Alexander Armstrong – In a Winter Light (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 47:47 minutes | 491 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © East West Records
After two Top 10 albums – ‘A Year of Songs’ (2015) and ‘Upon A Different Shore’ (2016) –the actor, comedian, presenter and classically trained baritone Alexander Armstrong is set to release his first Christmas album ‘In A Winter Light’. Having spent years performing in choirs, Armstrong’s beloved musical heritage is on full, glorious display on ‘In A Winter Light’. Recorded with the City of Prague Orchestra, abetted by the Choir of New College Oxford, the RAF Squadronaires big band and Jools Holland, it’s the rich, enveloping sound of a gifted baritone pursuing the range of his seasonal and musical passions.
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Alexa Tarantino – Winds of Change (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 51:27 minutes | 996 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Posi-Tone Records
Everyone is encouraged to enjoy a breath of fresh air when woodwind virtuoso Alexa Tarantino boldly embarks on an exploration of the “Winds of Change, her first record with Posi-Tone. With strong rhythmic and harmonic concepts and unstoppably gentle melodic sensibility, Tarantino skillfully conducts listeners through an exciting presentation of her carefully crafted arrangements and original compositions. Tarantino plays a combination of saxophones and flute on the record to make bold statements of stunning musicianship alongside the superstar accompaniment of pianist Christian Sands, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Rudy Royston. Whether one is already familiar with the music of Alexa Tarantino or discovering her for the first time, “Winds of Change” surely succeeds in delivering bright moments of straight forward musical delight while demonstrating that Alexa Tarantino is indeed a rising star for jazz fans to keep their eyes fixed upon for years to come.
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Alexa Tarantino – Firefly (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 57:34 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Posi-Tone Records
Fronting a quintet which includes vibraphonist and label mate Behn Gillece and keyboardist Art Hirahara, Tarantino, plays alto and soprano saxophones, flute and clarinet, making a music which has a feeling of a release of positivity, of pent-up feelings and ideas being given voice with the easing of a post-pandemic isolation. The disc opens with Hirahara’s “Spider’s Dance,” a luminescent reverie, with the leader sounding particularly inspired, The arrangement— the back and forth of piano, vibes and saxophone solos—is as close to perfection as can be. Vibraphonist Gillece’s “Mindful Moments” finds Tarantino switching to flute, floating over the rhythm section’s fluid shuffle, leading into a composition from the group’s drummer, Rudy Royston, “Move The Spirit,” a high octane, get-up-and-dance type of tune..
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Alexa Tarantino – Clarity (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 46:25 minutes | 912 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Posi-Tone Records
Woodwind virtuoso Alexa Tarantino moves straight forward with “Clarity,” on her second release for Posi-Tone. With an evocative display of talent over a wide range of instruments, Tarantino clearly demonstrates that her skills in songwriting and performance are elevating and shining steadily with bright moments. Tarantino is focused as a bandleader and relaxed as a soloist in front of the rhythm section of pianist Steven Feifke, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Rudy Royston. With an engaging musical program presented by an amazing group of players, Tarantino’s latest album encourages jazz enthusiasts to experience the “Clarity” of her musical message with amazement and delight.
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Alexa Raine-Wright – Platti: Flute Sonatas, Op. 3 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:19:17 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Leaf Music
Known for her spirited and luminous sound, Baroque flute player Alexa Raine-Wright shares her eloquent interpretations with audiences across North America in solo, chamber and orchestral performances. This debut solo recording brings to light a collection of rarely heard works by Giovanni Benedetto Platti (1697–1763), a composer with one foot planted firmly in the Baroque, and the other foot pointed toward the Classical style. Equally at ease on the Baroque flute and recorder, American/Canadian Alexa Raine-Wright has shared her passion and talent for early music with audiences across the United States and Canada in solo, chamber and orchestral performances. Winner of several national and international competitions, Alexa was awarded the $10,000 Devonna & Amos Gerber Grand Prize as well as the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra Prize at the 2016 Indianapolis International Baroque Competition. ?Alexa is a founding member of the ensemble Infusion Baroque, winner of the Grand Prize and Audience Prize in the 2014 Early Music America Baroque Performance Competition in Chicago. She is also a member of the celebrated recorder quartet Flûte Alors!, Canada’s only recorder quartet.
