Thomas Demenga – J.S. Bach Suiten für Violoncello (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:08:57 minutes | 2,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
The Swiss cellist (and composer) Thomas Demenga (*1954) is an artist on the world stage who defies classification: at once at ease in the most groundbreaking contemporary performances – we owe him many recordings of Cage, Holliger, Messiaen, Yun, Pärt, Zimmermann etc. – and in the classical repertoire, from Bach to Schubert, from Vivaldi to Mendelssohn, from Dvořák to Tchaikovsky. This is his completely new reading of Bach’s Suites, which he gives with an immense, almost-improvisational freedom, even if he respects the texts to the letter: it is all in the accents, the rubatos, the articulations and the phrasing that he gives his imagination free rein, as if the ink wasn’t even yet dry on these master-works. We are a long way, here, from some “cleaner”, more “classic”, “polished” readings from some great predecessors. But in reality, this music is sufficiently rich and ample to be seen from a thousand angles without losing any of its shine. Demenga, a disciple of Rostropovitch, Antonio Janigro and Leonard Rose, has entered a kind of pantheon, where he can bear comparison with any number of the greats. The deliberately rather low range which he has chosen lends greater depth and an uncharacteristically darker tone to his readings.
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Thomas Demenga – J.S. Bach: Préludes & Sarabandes (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:28 minutes | 821 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Swiss cellist Thomas Demenga returns to Bach’s suites. “To me, Bach is the greatest musical genius who has ever lived. His music is pure, sublime. It possesses something divine and each musician has a lifetime in which to discover new ways of interpreting it.” Demenga previously recorded the cello suites for ECM between 1986 and 2002, juxtaposing them with contemporary composition in albums that count as milestones in the early history of the New Series. This new double album however is devoted entirely to Bach and the six suites. Many years of playing and studying every aspect of them, from source manuscripts to different tempos, embellishments, fingerings and bowings, have brought Demenga to the heart of the music – which Bach himself described as the only goal. This new account of the music was recorded at the Hans Huber Saal in Basel.
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Thomas David – to love (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:57 minutes | 486 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia Local
Thomas David may look like just another singer/songwriter, but once you listen carefully to his expressive voice and simple acoustic sound, you’ll be captured from the very first moment. Influenced by the music of bands like Matchbox20, The Calling or songwriter like Jason Mraz, Gavin Degraw and many more, he writes and performs his songs with a lot of honesty. In his intimate live shows, Thomas mixes his sunny nature with his sincere music and connects with the audience in a truly charming way.
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Thomas Curbillon – Place Ste-Opportune (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 36:33 minutes | 422 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz & People
Accompanied by the cream of French jazz (Eric Legnini, St’ephane Belmondo …), guitarist and singer Thomas Curbillon unveils an irresistible first album, which connects happy and tender lyrics with the richness of solos, in a disc with mischievous lyrics, adorned with sumptuous arrangements… Enamelled with nods to Salvador, Aznavour and Nougaro, “Place Ste-Opportune” reconciles French song with swing. So French, so jazz! There was a time when jazz made the java. Carried by the magnificent piano of Eric Legnini, the double bass of Thomas Bramerie and the drums of Antoine Paganotti, who put heart into this work, Thomas Curbillon took pleasure in inviting the trumpeter St’ephane Belmondo to illuminate a few solo -some of his pieces.
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Thomas Clausen – Back2Basics (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:40 minutes | 1,00 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Stunt Records
This recording was made during the pandemic period, when Copenhagen Radio Jazz and the Ben Webster Foundation opened MillFactory Studios for a series of small concerts – without a live audience, but with unbridled enthusiasm. “We recorded on the large Steinway D, which has enormously long bass strings and so much fullness in the high register that you don’t have to play many notes. You can feel every sound. The music was recorded as if it were a real concert, with the songs in the order I planned and the order in which they are presented on the album
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Thomas Azier – Rouge (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 34:01 minutes | 662 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music Division Island Def Jam
Back in 2014 the dark and haunting over-the-top synthpop of Thomas Azier and his debut album Hylas became one of Nothing But Hope And Passion‘s favourite albums of the year. After a certain break, the Dutch gentleman now finally shared new music with us. His second album Rouge is set for a release on May 12 via Polydor/ Island and it shows a new side of the charismatic musician. He started the comeback run with Talk To Me which was way more laidback and driven by a gentle piano melody. The second track Winners starts gentle but comes with quite an epic finale while the third single Gold is pretty solid four-to-the-floor material.
Azier thought it was time for a musical change and this one is a highly appreciated one. ‘I decided to break my patterns,’ he reveals in the press release, ‘whether it was living in the same city, writing the same songs or using the same sounds. When I know the next step, I feel it is time for change.’
