Athanor. A mysterious name to designate, in alchemy, the long-combustion furnace that produces the philosopher’s stone. This matrix, which symbolises the quest of one who seeks to the Absolute, is a metaphor of Liszt’s approach.

In the song “The Cool School,” Michael Franks asks, “Am I dinosaur? Yeah you bet. I grew up listening to Mose and Chet […] me I attended the Cool School.” In a few short lines he describes what many jazz fans today are feeling: he’s an insider, his influences are hip and classic, a member of a small club, the kind of club that is both impossible to join and to which everyone can belong.

GRAMMY® Award-winning songwriter and producer Poo Bearunites some of the hottest names in pop, hip-hop, Latin, R&B, and electronic music for his upcoming full-length debut, Poo Bear Presents Bearthday Music—arriving in stores and online Friday April 27, 2018 via Capitol Music Group. This special bilingual collaborative album properly ushers the preeminent writer and enigmatic presence into the spotlight for the first time. "Poo Bear Presents: Bearthday Music" is available for pre-order HERE. Fans who pre-order the album will instantly receive “Hard 2 Face Reality”.

Following their album largely devoted to sacred polyphonic works composed for the basilica of Santa Barbara during the period in which Claudio Monteverdi worked for the Gonzagas in Mantua, Odhecaton now presents sacred compositions from the composers later years, written for St Marks basilica where he became maestro di cappella in 1613. This new recording presents both sides of Monteverdis sacred style: the stile antico or strict contrapuntal style, exemplified in the Mass for four voices published posthumously in 1650; and the stile moderno, that is, concertato and solo vocal writing.

A new recording of John Adams's Grawemeyer Award–winning Violin Concerto (1993) with his frequent collaborators violinist Leila Josefowicz, conductor David Robertson, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is due on April 27, 2018. The album was recorded at Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis in 2016.

The circulation of artists and sovereigns between France and England in the seventeenth century resulted in the establishment of highly original genres in the latter country: the first recitatives, large-scale airs from masques and dramatic ‘scenes' provided fertile ground for experimentation and prepared the way for the birth of semi-opera. Sébastien Daucé explores this English vocal art in a programme tailor-made for one of today's most fascinating voices: Lucile Richardot, in the exquisite setting provided by Correspondances, subtly blends music, love, night and melancholy.”

Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita release their much-anticipated second album SOAR on 27th April 2018 on the bendigedig label, followed by major UK tours throughout 2018.

Everybody knows about New Orleans’ rich musical tradition—but an even more deeply rooted tradition in the Crescent City is one of perpetual reinvention. It’s a city that’s been reborn countless times over the course of its multi-cultural history, a legacy vibrantly reflected in its music.

The first Grouper album in 4 years finds Liz Harris stripped of FX, pairing her vocals with skeletal piano gestures in beautifully pregnant space. For anyone familiar with the miasmic fuzz of Grouper’s previous releases, the relative clarity is quietly shocking in effect, revealing her songs and sound at their most vulnerable, and, in the process, locating a newfound strength in fragility.

Today it has mostly been forgotten that one of the founding fathers of German music copyright, Hans Sommer, whose real name was Hans Friedrich August Zincken (1837-1922), was also a prolific composer. Although the close connection between music and the educated middle class was taken for granted, the act of composing – either as a dilettante or as a professional – was still considered a hazardous venture. Hardly anyone could devote themselves entirely to composition without additional income from performance or teaching.

After a long discographic and scenic experience in the field of jazz, where Thierry Maillard has already been able to explore all the different facets of this music, from solo piano to septet, through the trio of course, and several orchestral experiences with strings ( especially with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra), Thierry Maillard realizes the work of his life, with the creation of this exceptional big band, which synthesizes all its influences and its various musical experiences, in a great melodic, harmonic and rhythmic whirlwind, for the pleasure of all, and pursuing happiness, of course!

“In the history of music, many are the noteworthy composers who long remained neglected and unrecognized, or whose œuvre has been reduced to misleading clichés. Lyapunov counts among them. Her pianistic virtuosity and inspired playing make us the living witnesses of the transcendental experience so dear to Liszt: they encourage elevation. Let us listen unbiased to a work that remains one of the prodigious cycles of piano literature.”

A famous cantata for baritone by Johann Sebastian Bach ("Kreuzstabkantate"), combined with two cantatas by Georg Philipp Telemann. In addition and as a supplementary musical color, there are three purely instrumental pieces: overtures by J. F. Fasch and Telemann, and as an "encore", the Larghetto from Handel's Concerto Grosso Op. 6/4. Christoph Prégardien was and is well known as one of the most versatile lyric tenors of our time.

We hardly need to introduce Emmanuel Ceysson: multi-award winning prodigy harpist, soloist at the Opéra national de Paris and now at the MET Opera in New York. His meteoric rise evokes that of the Frenchman Carlos Salzedo, born in the nineteenth century, who became in New York the greatest harpist of his time, and revolutionised the repertoire of his instrument.

Through the careful and delicate music of his first album "Moon River", Fred Pasqua demonstrates his attachment to the pieces that accompanied his life as an artist. Surrounded by musicians with whom he has already shared musical adventures, the drummer develops a very personal, sensitive and nuanced music whose aesthetic is similar to a light and delicate poetry in line with the image of Laeticia Bourgeois's photo.