For a long time, Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) kept the two main fields of his compositional activity neatly separated. First, there was film music: this was undoubtedly the best known and also the most abundant of the two. His artistic partnerships with directors such as Sergio Leone, Giuseppe Tornatore, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giuliano Montaldo, Elio Petri, and Gillo Pontecorvo marked the history of film music. However, the directors with whom he cooperated, also on the international stage, are very numerous, including Brian De Palma and Quentin Tarantino.

Swedish songwriter Alice Boman has been thinking about space a lot lately. The silence between sounds, the unspoken bonds between humans, the enormity of the universe and her place within it. You can follow these mini epiphanies on her stunning new album, The Space Between.

For twenty years Marco Serino was Ennio Morricone’s violinist, the soloist on his film soundtracks and on world tours where they were reworked for the concert hall. In January 2020, after what proved to be his last public concert, at the Italian Senate in Rome, Morricone finished the transcription of this magnificent and unpublished collection, which recasts the themes of his most famous scores in suites transcribed for violin and orchestra.

If we were to try to visualize all the songs that are traditionally heard during Advent and at Christmas, the result might be a map with countless brightly lit dots like a night sky filled with stars. The present recording features Christmas carols from the most disparate corners of Europe and seeks to add its voice to this rich and varied chorus, in the process allowing listeners to feel a sense of amazement at the whole range of Christmas songs and to delight in the beauty of the different traditions and common roots that are on display here.

Simon Zaoui, Pierre Fouchenneret and Raphael Merlin here resume, and complete, their exploration of the chamber works of Gabriel Fauré:, begun in 2018 with the first volume of Horizons. Far from the prevailing trends of the early 20th century, Fauré's music for piano and strings testifies to the singularity of his language, constantly moving between past and future. Joined by violist Marie Chilemme for the two piano quartets, and by members of the Strada Quartet for the string quartet and quintets, the three friends present a carefully considered version of these masterpieces, recorded here for the first time using the material of the new Barenreiter edition.

I found myself homeless at the start of the pandemic and in that drift I landed on a few hundred acres of blue oaks, dust and granite called Cinnamon Canyon in the Sierra Nevada Foothills. What I thought would only be months became years. Long enough for the land to break me in all the ways I unknowingly needed breaking. This album is a small document of that journey. A portrait of certain understandings that came from that death and rebirth of sorts.

Nachdem Howard Carpendale in den vergangenen zwei Jahren mit »Symphonie meines Lebens« und »Symphonie meines Lebens 2« zwei Karriererückblicke mit dem Royal Philharmonic Orchestra veröffentlichte, die beide in den Top 10 der deutschen Charts landeten, präsentiert der deutsch-südafrikanische Schlagersänger und Komponist 2021 ein neues Weihnachtsalbum und vollendet damit die Trilogie mit dem Londoner Orchester.

Today, indie-folk artist Josienne Clarke has announced her new album Onliness (songs of solitude & singularity) will be released on April 14th, 2023. On her new album, Clarke revisits songs from her back catalogue, a combination of fan favourites as well as hidden gems that have, until now, never had the spotlight she felt they deserved. The first single, out today, is a reworked and re-recorded version of one of her earliest compositions, ‘The Tangled Tree’.

In 2020, the legendary self-titled debut of metal giants ICED EARTH celebrates its 30th anniversary! Originally released in 1990, “Iced Earth” now returns in a brand-new edition featuring high class remixing and remastering courtesy of Zeuss (Overkill, Queensrÿche etc.), going to be released on December 18th, 2020, via Century Media Records.

Although Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) wrote a considerable quantity of piano music, only a single piece, ‘Étincelles’, made it into the repertoire, not least because Horowitz enjoyed playing it. The early works on this second instalment in Ian Hobson’s survey of Moszkowski’s complete music for solo piano reveal a debt to Mendelssohn and Schumann, but the effortless craftsmanship heard here already justifies a later remark of Paderewski’s: ‘After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique’. Most of the pieces in Opp. 15 and 18 are attractive salon miniatures, but the Three Piano Pieces in Dance Form, Op. 17, are extended Lisztian essays that showcase Moszkowski’s mastery of the keyboard and his command of form.

Eloy Panizo Padrón began studying trombone with José Francisco Abellán at the Patronato Insular de Música de El Hierro (Spain).

Live From Dublin is an 11-track live album by Irish indie-folk trio Kingfishr.

Full Cream, the debut from collective quartet comprising Greg Ward, Ziv Ravitz, Matthew Stevens and Leo Genovese, exuberantly celebrates camaraderie and the act of creation; out November 1, 2024 via Sugah Hoof Records

Music has always been an affair of the heart to Rain Sultanov.

The Zipps were a Dutch beat band from Dordrecht that merged from The Beat-Town Skifflers en The Moving Strings.