When Thomas Azier bought a 1920s upright piano, songs started hitting him like waves. His new release ‘Talk To Me’ bounced from just piano and voice to his laptop, and back. Working on his second album in Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris, ‘Talk to Me’ is his most personal release yet.
Everyone has their daily routine, both on – and offline. I decided to break my patterns, whether it was living in the same city, writing the same songs or using the same sounds. When I know the next step, I feel it is time for change.
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Noah Franche-Nolan – Within The Stream (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:23 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Cellar Live
New York-based Canadian pianist and composer Noah Franche-Nolan is joined by Juno Nominated Jodi Proznick on bass and Nicholas Bracewell on drums for his Cellar Live Debut. The album is a depiction of Franche-Nolan’s eclectic interior musical world, filled with lyrical compositions and intricately arranged renditions of carefully picked songs from the jazz/Black American Music canon.
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Nick Wade – Feeling Good is Good Enough (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 32:07 minutes | 278 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Wade Waters Productions
Nick Wade’s journey as a musician began 32 years ago, when he took his first lesson at 5 years old. Teaching him was his grandfather, Johnny Wade, a professional jazz musician who played with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Slack, and many others. “My grandpa showed me how to hold the trainer, he played a short melody, and I played it right back to him.”
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Marc Ponthus – Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:38 minutes | 935 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bridge Records
The wildly gifted French pianist Marc Ponthus offers a new reading of Beethoven’s great “Hammerkavier” sonata, op. 106, pairing it with Karlheinz Stockhausen’s explosive Klavierstück X.
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Manteca – The Offspring Project (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:34 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Pheromone Distribution – Fontana North
It was a grey fall day in 2020, mid-pandemic. I’m driving along Sherbrooke Street in Montreal, talking on the phone, handsfree, of course, to our woodwind department, Colleen Allen:
“I feel like the next record should be a project, something with an idea behind it. We’ve been making records since 1979; if we just do another eight songs, what’s the story? Who’s going to care about that?”
“You mean like a concept album?”
I could hear a slight giggle in her voice.
“A concept album. Really?”
Now, by way of backstory, this “concept album” concept has been trending in our community. Usually, it’s the jazz rereading of a pop, rock or classical recording. But for us, composing is half the fun, so why would we subcontract the writing out to a dead white guy?
“Why don’t we do something with some of the young players who are coming up?” Colleen suggests.
Johannes Fleischmann & Christoph Ulrich Meier – Solitaire (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:33:00 minutes | 1,73 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Odradek Records
Following the critical success that greeted his Odradek debut album Exodus (music by Korngold and Zeisl), violinist Johannes Fleischmann, known as the ‘Viennese Violinist’, returns in the company of pianist Christoph Ulrich Meier with Solitaire.
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Dionysos Now & Tore Tom Denys – Maistre Jhan (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:17 minutes | 704 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Evil Penguin Classic
Maistre Jhan (also Jehan, Jan, Ihan) (c. 1485 – October 1538) was a French composer of the Renaissance, active for most of his career in Ferrara, Italy. An enigmatic figure, of whom little biographical information has yet emerged, he was one of the earliest composers of madrigals as well as a prominent musician at the Este court in the early 16th century.
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Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra – Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 ‘Choral’ (1966)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:08:30 minutes | 696 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music Australia Pty. Ltd.
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is a choral symphony, the final complete symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, composed between 1822 and 1824. It was first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824. The symphony is regarded by many critics and musicologists as a masterpiece of Western classical music and one of the supreme achievements in the entire history of music. One of the best-known works in common practice music, it stands as one of the most frequently performed symphonies in the world
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The Howdies – Howdies All Around (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:20 minutes | 920 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Normaltown Records
The story of Howdies All Around is the story of a group of friends getting together to share songs around a campfire. At its heart is a love for the hardscrabble heroes of Country Music’s early days and the freewheeling feeling of the Outlaw era. Howdies All Around bares bones that are the musical styles of Appalachia and the old Blues that came together to create a distinctly American art form.
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Stéphane Degout – Brahms: La belle Maguelone (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:55 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © B Records
The legend of the beautiful Maguelone has gone through centuries before Johannes Brahms set it to music in his eponymous Lieder cycle, based on Ludwig Tieck’s novel. Stephane Degout has decided to pay tribute to the French origins of this epic romantic tale in a new project with Alain Planes, Marielou Jacquard and Roger Germser. An exceptional concert that blends Brahms’ music with an exquisite reading crafted as close as possible to the legendary source, captured by b*records at the Theatre de l’Athenee Louis-Jouvet.
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