Naxos)
DYN-CDS8006
To the degree that Saverio Mercadante is remembered at all these days, it’s primarily as a composer of operas — though even in that realm he remains almost completely eclipsed by the fame of his contemporaries Gioacchino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti. As this fine recording demonstrates, though, he was also a gifted flutist and composer for that instrument; his concertos gained some increased attention during the 20th century, but his chamber music has remained in obscurity. This disc features three quartets for flute and strings, all apparently written between 1814 and 1820 and all seeming to have been written for the flutist Pasquale Buongiorno, whose skills Mercadante greatly admired. The pieces reflect the influence of Domenico Cimarosa and Giovanni Paisiello, though they are more technically demanding and look forward more explicitly to the developing Romantic style. The group plays beautifully on modern instruments; it would also be interesting to hear these pieces on period instruments. Hopefully this world-premiere recording will stimulate more interest in Mercadante’s chamber music.
Giovanni Battista Casali
Sacred Music from Eighteenth-century Rome
Costanzi Consort / Peter Leech
Toccata Classics (dist Naxos)
TOCC 0429
It may seem odd today to think of mid-to-late-18th-century Rome as a musically stagnant city, but this seems to have been the consensus of music critics and historians for some time. But recent research is adding more texture and complexity to that picture, and these world-premiere recordings of sacred a cappella works by the underappreciated composer Giovanni Battista Casali demonstrate the need for ongoing research into what is increasingly emerging as a fertile musical scene. With this recording, the listener is offered the twin thrill of hearing music that has likely not been performed at all (let alone recorded) for hundreds of years, and of experiencing the richness and invention of a composer whose vocal works reflect not only his technical skill (Casali’s pupils included André Grétry and Pietro Terziani) but also his brilliance as a writer for unaccompanied choir — a format that was quickly falling out of fashion. These motets and liturgical works are simultaneously fresh and backward-looking, and are brilliantly sung by the Costanzi Consort.
Eugène Godecharle
Sei Quartetti per Harpa, Violino, Viola e Basso, Op. IV
Société Lunaire
Ramée (dist. Naxos)
RAM2207
If the musical scene in Rome was languishing at least to some degree in the latter half of the 18th century, the same can’t be said of Paris and Brussels, where (among other exciting musical developments) there was a burst of interest in the pedal harp for both home and concert use. The Belge composer Eugène Godecharle was appointed director of music at the church of Saint Géry in 1776, and in addition to composing quite a bit of church music he also left behind some very fine chamber music featuring the harp. These six quartets for harp (or harpsichord) with strings are completely charming, and in addition to illustrating the capabilities of the relatively new, chromatically adaptable pedal harp, also display Godecharle’s skill as a composer of small-ensemble works. Société Lunaire play beautifully on period instruments and are very well recorded. Recommended to all library music collections.
JAZZ
Jennifer Wharton’s Bonegasm
Grit & Grace
Sunnyside
SSC1709
As its name would (colorfully) suggest, Jennifer Wharton’s band is centered on the sound of the trombone. She leads the group and plays bass trombone, and the front line includes three other trombone players and no other brass or reeds. So the sound is unique. So also is Wharton’s approach to arranging — she manages the challenge of writing colorful charts for identical instruments brilliantly, creating a lush and rich sound palette without sacrificing rhythmic nimbleness or, frankly, wit and humor. I’m especially impressed by the way her arrangements shift back and forth from big, juicy brass-choir passages to sturdily swinging sections, from classic big-band to innovative modern jazz flavors. It’s rare to find a jazz musician with this kind of quadruple-threat capability: as a player, a composer, and arranger, and a bandleader, Wharton is in a class of her own. For all jazz collections.
Cal Tjader
Catch the Groove: Live at the Penthouse 1963-1967 (2 discs)
Jazz Detective/Deep Digs Music Group
DDJD-012
Like a bloodhound or a truffle-hunting pig, producer Zev Feldman seems to have been gifted by nature with the ability to sniff out musical treasures from the most unlikely places. In this case, not only are the recordings themselves being released commercially for the first time, but they also shed much-deserved light on an underrated musician, the great jazz vibraphonist Carl Tjader. These four discs capture six sets that Tjader played, accompanied by a shifting quartet of musicians, at Seattle’s Penthouse club in the mid-1960s. They were recorded originally for airplay, and the sound is surprisingly good — which probably has as much to do with the restoration work of Sheldon Zaharko as the quality of the sources. As for the playing: honestly, it’s amazing. Tjader was not only technically adept (and I think most people underestimate the skill required to play the vibes) but also an improviser of great intelligence and warmth — he was known for being a sweet and kind person, and you can hear that in his playing. He died far too young, of a heart attack at age 56, and left us too little music. Feldman deserves all of our gratitude for unearthing these gems from Tjader’s recording history.