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Alex Woolf, Nicky Spence, Iain Burnside, Philip Higham, Anthony Gray – Alex Woolf: Requiem (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:44 minutes | 956 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Delphian Records
A major statement by a composer still in his mid-twenties, Alex Woolfs Requiem, composed in 2018, combines powerful expressive immediacy with an impressive ability to synthesize the diverse traditions that have grown up around the requiem genre in the past two hundred years, as it has moved from the church into the concert hall. As in Brittens War Requiem, the traditional Latin texts are brought into dialogue with modern-day poetry here, three poems by the Welsh writer Gillian Clarke (who was National Poet of Wales from 2008 to 2016). Initially these exist in the separate sound-world of a solo tenor and piano, with a solo cello creating the bridge to the liturgical sphere of choir and organ. Yet ultimately, Clarkes very human concerns focus and inflect Woolfs approach to the religious texts, confirming the works trajectory from despair into consolation. Nicky Spence, fresh from his triumph at the 2020 BBC Music Magazine Awards, is the solo tenor, joined by Delphian artists Iain Burnside and Philip Higham; and Woolf conducts his own choir Vox Luna in this strikingly personal work.
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Alex Wilson – Kelly: Piano Works (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:28 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Toccata Classics
My first solo CD is due for release on June 5th 2020 – the first complete recording of the ’24 Monographs’ and ’12 Studies’ by F.S.Kelly, a composer who tragically lost his life during World War One.
I was in the recording studio in April 2019, with the disc to be released on the Toccata Classics label. This disc will be the first recording of these works in their entirety and as such represents a great opportunity to introduce some fascinating music to the world for the first time. It will also enable me to promote this music to audiences further afield who are unable to attend one of my live concerts.
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Alex Western-King – Sideslip (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 41:53 minutes | 433 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ubuntu Music
Revered jazz pianist Sam Leak is joined by the swingin’ combination of Jonny Wickham on bass and Jay Davis on the drums; all three musicians have impressive careers in their own right. As Alex explains it, “This album is a meeting point between my love of straight ahead bebop and the chaos and fragility of free jazz. For my debut album I feel very lucky to be working with musicians that are among the very best on the scene, and more importantly are people with whom I have a close personal connection. The chemistry that myself, Sam Leak, Jonny Wickham and Jay Davis have formed over our years of playing together allows us to constantly push creative boundaries within our improvisation.
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Alex Welsh – Side by Side (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:51:38 minutes | 990 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © nagel heyer records
Alex Welsh (9 July 1929 – 25 June 1982) was a Scottish jazz singer, and bandleader who played cornet and trumpet.
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Alex Stuart – Aftermath (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 51:32 minutes | 598 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © jazz family
Australian guitarist Alex Stuart moved to Paris in 2005. He’s since then recorded three albums, won the jury prize at the Jazz à Juan International Jazz Festival, and was nominated for the Freedman Fellowship (awarded to the best emerging Australian jazz artist). His newest opus entitled Aftermath is set to drop November 24 on French label Jazz Family. Aftermath is a response to the November 2015 Paris attacks, “an album inspired by the dark turning point the world is facing today, but also by the omnipresent and evident beauty that surrounds us” in Stuart’s words.
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Alex Sipiagin – Upstream (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 54:54 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Posi-Tone Records
Trumpeter Alex Sipiagin has grown tremendously in recent years – and a record like this is a fantastic demonstration of his talents as both an instrumentals and as a composer – and also as a leader of a very well-matched group! The combo is a quartet, but soar out with a spirit that makes you feel like you’re hearing the energy of a much larger ensemble – a quality that maybe comes in part from the work of pianist Art Hirihara, who always seems to have this grand sense of flow – driven on strongly here by the bass of Boris Kozlov and drums of Rudy Royston! Sipiagin is majestic throughout – able to fly to the heavens at some points, but then be very down to earth and personal at others – on titles that include “Sight”, “Call”, “Rain”, “Shura”, “Echo Canyon”, “Upstream”, and “Magic Square”.
