Welcome to the weekend. Here are Cultural Attaché’s selections of the best New In Music This Week: June 9th.
Our top pick this week is:
CLASSICAL MUSIC: Conciertos Románticos – Jorge Federico Osorio (Cedille Records)
It is unfortunate that not much of the classical music written by Mexican composers is commonly performed or recorded. Mexican-born pianist Osorio has contributed an important new record that allows us more exposure to some of these great works.
This album features works by composers Ricardo Castro (1864-1907) and Manuel María Ponce (1882-1948). A piano concerto by each composer (performed with Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería) is followed by 3-4 works for solo piano. Carlos Miguel Prieto conducts.
I love this album and have listened to it several times. I hope more music by Castro and Ponce gets recorded in the future. You can consider Concertios Románticos your gateway drug into this music.
Here are the rest of our selections for New In Music This Week: June 9th
BROADWAY: New York, New York OBC (Wine & Peaches) UPDATE!!!
This new musical by Fred Ebb, John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda received nine Tony nominations including Best Musical. (With the Tony Awards on Sunday night, we’ll know soon enough how many it might win.) The musical is based on the Martin Scorsese film from 1977 that yielded a title song so ubiquitous that it is doubtful anyone doesn’t know it?
Several of the songs from that film are included here including Happy Endings, But the World Goes Round and the title song, of course. This album contains nearly 90 minutes of music. Seven of the songs were written by Kander and Miranda.
Start spreading the news THAT the release date has changed to June 23rd!!!! You get an early preview here!
CLASSICAL MUSIC: Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition / Night on Bald Mountain – Cleveland Orchestra with Lorin Maazel (Craft Recordings)
This is a high-end vinyl release of this 1979 album featuring two of Modest Mussorgsky best-known works. Pictures at an Exhibition is a 10-movement suite that was originally written for piano. In 1922 composer Maurice Ravel (Bolero) created an adapation for orchestra which is the most common way of hearing this work. (I also strongly recommend hearing this work live only in outdoor venues. It gets quite loud!)
Night on Bald Mountain may be best-known to audiences as one of the pieces of music Walt Disney and his animators used for the final segment of Fantasia.
CLASSICAL MUSIC: Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor / Scriabin: Etudes (Craft Recordings)
Pianist Lang Lang’s first two albums were live recordings. This high-end vinyl release is his second album which was released in April of 2002. Lang Lang was performing at The Royal Albert Hall in London with Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.
Given all the various celebrations of Rachmaninoff’s 150th anniversary, it’s only appropriate that his mammoth 3rd piano concerto be part of this recording. It’s also a great way to revisit how a younger Lang Lang was performing at the time.
CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL: Lullabies for Piano and Cello – Gabríel Ólafs – (Decca Records)
This simple and simply beautiful album offers another chance to explore what’s happening in Iceland music. While browsing through an antique bookshop in Reykjavik, Ólafs found a book of Icelandic melodies from 1880. He’s now created beautiful instrumental arrangements and new compositions based on those melodies on this ten-track album.Cellist Steiney Sigurðardóttir joins the composer who plays the piano. The end result is an emotional album that takes us back to simpler times in our lives and leaves us with the hope that a simpler time might still be possible.
JAZZ: Short Stories – Vicente Archer (Cellar Music Group)
This is the first album by bassist Vicente Archer as a leader. He’s assembled two amazing musicians to join him for this record: pianist Gerald Clayton and bassist Bill Stewart. The album is produced by one of my favorite trumpeters, Jeremy Pelt.
There are nine different compositions on the album which each musician and producer Pelt having written them. There’s also a track by Nicholas Payton that is featured in two different versions on the album.
Short Stories is well worth your time.
JAZZ: THE GENNETT SUITE – Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra (Patois Records)
Richmond, Indiana is probably not the first place that comes to mind in the history of jazz, but in reality the small town was home to Gennett Studios. Within that studio jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Jelly Roll Morton recorded some of their earliest work in the 1920s. It was an sophisticated facility, but the music captured there is legendary.
The Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra, led by Brent Wallarab celebrates that location and the music recorded there in this album of four movements: Royal Blue; Blues Faux Bix; Hoagland and Mr. Jelly Lord. The third movement references the classic song Star Dust which was composed and recorded by Hoagy Carmichael at Gennett.
This is a fascinating and enjoyable album.
JAZZ: Words From My Horn – Anthony Hervey (Outside in Music)
On the dozen tracks found on his debut album, trumpeter Hervey immediately impresses. The songs tell the story of his deeply personal connection with his mother and grandmother and continues with meditations on his hometown (Terre Haute, Indiana) and the role of hope in his life.
Hervey is joined on the album by alto sax player Sarah Hananah, pianist Sean Mason, bassist Philip Norris, drummer Miguel Russell and pianist Isaiah J. Thompson. The album is produced by drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr.
You might know Hervey from his gigs with Jon Batiste, Michael Buble, Wynton Marsalis, Chrisitan McBride and more. You’ll know much more about him when you listen to Words From My Horn.
Those are my choices of the best of what’s New In Music This Week: June 9th. What are you listening to?
Have a great weekend and enjoy the music.
Main Photo: Art from Gabríel Ólafs’s Lullabies for Piano and Cello