William Christie’s account on Erato is probably now a first recommendation… he has marshalled expert singers; Alan Ewing’s Polyphemus is particularly good, well characterized and spirited. Indeed, the whole performance is full of life and personality, and Christie holds everything together with finesse and grace.

This two-disc Porgy and Bess records not an entirely new version of the Gershwin opera, but a claimed improvement on the "complete" version that surfaced in the 1970s and changed the opera from a series of set pieces to a living work of drama.

With THE FLEMISH CONNECTION vol. 2, I SOLISTI release a second album with works by their composer-in-residence Frederik Neyrinck. He has mastered the art of writing brilliant and innovative compositions that make the most of the wind ensemble’s wealth of sound colours quite like no other. The setting of texts and stories is a recurring theme throughout this fascinating album. Featured are concert versions of two musical theatre pieces: Landru, the story of a famous serial killer, and WILD, a magical realist fairy tale. The third work on the album, De oude woorden van een tijd die komen gaat (The old words of a time that still is yet to come), premiered at the 2021 Klarafestival and is based on a new idyll by Dutch author Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer. Narrator Josse De Pauw and soprano Lore Binon guide us through this work, which is immersed in a medieval atmosphere reminiscent of the current pandemic.

With bassist Eric Wheeler grounding the proceedings with humungous tones and agile lines, pianist Donald Vega bringing harmonic freshness in his comping and excitement in his solos and Watts underscoring the proceedings with his inimitable polyrhythmic touch on the kit, Wyatt is on firm footing here. Trumpeters Theo Croker and Chris Lowery, trombonist Clifton Anderson and percussionist Kahlil Owame Bell all contribute mightily to A Song of Hope, which resonates as a kind of healing balm for these stressful times.

Another Koek is the first CD of the duo Knuijt and Dellebeke, mother Cora Dellebeke and son Stefan Knuijt. From their home village Nieuw- en Sint Joosland in the Dutch province of Zeeland they succeeded in building a career as meritorious musicians both within Zeeland and nationally. At the time they continued looking for challenges to play together and make uncommon presentations. “A different piece of cake,” one could say. The uniqueness of the musical collaboration lies in the combination of instruments they’re specialized in. Cora Dellebeke (1967) is percussionist with het Zeeuws Orkest (the provincial symphony orchestra) and Stefan Knuijt (1992) is composer, pianist and tuba player in de Marinierskapel der Koninklijke Marine, Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy. They play together in a natural fashion, they don’t need many words to explain their intentions and they picked a repertoire which enables them to explore variation, interplay and virtuosity.

During the years in which Bernard Foccroulle was successively director of the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, he never ceased to devote himself to his instrument, the organ, regularly making recordings, giving numerous concerts and several premieres. The compositions on this recording range over that thirty-year cycle, from the 1991 premiere of Jonathan Harvey’s Fantasia in Strasbourg to that of Betsy Jolas’s Musique d’autres jours, a piece combining organ with cello that was premiered in Paris in February 2021 during the Présences Festival. His collaboration with the cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton also resulted in a new composition by Bernard Foccroulle for this organ-cello duo!

A former member of Betty Carter's band, Green shows on this set that the word on him was correct; he's both an aggressive and sensitive stylist, able to rip through songs and make quick, yet correct chord changes. Yet he can also play a passionate ballad and not rush through it, instead developing and then completing his solos impressively.

Wednesday Morning, 3 AM doesn't resemble any other Simon & Garfunkel album, mostly because their sound here was fundamentally different from that of the chart-topping duo that emerged a year later. Their first record together since their days as the teen harmony duo Tom & Jerry, the album was cut in March 1964, at a time when both Simon and Garfunkel were under the spell of folk music…

If Venus and Mars had the façade of being an album by a band, At the Speed of Sound really is a full-band effort, where everybody gets a chance to sing, and even contribute a song. This, ironically, winds up as considerably less cohesive than its predecessor despite these efforts for community, not because Wings was not a band in the proper sense, but because nobody else in the band pulsed as much weight as McCartney, who was resting on his laurels here…