Simon Moullier Trio
Inception
Fresh Sound New Talent
FSNT 661
Here’s another outstanding album from a great vibraphonist, this one a young player who is still very active on the scene. Simon Moullier’s approach is based on the idea of importing the language of horn players to the vibes — though interestingly, for this standards album he’s chosen to replicate the piano-trio format (playing alongside bassist Luca Allemanno and drummer Jonkuk Kim). This means that what he’s really doing is filling the roles of both pianist and horn player, and he does so with stunning skill and fluency. While all the tunes here are standards, they’re not all equally familiar: for every “You Must Believe in Spring” and “Lush Life” there’s a “Peggy’s Blue Skylight” (Charles Mingus) or an “Ecaroh” (Horace Silver). And there’s actually one original composition, “RC,” but since the title stands for “Rhythm changes” it pretty much counts as a standard. This is brisk, exciting, virtuosic music that thrills without ever losing sight of fundamental musicality, and the album should find a home in any library’s jazz collection.
Mareike Wiening
Reveal
Greenleaf Music
GRE-CD-1106
Drummer/composer Mareike Wiening’s third album as a leader finds her continuing to dance gracefully on the line that separates modernistic and straight-ahead jazz. Note, for example, the opening track, “Time for Priorities”: it opens with what sounds like a section of free group improv, complete with skronky distorted guitar, before launching into a spiky but powerfully swinging head. (Notice also how seamlessly Wiening’s drum part shifts from the free section into the head, hardly changing at all until the B part.) Something similar happens with “Choral Anthem,” though on this track structure and chaos seem to be in more of a constant negotiation; the title track is a much more traditional hard-bop burner, while her take on Ciprian Porumbescu’s sweet and tender “Balada” combines what sound like carefully composed guitar and piano parts with plenty of space for solos. Wiening has said that when she writes music “drums are usually the last thing (she’s) thinking about,” which, quite frankly, is the sign of a mature and thoughtful composer — qualities well in evidence throughout this fine album.
Cory Weeds
Home Cookin’
Cellar Music (dist. MVD)
CMR120522
I don’t usually like to admit it when I listen to an album based on the cover art, but in this case I’ll confess that I was drawn by the explicitly 1950s-style cover design and typography, which suggested to me that I could expect cool, swinging straight-ahead jazz of the kind I love so well. And sure enough, that’s what I got: leading his celebrated Little Big Band, tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds delivers a program consisting of two old-school originals and five standards by the likes of Horace Silver, Tad Jones, and Bernice Petkere. His big band isn’t really that “little” (it includes eleven players), but it’s compact enough to be nimble and tight, and the arrangements by Bill Coon and musical director Jill Townsend are perfectly suited to the group’s strengths: the shout choruses are big and joyful, the horn parts behind the solo sections are tasteful and fun, the soloists are obviously having a wonderful time. You will, too.
FOLK/COUNTRY
Meredith Lane
Greyhound (digital only)
Self-released
No cat. no.
She bills herself as an “alt rock and folk artist,” which is pretty intriguing. On the evidence of her first solo album, it’s hard to fault that description: while you can certainly hear echoes of outlaw country and Nashville singer-songwriter introversion, Lane’s aggro guitars and Jake Bibb’s pounding drums bring a definite punkiness to songs like “Ironies” and “Bitter” — but on the other hand, “Greyhound” comes on like early-1980s Fleetwood Mac (except with a steel guitar) while “Uncertain Sundays” wouldn’t sound out of place on a Replacements album. Then there’s “Gas Station Baby,” which is what all modern country music really ought to sound like. And Lane’s voice is a gritty, golden-hued joy. Here’s hoping for more from this impressive young artist, and the sooner the better.
Catrin Finch & Aoife Ní Bhriain
Double You
Bendigedig (dist. Naxos)
BENDI11
Both harpist Catrin Finch and violinist Aoife Ní Bhriain have the distinction of being accomplished classical and folk musicians, and on their debut album as a duo you can hear them drawing deeply on both traditions. The program suggests a concept album of a sort: each track is an original composition with a single-word title beginning with the letter “W” (“Whispers,” “Woven,” “Waggle,” etc.). And the music itself ranges far and wide: “Why” opens with a dreamy, free-rhythm section before sliding into a liltingly lovely traditional-sounding tune; “Wonder,” with its repeated scalar and arpeggiated passages, put me in mind of Philip Glass; “Wings” is an ambient excursion that floats and drifts with aimless beauty. None of this music is what one might expect of a Celtic harp-and-fiddle duo; all of it is wonderful.
Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs
Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs Sing and Play New Folk Songs for Children
Smithsonian Folkways
SFW45087
Alba Careta & Henrio
Udolç
Microscopi
No cat. no.
I don’t normally review children’s music, but I’m making two exceptions here because each of these albums is so unusual and so attractive, each in a radically different way. Mr. Greg and indie-rock star Cass McCombs have produced an album of “folk” songs that span many different musical styles, some of them a bit more rockish than one might expect of folk music but all of them warm and fun and tuneful. (And most will also prove helpful in engendering appropriately progressive political viewpoints in your kids, if that’s your jam: “Requiem for Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” “Wave a Flag for Harvey Milk,” “Things That Go in the Recycling Bin,” etc.). The new album from jazz singer/trumpeter Alba Careta and singer/songwriter/producer Henrio is very different, and yet oddly similar. It’s a collection of songs from the oral traditions of the Catalonian region, all gathered from research performed by students of Cassà de Selva during the 2021-22 academic year. All are lullabies, though not all sound like they would be; the arrangements are gentle and quiet but not always slow or lulling, and some of the music accompanies spoken-word interludes by poet Enric Casasses. Henrio most often sings solo, but there are also passages of sweet harmony with Careta. This is a highly unusual and truly beautiful album.
ROCK/POP
Canblaster
GENESIS (digital only)
Animal63
No cat. no.
Longstanding pillar of the French electronic music scene, Cédric Steffens (a.k.a. Canblaster) got his start writing music for video games and DJing at techno, house, and UK garage gigs before becoming a founding member of the Club Cheval quartet and releasing EPs on various underground labels. GENESIS is the result of several years spent holing up in his home studio with a bunch of modular synthesizers. The music that came out of that period of retrenchment is, gratefully, more rooted in garage and breakbeat hardcore than in house or techno: the synth sounds are predictably squidgy and archaic, but the beats are bouncy, funky, and sometimes frenetic — and Steffens’ use of vocal samples is tasteful and abstract. Highly recommended to pop collections.
New Order
Substance (reissue; 4 discs)
Factory
Facd 200
One of the most fascinating evolutions in the history of pop music was that of Joy Division into New Order. Joy Division had created a revolution in post-punk sound, quickly morphing from a scrappy punk band into a sui generis harbinger of sonic doom that helped create the template for Goth and shoegaze. When singer/lyricist Ian Curtis took his own life on the eve of their first American tour, the group emerged from its collective grief with another entirely new sound: a chilly but high-energy technopop that created yet another template for yet another musical movement. Substance is a best-of collection originally released in 1987; now it’s back in multiple formats and versions, all of them radically expanding the content of the original collection with remixes and live tracks. Most library collections will probably be well served by the two-disc CD version, but this four-disc set is magnificent and can be confidently recommended as well.
NRBQ
Tiddlywinks (reissue)
Omnivore
OVCD-500
Originally issued in 1980, this was NRBQ’s eighth album, and it finds them in amazing form. Apart from the hit “Me and the Boys” (which, I’m embarrassed to admit, I actually thought was a Bonnie Raitt original), it includes their rollicking take on the classic novelty song “Music Goes Round and Round,” bassist Joey Spampinato’s tender “Beverly,” and the rollicking R&B workout “Want You to Feel Good Too” (remember that the band name stands for “New Rhythm & Blues Quintet”), as well as several bonus tracks. Good humor has always been a hallmark of the NRBQ approach, but on this album you can easily detect the seriousness below their good-time veneer: these guys were — and still are — consummate professionals, in all the best senses of that word. Exquisitely structured songs, hooky melodies, and wide-ranging musical influences are what NRBQ have always been all about. May they never stop.
Daily Worker
My Heavens (digital only)
Self-released
No cat. no.
Normally, for purposes of this blog, I characterize as a “new release” anything that came out within the past two years. This album by Austin-based one-man band Daily Worker falls outside even that generous timeframe, but I’m making an exception because it came recently across my transom and it’s just so dang tasty. Cotton Mather guitarist Harold Whit Williams has been recording on his own under the (brilliant) name Daily Worker for some years now, and I’ve loved everything I’ve heard. He jumps nimbly back and forth over the line that separates jangle pop (“Temporal World”) from power pop (“Buried Alive”), and does it with grace, good humor, and a razor-sharp sense of melody. Interestingly, in light of the review just above this one, the opening bars of “Flown Away” sound like a direct lift from New Order, though none of the rest of the song does; “Rock Roll Fadeaway” is a charmingly curmudgeonly reflection on the current state of pop music. Brilliant all around.