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Alex Riel, Bo Stief & Carsten Dahl – Our Songs (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:53 minutes | 812 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Storyville
Always curious and always looking for new challenges, Alex Riel has been an important innovator of modern drumming in Europe. He was among the very first to record a “free” solo on his debut album in 1965 and he was a founding member of the beat-group Savage Rose, while also playing with Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon and being a member of Monica Zetterlund’s quartet. From the last 20 years we know him for his work with Enrico Pieranunzi, Kenny Werner, Mads Vinding and many others.
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Alex Potter, Ensemble La Fontaine – Fede e Amor (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:19:37 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée
This recording explores some of the lesser-known music from eighteenth-century Vienna that combines solo voice with virtuoso trombones. During the first half of that century, the city’s musical life experienced an unprecedented blossoming. The Habsburg Emperors aimed to turn Vienna into a truly magnificent capital for the Holy Roman Empire and used visual art, architecture, liturgy, court ceremony and, above all, music to help achieve this. The Habsburg rulers Leopold I (1658-1705), Joseph I 1705-1711) and Charles VI (1711-1740) took the “Holy” part of their title very seriously and paid for a huge amount of elaborate sacred music to be performed on a regular basis by court musicians, a major element of which was the performance of large-scale Oratorios in the Imperial Chapel.
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Alex Monfort – Introspection (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:00 minutes | 496 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © jazz family
Remember these three letters well, because they ring with the youth, modernity, and virtuosity of the next generation of jazz. Composed of pianist Alexandre Monfort, bassist Samuel F’hima, and drummer Tom Peyron, this sensational ensemble is quickly rising to success. In only one year, these three musicians have taken the podium at some of the world’s most prestigious jazz competitions, including the Rezzo Focal de Vienne, Jazz à St. Germain des Près, Jazz à Vannes and were unanimously selected as the first prize winners at the Blue Note Festival, where they were hailed for their performance by the judges and critics alike. This success was swiftly followed by a rousing performance at the eminent Sunset-Sunside jazz club in Paris that brought the audience to their feet. Technically brilliant, stylistically vivacious, and with the flair of young virtuosity, A.M.T. is primed to bring the next generation of jazz to audiences all over the world.
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Alex Lahey – The Best of Luck Club (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 40:25 minutes | 463 MB | Genre: Indie Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Dead Oceans
Some songwriters are interesting because they tell you things you may not know, and others are remarkable because they have a gift for expressing the thoughts and feelings that most of us share. Alex Lahey clearly falls into the latter category, and while the nuts and bolts of human interaction aren’t uncharted territory in pop music, she builds clever and witty art from the ups and downs of friendship and relationships. She also matches her lyrics with some potent music, hooky tunes that suggest pop-punk without that subgenre’s more unfortunate cliches, and after showing what she could do on her 2017 debut album, I Love You Like a Brother, she’s gotten just a bit more ambitious on her sophomore effort, 2019’s The Best of Luck Club. The buzzy guitar figures and walloping drums that dominated the debut are in plentiful supply here, but Lahey is willing to reveal her more vulnerable side on atmospheric cuts like “Unspoken History,” “I Need to Move On,” and “I Want to Live with You,” where she turns down the tempos, boosts the keyboards, and drapes the performances in clouds of echo and ambient sound. “Isabella” is an engaging pure pop number that sounds like a possible hit single, especially with its singalong chorus, and “Misery Guts” is its ideal half-sibling, pure pogo’ing energy that suggests what Nirvana might have sound like if Kurt Cobain had been a level-headed woman from Australia. And best friends who become scarce when they find a significant other (“I Don’t Get Invited to Parties Anymore”), loved ones burning the candle at both ends (“Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself”), and celebrating the utter coolness of your significant other (“Black RM’s”) are pretty common themes in pop songwriting, but Lahey makes them sound fresh with her keen observational skills and personal touch. And thanks to the miracle of overdubbing, Lahey (who plays most of the instruments herself on these sessions) is a fine band as well as a great bandleader. On The Best of Luck Club, she adds a few new tricks to her repertoire without losing touch with what she was already doing so well, and based on this music, it’s a safe bet that she’ll be delivering more great songs in the future. ~ Mark Deming
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