For the fourth time on the Phi label, Philippe Herreweghe presents three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach – Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4, Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79, and Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80. Written at different moments in the composer’s life and based to a large extent on the works of Martin Luther, these cantatas reflect a marked taste for dramaturgy, vivid word-painting and an invariably astonishing use of instruments and voices. Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent give us an accomplished version of these masterpieces, confirming, if further proof were needed, their stature as ardent champions of Bach.

"Pop meets opera": “Latin American songs go straight to the heart, because they deal with the things that matter most to us – homeland, tradition, love, heartbreak, and so on – and do so with enormous charm, but also incredible passion. The mysterious Ecuadorian pasillo Sombras, the gentle Cuban bolero Contigo en la distancia, the nostalgic Si vas para Chile, the tango Volver, an Argentinian work of art by Carlos Gardel, and other songs like these make you understand that love for one’s homeland is as powerful as any first love.” )Juan Diego Flórez)

The tenor Julian Prégardien joins Alpha for several recording projects that will showcase every facet of his talent, notably lieder and oratorio. His first album on the label is devoted to one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of music, Winterreise, but in a version with orchestra composed by Hans Zender in 1993. He scored the work for orchestral forces very different from the ensembles used in the nineteenth century (including, for example, a soprano saxophone, an accordion, a harmonica, a wind machine, a guitar and a very large percussion section).

The works on Viktoria Mullova’s new album devoted to Arvo Pärt’s music for violin stem from the composers study of medieval church music, and are products of what Arvo Pärt himself describes as a ‘tintinnabuli’ style, developed by the composer in the 1970s through studying medieval church music ‘I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements – with one voice, two voices. I build with primitive materials – with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation.’

Bruno Cocset pays tribute to one of the precursors of the Golden Age of the cello by recording five sonatas (no.5 in G major, no.2 in C minor, no.1 in F major, no.13 in A major, no.12 in B flat major), based on the manuscripts of the extensive Noseda Collection of the Milan Conservatory. He is accompanied by his partners from Les Basses Réunies, Maude Gratton (fortepiano), Bertrand Cuiller (harpsichord), Emmanuel Jacques (cello continuo) and Richard Myron (double bass).

In February 2015 Heinz Holliger conducted a performance of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony with the Basel Chamber Orchestra. The result was so compelling that Holliger and the orchestra decided to record all the symphonies, together with a selection of Schubert’s operatic overtures. The project began in 2017 and is scheduled to end in 2019.

The sixth studio album by the unique poet, novelist and musician, Anthony Joseph 'People of the Sun' sees Joseph return to his roots. Recorded on his native island of Trinidad, it's a tribute to the bubbling Port of Spain (POS), this meeting place of many cultures.

For its third ECM release, the Danish String Quartet inaugurates a series of albums with the overarching title of Prism, in which the group will present one of Beethoven's late string quartets in the context of a related fugue by J.S. Bach as well as a linked masterwork from the quartet literature.

Hélène Grimaud’s new album MEMORY can be thought as an invitation to mindfulness.

Described as ‘one of the great new Sibelian teams’ (The Herald), Thomas Søndergård and BBC National Orchestra of Wales continue their shared fascination with the orchestral music of Sibelius.

On 2015’s Aesthesis Australia’s Dead Letter Circus showed signs of mellowing into their stride, subtly putting aside the robust and pain-stricken crescendos that first caught our attention with the expansive This Is The Warning. Aesthesis pointed them in the direction of radio-friendly territory where there’s little place for pronounced heaviness. With their eponymous album, thank goodness, they haven’t done away with the riffs altogether and those twinkling guitar tones, not to mention Kim Benzie’s consistently dreamy vocals, the standout drumming of Luke Williams and production by Forrester Savell (Karnivool, Skyharbor), have afforded Dead Letter Circus a recognisable sound.

It's just like Richard Swift to leave a postscript, a note at the end of a long letter riddled with silly jokes, bruised run-on sentences and doodles in the margins. He was always working, always writing songs and dreaming up sounds, right up until he died July 3 in a Tacoma, Wash., hospice facility from complications of hepatitis, as well as liver and kidney distress. He was 41, but his extensive production and songwriting catalog read like someone with several more years on him, sharing studios with the likes of Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Dan Auerbach, Laetitia Sadier and The Shins.

The new album from Nosound, 'Allow Yourself', is a new expression from the group who have grown alongside their evolving and borderless label Kscope. The new material is a stripping back of what has come before, and its inspirations are in a different field altogether, based on founder and songwriter Giancarlo Erra's own shifting interests. "Time has arrived for a radical change towards an alternative and electronic direction, being the music I have enjoyed the most in recent years."

The current iteration of 20th Congress includes a crew of brilliant improvisers and genre-bending virtuosos. Drummer Simon Lott (Kool Keith, Charlie Hunter) is a longtime collaborator who brings a refreshing unpredictability anchored in deep-rooted New Orleans rhythms. Bassist Victor Little (Billy Preston, Charlie Musselwhite) started sitting in with the band on a series of West Coast gigs and gradually became essential to the evolving sound. Guitarist Chris Alford (Cassandra Wilson, Mike Dillon) has worked extensively with Lott in New Orleans, bringing a baked-in chemistry that has mutated into the infectious sound of this incarnation of the 20th Congress.

Rarely have two musicians given the impression of making their artistic proximity so manifest. Alto saxophonist Dmitry Baevsky and pianist Jeb Patton have known each other for many years. They met at a young age in New York, driven by a same thirst to learn the language of jazz and to make it their idiom of predilection. What better way for these two musicians to reveal their entente than in a tête-à-tête? What better context than a one-on-one, in which they elaborate the music together, privileging careful listening to one another other, a dialogue, a complementarity? The complicity is obvious between Jeb Patton’s elegant and articulated piano playing and Dmitry Baevsky’s vivid, precise and lyrical alto saxophone. The complicity is obvious between Jeb Patton’s elegant and articulated piano playing and Dmitry Baevsky’s vivid, precise and lyrical alto saxophone. Magnificently recorded, they have achieved a classic and everlasting album that marks the meeting of two contemporary jazz masters, simply called ‘We Two’.