Maria Farantouri – Beyond The Borders (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:08 minutes | 918 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
The album title is the programme in this meeting of remarkable artists brought together to arrange and interpret traditional music of Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Armenia, and to play original songs by Anatolian saz player Cihan Türkoğlu and lyricist Agathi Dimitroukas. In the spirit of the project, the new songs also bridge cultures and idioms. Legendary Greek singer Maria Farantouri, once famously hailed as “the Callas of the people”, excels in this music beyond the borders, having worked with a vast range of artists – from Mikis Theodorakis to Charles Lloyd, from Leo Brouwer to Mercedes Sosa. German cellist Anja Lechner, a classical musician primarily, in this context draws on a knowledge of folk forms gained partly through interpreting the works of Armenian-Greek philosopher-composer Gurdjieff. Armenian-born, French-based kanon (zither) player Meri Vardanyan has previously appeared on ECM as a member of the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble. Ney player and ethnomusicologist Christos Barbas, from Thessaloniki, has played everything from music of the baroque to ragas. Percussionist İzzet Kızıl grew up in Eastern Turkey in an environment dominated by Sufi rhythms and has worked in many transcultural ventures with artists from Natacha Atlas to Theodossi Spazzov, along the way evolving new approaches to percussion. In brief, each of the musicians here has a history both of working sensitively within traditions and, no less respectfully, extending those traditions through collaboration.
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Maria Emrik – Homeless Heart (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 35:37 minutes | 724 MB | Genre: Jazz, Vocal Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ali Production
My heart has always been beating for jazz music and I feel like home when working on new jazz songs. Though I have recorded many cover songs I have found that writing my own songs and lyrics is a healing and almost spiritual process for me. It gives me a deep feeling of purpose and meaning.
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Maria Emrik – Close Your Eyes (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 43:42 minutes | 864 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ali Production
“Music is the most important thing in my life! I have sung all my life and recorded more than 30 albums through the years. I am in a process of remastering some of them to be able to upload them to various streaming services on the internet.
It will take some time as there are many songs, and many of them are on tapes, and the process is being done in another country – so there is plenty of work!
I have often been asked why I don’t do concerts or interviews, and I understand that it may be difficult to understand, but honestly I do not think it is important to listen to me repeating my lifestory over and over again. I would be happy to talk about my music, but I have found that it often ends up being about me instead. My music is my purpose – not me as such. Trust me I am not that interesting 🙂
I think that music and art is very important for peoples wellbeing in this world and I believe that those who are supposed to hear me will find me regardless.”
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Maria Dolores Pradera – Esencial Maria Dolores Pradera (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:38:06 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Latin Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings
Singer and actress Maria Dolores Pradera was born in Madrid on August 29, 1924. She spent much of her childhood in Chile, her family brought there by her father’s business. She began working as an actress on both stage and screen as early as her late teens. Her first major works were the films Yo No Ne Caso in 1944 and Los Habitantes de la Casa Deshabitada in 1946. It was while working on Los Habitantes that Pradera met Fernando Fernan Gómez, whom she would marry in 1947. From there she would perform in various theaters in Spain, France, and Mexico, collaborating with the most important directors of the day. As a singer, Pradera was known for her smooth voice, perfect diction, and intuitive nature in a variety of styles. A master of bolero, ranchera, coplas, ballads, fados, and more, Pradera became well loved all over Latin America. Her voice made famous the works of songwriters like José Alfredo Jiménez (Mexico), Chabuca Granda (Peru), and Miguel Matamoros (Cuba). Her vocal and theatrical career was celebrated throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Toward the end of her productive years she helped to bolster and guide Spain’s next generation of artists, including Joaquín Sabina, Rosana, and Los Sabandenos.
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Maria Del Mar Bonet – Esencial Maria del Mar Bonet (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:10:51 minutes | 1,48 GB | Genre: Latin Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings
Maria del Mar Bonet i Verdaguer (born 1947 in Palma, Majorca) is a Balearic singer from the island of Majorca.
Bonet studied ceramics in the school of arts, but eventually decided to dedicate herself to music. She arrived in Barcelona in 1967, where she began to sing with the group Els Setze Jutges. She has published many rock music albums in Catalan, in spite of the ban on the Catalan language and its music during Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. She has performed throughout China as well as in Japan, the former USSR, Tunisia, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Brazil, Sweden, Switzerland, Venezuela, Mexico, and the United States.
Maria Dallas – Tumblin’ Down (1968/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 27:40 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Country, Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA – Legacy
Maria Dallas was discovered at a talent contest in small town of Morrinsville, New Zealand. Her first single “Tumblin’ Down”, written by Jay Epae, released in 1966 and made it to #11 in the charts. It also won her a Loxene Golden Disc award. She released several albums and singles and starred in the New Zealand television series Golden Girl before moving on to Australia in 1967 and then to Nashville. She returned to New Zealand in 1970 and scored a #1 hit with the song “Pinocchio”. In total, Dallas produced at least 10 albums and 25 singles.