Matmos
Return to Archive
Smithsonian Folkways
SFW40261
Let’s close out this month’s Rock/Pop section with some genuine weirdness. In addition to its well known and justly celebrated deep catalog of folk albums, the Folkways label also includes an extensive collection of recordings made by scientists, sound engineers, and field recordists who sought to document non-musical noises from the natural and human environments. On Return to Archive, the electronic music duo Matmos was given access to all of those recordings and emerged with a bunch of samples from which they’ve created a sprawling set of wild soundscapes, beats, and pitches: “Mud Dauber Wasp,” for example, is a frenetic dance track built out of sounds made by the titular creature; “Injection Basic Sound” is based on a sample of a sound engineer’s explanatory monologue; “Lend Me Your Ears” is an odd, eerie, and hard to describe (though it would make a great soundtrack to a Halloween party). The whole album is genuinely fascinating, though not exactly “fun.”
WORLD/ETHNIC
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Catch a Fire (reissue; 3 discs)
Island
5565983
It would be hard to overstate the impact that Catch a Fire, the fifth studio album by Bob Marley and the Wailers, exerted on the development of both reggae music and pop music more generally. Accordingly, it has been issued and reissued in literally hundreds of versions and formats (check out the Discogs page if you don’t believe me). This new extra-deluxe issue, available both as three vinyl LPs and as three CDs, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the album’s original release. The first disc is the original program; the second documents a contemporaneous live set from the Paris Theater in London (charmingly, if a little annoyingly, narrated between songs by a clueless-sounding MC); the third gathers instrumental and extended versions of some of the original recordings along with a handful of additional live tracks. Not having listened to this album in quite a while, I was struck anew by how powerful it is: songs like “Concrete Jungle,” Peter Tosh’s bitter “400 Years,” and the magnificent “Stir It Up” have lost none of their impact over the half-century since their original release. Recommended to all libraries.
Soom T
The Louder the Better
Renegade Masters/X-Ray Production
XRPCD2305
Last year I called Soom T’s album Good one of the best reggae releases I’d heard all year. And I have to say the same thing about this year’s The Louder the Better. No longer just a deejay, Soom T has fully embraced her singing voice — not always a wise move for a chatter, but in her case the shift is inspired. The songs on this album are straight-up modern roots reggae, some of it more organic and analog-based and some of it in more of a digital vein, but what unites everything is the directness and sincerity of Soom T’s musical and spiritual vision. Her Christian beliefs are even more up-front and unapologetic than they were on Good, and so is her social critique, which does not necessarily hew to the political norm: note in particular “Free the Man” (about imprisoned politician Schaeffer Cox) and “Hail to the Watchman.” A female Indo-Glaswegian Christian with heterodox social/political views, Soom T is a welcome example of diversity across multiple dimensions, and her new album is seriously banging.
Dub Syndicate
Fear of a Green Planet (25th Anniversary Expanded Edition)
Echo Beach
EB200
It’s hard to believe that this album was first issued 25 years ago — I still think of it as one of Dub Syndicate’s “newer” releases. Of course, I’m getting pretty old myself. Anyway, Fear of a Green Planet was another mighty entry in the ongoing series of projects by the bass-and-drums duo of Errol “Flabba” Holt and Lincoln “Style” Scott, in collaboration with producer Adrian Sherwood (though it was issued on Scott’s own Lion & Roots label rather than on Sherwood’s On-U Sound imprint). The sound is nothing surprising: everything is built on the elephantine rockers beats that have been Style and Flabba’s hallmark since their early days in the Roots Radics, with dubwise elaborations by Sherwood and significant contributions from guitarist/vocalist Skip McDonald and a handful of other guests. But surprising or not, the grooves are absolutely delicious — and the six bonus tracks on this extended reissue make the new version of this album all the more attractive. Highly recommended.
Samory I
Strength (digital & vinyl only)
Easy Star
ESCD128
The debut solo album by Samory I (not counting his 2017 collaboration with Rory “Stonelove” Gilligan) is a fine example of what roots reggae sounds like in the 21st century: digitally clean, influenced (but not overwhelmed) by hip hop, and enriched by up-to-the-minute production techniques and stylistic elements from all over: listen to the rich bass sound and the subtle Spanish guitar on “Blood in the Streets,” for example, not to mention the harmonically dense but lightweight backing vocals on “Continent” and the funky reggae/R&B rhythms that underlie “Ocean of Love” and “Stormy Nights.” Note also the powerful three-way combination track “Wrath,” featuring both Kabaka Pyramid and legendary Bobo Dread firebrand Capleton. Samory I is still early in his career, and this album hints at genuine greatness to come.
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