When the history of Jazz during the COVID-19 pandemic gets written, Armen Donelian warrants a detailed chapter. Though he composed more than a dozen new pieces through the spring of 2021, the veteran pianist and educator didn’t use the downtime to reinvent his repertoire as much as he deepened his pianistic approach and sharpened his ears in the context of a supremely sensitive new trio with bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Dennis Mackrel. The group’s unabashedly beautiful debut, Fresh Start, is Donelian’s 14th album and his 11th for Sunnyside, the label that has documented the bulk of his work as a leader since the mid-1980s.

Attend the tale of Beinta Broberg. So dark an aura gathered around this unfortunate seventeenth-century soul that she became known on her native Faroe Islands as ‘Wicked Beinta’. Composed by Anna Katrin Øssursdóttir Egilstrøð and Allan Gravgaard Madsen, the symphonic song cycle’s introspective, veiled songs are couched within a mostly passive-aggressive orchestral landscape: not a roaring and surging ensemble but a brittle, desolate and minutely changeable one.

Listening to music performed live at a concert is radically different from experiencing music at home. Live listening is listening in public, together with others, at the same time and place. Listening at home is private, often done alone. It takes place in the comfort and intimacy of your own space, on your own terms; perhaps this is what makes home listening more sincere and direct. Then the relationship we create with the music can become more personal and long-lasting.

Sergei Bortkiewicz's artistic path was shaped by the history and geopolitics of the turbulent 20th century. He was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, as a Russian of Polish descent; he received his education in St Petersburg and Berlin; after fleeing from revolutionary Russia, he worked in Constantinople; he spent the last decades of his life in Vienna, where he escaped from Nazi-controlled Berlin. All the above had an effect on his piano output – he was influenced by the music of Chopin and Rachmaninoff, an incurable romanticist and lyricist, looking in his compositions for the beauty of the melody.

Composer Elena Ruehr adds to her extensive discography with "Icarus", an album of chamber music infused with hints of history, legendary literature and close collaborations with a multitude of musical colleagues. The repertoire revolves around the string quartet, a genre that generated great acclaim for Elena’s Six String Quartets.

Jason Vieaux, "among the elite of today’s classical guitarists" (Gramophone), is described by NPR as "perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation". Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy-winning album for "Best Classical Instrumental Solo", "Play". Vieaux’s multiple appearances over the years with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Strings Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Caramoor Festival, etc., have forged his reputation as a top-drawer chamber musician.Regular collaborators include the Escher String Quartet, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, and accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro. Now, Vieaux releases "Bach Volume 2", a follow-up to Volume 1. This is Jason's first release since the 2015 release of Grammy Award winning "Play".

Two years after the great acclaim aroused by "Beethoven and his Contemporaries", his first recording for Arcana, Raffaele La Ragione returns with an album containing the four best-known mandolin concertos, which appear in a new light here thanks to the use of three different period mandolins. For this ambitious project he is joined by the brilliant orchestra Il pomo d’oro, universally renowned for its lively, dynamic interpretations of instrumental and vocal music from the Baroque and Classical periods (with Joyce DiDonato, Franco Fagioli, Jakub Józef Orliński) and directed here by its principal guest conductor Francesco Corti, a harpsichordist of international repute.From Vivaldi’s famous mandolin concertos, by way of the typically Neapolitan examples by Paisiello and Lecce, to the two more Classical concertos of Hummel (these last in their world premiere recording on historical instruments), four concertos and three precious instruments restore this repertory to its rightful place and relate almost a century of mandolin history.

To welcome the spring, British ensemble I Fagiolini puts aside its beloved Monteverdi to uncover its own national heritage: the best of John Wilbye's classic Golden Age madrigals. Whilst his oeuvre may have been small (just 75 works that we know of and most just a couple of minutes long), time and again, in these exquisite cameos, Wilbye delivers what might be reckoned the ultimate madrigal experience.The plangent dissonance of Draw on, sweet night and Weep, weep, mine eyes perfectly evoke English melancholy, while Sweet honey-sucking bees and Adieu, sweet Amaryllis are such sheer pleasure to sing that many listeners will scrabble to unearth old scores. This album is, in a nutshell, 75 minutes of madrigalian bliss! Rediscover or enjoy anew this central part of English choral culture, strangely out of fashion for so long, sung by a group that has matured into the repertoire like a good wine.

Wir wissen ja nicht, was jüngst in Dublin vor sich ging. In jedem Fall konnte die Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste mit dieser Produktion mithalten. Mindestens. Am 2. Februar 1922 erschien der Roman "Ulysses" des Ur-Dubliners James Joyce, pünktlich ein Jahrhundert später kommt diese Aufführung des Spätwerks "Yes I Will Yes" von Dieter Schnebel.

When Sade released Diamond Life in their native U.K., they were already a kind of sensation. The band had scored hits with their first singles, the smoldering Top Ten ballad "Your Love Is King" and the perseverant soul anthem "When Am I Going to Make a Living," both of which only faintly resembled anything else on the chart. Magazines such as The Face and Smash Hits had published cover features, intensifying anticipation for the album…

This project relates to a new album, “Early Italian Cello Concertos” to be released on April 1, 2022 on the Analekta label, a collaboration between cellist Elinor Frey and Rosa Barocca, conducted by Claude Lapalme. We recorded the album last September in Calgary, Alberta.

An immersion in the music of La Grande Écurie at the French court. The programme is based on the music that punctuated all the ceremonies of the French court from Henri IV to Louis XIV.

Carl Theodor of the Palatinate. Richter joined this renowned ensemble in 1747, serving as a composer, violinist, and bassist. His works combine Baroque stylistic features with elements of the style galant, and he numbered among the masters of the Mannheim school who made very important contributions to the beginnings of the early classical symphony. While Johann Stamitz, Ignaz Holzbauer, and Anton Fils, drawing on ideas of Italian provenance, shaped the new musical language of what came to be known as the Mannheim school, Richter’s own comparatively conservative view of music was an obstacle to his advancement.

Winner of the "Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Mosel-Eifel" Prize in Germany, pianist Régulo Martínez-Antón has appeared in renowned venues throughout Europe and North and South America. A versatile and passionate performing artist, Mr. Martínez-Antón has proven himself to be one of the most intriguing Spanish pianists of his generation. He has presented solo recitals at the prestigious El Escorial Music Festival and a performance of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto with Maestro Michael Francis and the Andres Segovia Chamber Orchestra.

Un milagro de fe (A Miracle of Faith) presents the spectacular debut recording of the choral ensemble Border CrosSing, based in the Twin Cities, and led by Mexican-Egyptian conductor Ahmed Anzaldúa. Their kaleidoscopic program presents vibrant readings of works of faith by Beatriz Bilbao, Ariel Ramirez's Misa Criolla, Mary Lou Williams's St. Martin de Porres, and selections from Osvaldo Golijov's La Pasión según San Marcos.