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Maria Cristina Kiehr, Krishnasol Jiménez, Roberto Koch – Navigating Foreign Waters: Spanish Baroque Music & Mexican Folk Music (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:28 minutes | 899 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Brilliant Classics
In a very specific sense in 16th- and 17th-century Spain and again in today’s Mexico (and elsewhere in Latin America) the Spanish term son denotes a particular genre of music with certain common traits including a close association with dance, text composed of several verses (coplas) and a fundamental harmonic pattern unique to each son. This use of the term can be found in sources as early as Gaspar Sanz’s Instrucción de musica para la guitarra Española (1674), whose title page proclaims ‘a variety of sones and dances, both strummed and plucked, in the Spanish, Italian, French and English styles’. These Spanish sones are the forerunners of those performed today by popular musicians in many regions of Mexico, notably in the States of Jalisco, Guerrero, and Veracruz, in the latter, the two varieties of son being the huasteco (northern) and the jarocho (southern).
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Maria Cole – Maria Cole (1960/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 31:26 minutes | 594 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla
Maria Cole (née Hawkins; August 1, 1922 – July 10, 2012) was an American jazz singer and the wife of singer Nat King Cole; mother of the singer Natalie Cole.
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Maria Christina with Federico Casagrande – Morning Swim (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 41:31 minutes | 775 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Timezone
Vienna – New York-Berlin: Austrian singer Maria Christina has an exciting trip behind herself and one hears this. Their voice is the expression of a highly sensitive, frank soul, her songs have to tell a lot.
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Maria Chiara Argiró – The Fall Dance (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 54:33 minutes | 695 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Odradek Records
Italian pianist Maria Chiara Argirò’s album firmly falls into the contemporary Jazz camp and if you’re able to leave your prejudices aside, you’ll find a very beautiful album that will reap you rich rewards once you get into it. It has a strong, contemporary, urban, pulse that runs through it and, to my mind, also draws on some of the pastoral traditions of Folk. That it also manages to do this whilst remaining, on the whole, upbeat and absorbing in equal measure, is testimony to the skill of the composer and her collaborators.
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Caturelli Maria & Tozzetti Michele – Kuhlau: Complete Sonatas for Flute & Piano (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:29:45 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Brilliant Classics
Friedrich Kuhlau (1786 – 1832) lived and worked during a transitional period of classical music. A contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert, his works remain almost unknown to this day, except for some compositions for the flute.
The compositional style of the sonatas featured in this recording perfectly identifies with that of his contemporaries, while showing some differences in content; the structure of the sonatas is that of the classical period, but the use of melodic themes and harmony looks to the romantic period.
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Maria Callas – The New Sound of Maria Callas (Remastered) (2003/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:33:48 minutes | 3,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Renaissance of a voice: Maria Callas – Unforgettable arias sung by the most iconic diva of all time – remastered for the first time in high-definition sound from the original tapes, for an unprecedented sound quality that shines new light on the voice of Maria Callas. Allan Ramsay, remastering engineer at Abbey Road Studios: “With high definition, you’ll be able to experience sounds which have only been heard so far by people who were either present at Callas’s recording sessions, or who had access to the unique master tape … All we wanted to do is remove the specks of dust, as it were, and wipe the glass clean.”
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Maria Callas – The Callas Rarities (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:56:48 minutes | 2,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
The first two tracks heard here are tests made for the producer Walter Legge to get the feeling of working with Maria Callas in a studio and to find good microphone placings in an acoustically difficult venue for recording Lucia di Lammermoor immediately afterwards. In the mono version of the Sleepwalking Scene from Macbeth one hears the character moving off into the distance as instructed in the score, unlike the stereo take where the voice remains centre stage.
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Maria Callas – Pure – Maria Callas (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:53 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Opera singers come and go, but just a few – the legends – live on. And Maria Callas was the greatest legend of them all, though not just for the wonder of her voice. She changed the way people thought about opera, but she also became famous as the glamorous celebrity who fell in love with Aristotle Onassis, leaving her elderly husband to live with him on his yacht Christina and enjoy the high life with the international jet set.
Of course it ended badly. She lived her life like one of her own tragic heroines who (as women tend to do in opera) sing, suffer and die. And her own death came at just 53, after a dazzling but short career that took in heavy roles alongside decorative, nightingale-like ones – ignoring the established rules of vocal health and probably explaining why her voice finally gave out as it did.
But in that time she did extraordinary things, using the muscle of those heavy heroines to empower the nightingales with strength and depth of feeling nobody had thought to offer them before. She gave them credibility as drama. Her performances were absolute and self-exposing: she held nothing back. And she was even tougher on herself than she could be on others – which is why her voice was never quite the flawless instrument singers are meant to cultivate. Her personality was far too volatile and too self-sacrificing in its love affair with risk.
In the mythology of opera, though, that’s what the audience demands. We want the diva to be both a goddess and a slave: to give her life for art. We thrill to the dimension of that sacrifice. And Callas dutifully obliged.
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Maria Callas – Maria Callas – Live & Alive (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:12:05 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
The passion and charisma of Maria Callas, performing live on the stages of the world’s greatest opera houses and concert halls, can now be experienced as never before – thanks to new audio remastering from the best available sources. These are performances that played a crucial part in creating the legend of Callas, La Divina, and which keep her thrilling art very much alive.
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