The drum and sax duo, Heaven, is the collaborative project of Danish saxophonist Henrik Pultz Melbye and Norwegian drummer Ole Mofjell. Heaven’s fast, highly energetic performances, combine influence from old and new-school free jazz, as the foundation for their innovative sound. Inspired by European improvisation, 60’s New York-loft-avant-garde and Ethiopian jazz, Heaven fearlessly ventures between rhythmic and melodic realms, to stretches of noise and non-idiomatic sounds.

Prepared for a new surprise coming from the Norwegian front? Master Oogway is a band with a Miles Davis feeling (and particularly the one of his Sixties records), a saxophone style rooted in the heritage of Ornette Coleman and the great free jazz original soloists, applied by tenorist Lauritz Lyster Skeidsvoll, and that kind of energy and distorted sound you only find in rock, coming very specially from the hands of guitarist Håvard Nordberg Funderud.

It makes so much sense for a Portuguese record label to release a new opus of the New York pianist and composer Jacob Sacks, considering his many connections with the jazz scene of this country and musicians like João Lencastre, Sara Serpa, André Matos, Gonçalo Marques and Demian Cabaud. Sacks is widely recognized as one of the most creative musicians in his hometown, and “Fishes” presents him in the company of other notable protagonists of the New York jazz scene, all of them members of the Clean Feed family: Ellery Eskelin, Tony Malaby, Michael Formanek and Dan Weiss.

As a young boy he was trained by his mother to play piano but later decided to exchange the instrument for the violin. In 1928, convinced by Bronisław Huberman (a friend of the family), Szeryng went to Berlin to study under Karl Flesch. His debut concert took place in Warsaw in 1933 when he performed Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major with Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Bruno Walter. In the same year he played in Bucharest, Vienna, and Paris, achieving acclaim both from the audience and the critics. In the years 1933-1939 the artist continued to learn violin under Jacques Thibaud and Gabriel Bouillon and studied composition under Nadia Boulanger.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Russian composer and pianist. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a composer beginning to be known outside Russia, found a home in music during a life full of persecution, exile, and upheaval. Pianist Jeanne Golan, cellist Andrew Yee, and the Attacca Quartet give passionate performances of three Weinberg works: the Piano Quintet Op. 18, the Cello Sonata Op. 63 No. 2, and the Sonatine for Piano, Op. 49, on their new recording for the Steinway & Sons label (STNS 30072).

Leonard Bernstein was certainly not surrounded by an aura of aloofness. He enjoyed his immense popularity, although he never consciously attempted to be “everybody’s darling” and to be hailed as “Lenny” by everyone on the street. His parents had officially named him Louis, but tended to call him Leonard. Serge Koussevitzky, his teacher and elder friend – with whom he not only shared an outstanding musical talent but also an East European Jewish family background – called him “Lenyusha”.

Pianist Alexandra Dariescu presents a reimagining of the classic ballet tale of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, with Alex herself taking the role of Clara, now a little girl longing to fulfil her dream of becoming a pianist …

Before coming into contact with James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon, Handel was is dire straits in London. His pension of £200 a year for teaching the Royal princesses had stopped, as had the public taste for opera. London had plunged into a hedonistic, alcohol- and gambling-driven lifestyle, where the bawdier things were the better.

Gianluca Cascioli’s career as pianist was launched with his victory at the 1994 Umberto Micheli International Piano Competition before a jury that included Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter, Maurizio Pollini, and Charles Rosen.

First performed in its entirety by Tristan Pfaff in July 2014 as part of the “Festival des Forêts”, the whole of these twelve etudes, composed between 2000 to 2011, constitutes the bulk of Karol Beffa's works for solo piano. Polyphony, sense of colour, virtuosity, rhythmic swaying: these etudes truly test the performer. This is where Tristan Pfaff excels…

In 1997, PBS began airing Sessions at West 54th, a program far removed from the live music fare aimed at the older set that one usually finds on the network. Instead, Sessions at West 54th brought the hottest and hippest acts to New York to perform live in front of a studio audience. And one of the first acts asked to appear was Ben Folds Five. Which was a very big deal to the leader of the band. "I viewed it as an equal to a classic BBC live music television show," says Ben Folds. "I walked into it thinking, 'This is the one I leave [behind],' because it felt like some kind of a time capsule gig."