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Osmo Vänskä – Kalevi Aho: The Chamber Music for Clarinet (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:15:10 minutes | 678 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Renowned for his rich production in the field of orchestral music, Kalevi Aho is also a prolific composer for chamber forces. Here three works spanning two decades have been combined, with the Sonata for two accordions originating in 1984 as a Sonata for solo accordion described by the composer in his own liner notes as ‘comparable in aspiration with Liszt’s most virtuosic piano works’.
Completed five years later, the duo version exploits to the utmost the unique possibilities offered by the accordion and remains highly virtuosic. It was premièred as late as 2002 by Veli and Susanne Kujala, who also perform it on this recording.
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Chamber Orchestra of Lapland, John Storgards – Kalevi Aho: Rituals (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:19:34 minutes | 671 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
In 2003 Kalevi Aho received the unusual commission of composing a complete concert programme. Kysymysten kirja, a meditative, philosophical song cycle using the Finnish translation of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s posthumous collection ‘The Book of Questions’. The poems included are made up exclusively of questions, of which Aho has chosen a number, combining them into eleven sets to be performed without a break. The concert leads immediately into the Viola Concerto, and ends with Symphony No.14, ‘Rituals’, scored for sixteen string players, wind quintet and two percussionists.
Aho, who this year celebrates his 60th birthday, is increasingly recognized as one of today’s leading orchestral composers.
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Sonja Fräki – Aho: Piano works (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:22 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS Records AB
Known particularly for his orchestral output – 16 symphonies and 21 concertos to date! – the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho was recently described in Gramophone as having ‘a strong claim to the title of greatest living symphonist’. But as followers of the ongoing releases of his music on BIS will know, Aho has also composed a large number of works for smaller forces – quartets and quintets, duos and solo pieces. On the present disc, the Finnish pianist Sonja Fräki presents his output for solo piano, comfortably fitting on one disc, but nevertheless spanning some 30 years of a long career. The disc in fact opens with Aho’s earliest published work, the Nineteen Preludes from 1965-68, written before the composer had begun any formal studies of either composition or the piaNo.There is even a first version of Prelude No.8 dating from 1963, when Kalevi Aho was in his early teens and was just beginning to teach himself the piano, writing music intended mainly as practice pieces for his own use. Since then Aho has composed for other budding pianists – the Two Easy Piano Pieces for Children and the Sonatina – but as in much of his other music, the works for piano display his characteristic fascination with the virtuosic and technically brilliant side of music-making. On the present disc, this quality comes to the fore in the Sonata, with its sparkling first movement and percussive, toccata-like second movement followed by a searching Tranquillo molto, characterized by a trill which continues almost without interruption throughout the movement. Commissioned as a set piece for a piano competition, Solo II is likewise a challenge for any pianist, and forms part of a series of big (roughly ten-minute) solo works for various instruments, of which several have been recorded by BIS.
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John-Edward Kelly, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Stefan Asbury, Jean-Jacques Kantorow – Kalevi Aho: Chamber Symphonies Nos 1–3 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 56:40 minutes | 506 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
The focus of Kalevi Aho’s output lies on large-scale orchestral works, and his work-list includes fifteen symphonies to date, composed between 1969 and 2010. Although the Finnish composer is famously lavish as an orchestrator, and often invites rare guests such as the heckelphone into his orchestra, the scores of Aho’s three chamber symphonies are much more economic in scale. Although composed for some twenty strings in all, they bear eloquent proof of the composer’s aim of exploiting to the full the expressive capabilities of a string orchestra. Consequently these works are highly demanding for the players, not because virtuosity has been an end in itself, but for reasons of maximum expressivity.
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Ahmed El-Salamouny – Rio Rhythms (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 59:23 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Latin Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Acoustic Music Records
In his album, “Rio Rhythms”, Ahmed El-Salamouny, the specialist for Brazilian guitar music, lets listeners experience the magic of Brazil. The seventeen pieces on the CD are an exciting mixture of Brazilian rhythms delivered in a manner that is at times poetic and dreamy and at times highly virtuosic.
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Sinfonia Lahti, Okko Kamu – Ahmas: Symphony No. 1 (2001–02) (Music Finland) (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:43 minutes | 632 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS Records
Harri Ahmas is a bassoon (Fagott) player in the Lahti SO, and, as such, he has participated in countless recordings for us. He has also aranged a lot of music included in that orchestra’s records of Finnish Psalms without singing – an as surprising as overwhelming sales success story). Not content with that, he is also a composer in his own right, and we are proud to be able to present to you his First Symphony, lovingly played by his orchestra under no less than Okko Kamu. This is, for the time being, a digital-only release, so this is the only chance you have to buy it until further notice.
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Ahmad Jamal featuring Yusef Lateef – Live at the Olympia – June 27, 2012 (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:46:18 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz Village
Olympia, Paris, 27 June 2012. In this mythical concert hall, the Ahmad Jamal quartet played in telepathic mode to reinvent the Blue Moon repertoire. Then, before giving the audience a transformed rendering of Poinciana, a hit from the Chess era, the pianist brought on stage Yusef Lateef who played with him in the glory days of the Atlantic label. The pioneering world fusion wind player then conjured up some magical moments and took us on one of those mystical journeys to which he has the key. This recording offers the entire historic concert, illuminated by these two jazz greats inspired by groove and the spirit of the sacred.
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Ahmad Jamal – Carpeta Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions Vol.1 1956-1962 (2010/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 09:25:20 minutes | 5,28 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve Reissues
“When I listen to these records now… when I listen to the Pershing, it’s phenomenal, I must say. What they were doing, phenomenal, the lines and the purity. It’s so pure … It was sheer joy working with these two individuals. Master musicians,” writes pianist/bandleader Ahmad Jamal in the liner notes to this collection.
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Ahmad Jamal – Saturday Morning (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:14:23 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz Village
Following on from Blue Moon, Ahmad Jamal and his dream team are back with a joyful album made up of the kind of ballads to which only he holds the key. Each one is a moment of grace, shining like a star in the sky of American Classical Music it also features one wonderful Duke Ellington cover and a tribute to Horace Silver. With his light-fingered but rhythmic style, he sends us into a sensuous trance and leads us to a musical climax: a sound which is pure groove.
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Ahmad Jamal – Marseille (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:38 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz Village
A new album by legendary pianist and composer Ahmad Jamal is always a hotly anticipated event. But Marseille has an additional glow of excitement as it is a very personal expression of the sincere and long-standing mutual admiration that has existed between the American artist and French audiences for over six decades. The title track of the record is a love letter to the iconic Southern city whose magnificent port and dazzling light have inspired numerous artists and filmmakers over the years. In a daring departure for Jamal, it features a striking performance by French rapper Abd Al Malik. Marseille is the work of a master musician who never says more than he has to but always says enough to make the world sit up and listen.
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Ahmad Jamal – Live In Marciac, August 5th 2014 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:22:22 minutes | 870 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz Village
This stunning live recording of Ahmad Jamal in Marciac on August 5, 2014, captures a delightful set that weaves through gorgeous originals and loving interpretations of American songbook classics, with special homages to Cole Porter and Horace Silver. Jamal’s improvisations and mindbending syncopations are highlighted by his all-star band comprised of Reginald Veal (bass), Herlin Riley (drums) and Manolo Badrena (percussion).
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Ahmad Jamal – Ballades (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 41:52 minutes | 724 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz Village
At the age of 88, composer and legendary jazz musician Ahmad Jamal presents Ballades, an album that sees him returning to his roots in a transcendent journey. Jamal comes from the closely-knit club of the great masters of jazz. That is why, in the manner of Coltrane and Miles, he goes back to his past as a way to overcome it. At its heart, Ballades is a solo piano album – something Jamal has never done before (double-bass player James Cammack is featured on three tracks). The music is art in its purest form, ranging from the iconic ”Poinciana” to the symbolic ”Marseille.” Ballades is a new masterpiece in this artist’s long and distinguished career.
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Ahmad Jamal – Ahmad Jamal at the Blackhawk (1961/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 37:51 minutes | 373 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Reborn recordings
Ahmad Jamal at the Blackhawk is a live album by American jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal featuring performances recorded in San Francisco in 1961 and released on the Argo label.
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AHI – Unarchived (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 35:36 minutes | 715 MB | Genre: Folk Pop, Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © 22nd Sentry
AHI is the stage name of Ahkinoah Habah Izarh, a Canadian singer-songwriter, whose album In Our Time was named as a Juno Award nominee for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2019.
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a-ha – Time And Again: The Ultimate a-ha (Remastered) (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:37:52 minutes | 1,84 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino – Warner Records
Time and Again: The Ultimate a-ha is a greatest hits compilation album by the Norwegian band a-ha. Given how hugely successful the Norwegian trio remains around the world, it’s always a little amusing to think about how many Americans still view them as only having a couple of hits. In fact, the band just celebrated their 30th anniversary last year, releasing a new album, Cast in Steel, their 10th full-length studio effort to date.
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