THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD compiles the best new music around right now, with 15 tracks from Yard Act, Curtis Harding, Anaïs Mitchell, Arooj Aftab, Working Men's Club, Binker & Moses, Imarhan, Billy Strings and more.

With this recording the acclaimed ensemble Le Nuove Musiche, led by director Krijn Koetsveld, have come full circle and at last completed their monumental undertaking of a complete cycle of Claudio Monteverdi’s books of madrigals. In bringing this endeavour to a close the group have returned to their starting point, recording a fresh take of perhaps the most famous set, Monteverdi’s groundbreaking Books V & VI, previously released by Le Nuove Musiche one decade ago at the start of this musical journey.

Jazz on life and death! In There Is No Future, Swedish jazz singer Sara Aldén makes her album debut with self-written music and arranged jazz standards with a focus on grand crescendos and vulnerable intimacy. She creates jazz as if her life depended on it where the question of the end of everything is allowed to exist, the small endings and the big ones. Sara Aldén and her trio present a musical sinkhole in the ongoing history of jazz, where doom-filled and intimate compositions alternate with dizzying arpeggios and dystopian and lyrical sound worlds.

Sean Shibe returns to the acoustic guitar on Profesion, bringing together works by Agustin Barrios, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera. The album derives its name from Barrios's "Profesion de fe" (profession of faith), a poetic, mythological text praising the divine power of music, often used as a preface to his concerts. Barrios's La Catedral and Julia Florida are combined with Villa Lobos's 12 Etudes, while Ginastera's Guitar Sonata completes the programme. These works by Southern American composers share a spirit of homage and pastiche, bound together by magical realism.

The constant movement and passionate stream-of-consciousness of Nikolay Medtner's music suits Severin von Eckardstein wonderfully, and he it. The difference between his performance of these character pieces/tone poems for piano and that of other pianists is his touch. He is light and graceful enough that feverishly ardent passages do not burrow deeply into a good, indulgent brood and drag the listener along for the ride. Instead, he propels himself through the moodiness, but still fully acknowledges the feelings within the music.

Wild is a 'larger than life' pianist, one who can spin out a lyrical line and use romantic gestures without ever sounding self-conscious. His balance of excitement and control, and, indeed, his gorgeous sound, are a constant marvel.

Though Chris Rea has been around for nearly 25 years now, it's good to go back to his beginnings as a songwriter and guitarist who carved out a niche for himself with a late-night brand of very British formalist rock & roll that owes as much to J.J. Cale as it does to Dire Straits. But it's the late-night sound that is his trademark and it was in evidence on this, his very first outing. He has help from drummer Dave Mattacks, keyboardist Pete Wingfield, percussionist Ray Cooper, bassist Dave Paton, and a host of other dignitaries.

While 2002's Down the Road was the best Van Morrison release in ages – with its autobiographical allusions, cultural critiques, and new band – it could not have prepared listeners for the jolt of this, his Blue Note Records debut What's Wrong With This Picture? While the album is hardly a straight jazz record, it does take the territory he explored on Down the Road another step further into the classic pop music of the 20th century filtered through his own Celtic swing, R&B, vocal jazz, and blue-eyed soul. The title track that opens the album is as close to an anthem as Morrison's ever written; he states with an easy, swinging, jazzy soul groove that he is not the same person he once was and wonders why that was so difficult for others to accept. There is no bitterness or bite in his assertions. If anything, the question is asked with warm humor and amusement as if it is indeed the listener's hangup if he/she can't accept Morrison "living in the present time." He asks, "Why don't we take it down and forget about it/'Cause that ain't me at all," as the song whispers to a close.

Dani Howard is a British composer and orchestrator who is fast establishing a reputation across Europe for her music. The Times called her Trombone Concerto ‘An instant classic…lush..rivetting’. She has had major commissions from UK orchestras, including the RLPO, and her works have been performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, CBSO, Hallé, BBC Scottish SO, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Concert Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, NCPA Orchestra of China, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, European Union Chamber Orchestra, NYOGB, RLPO (conducted by Domingo Hindoyan).

Turkish pianist KCS is the Grand Prize winner of the 2022 Alexis Gregory Vendome Prize, where he was also awarded the Recording Prize.

Fado is to the Portuguese what the blues is to America: it is the yearning, bloody, naked soul exposed. This 150-year-old art form is so inseparable from its people that it has become the sum of Portugal's cultural identity. The undisputed queen of fado, Amalia Rodriques, is the jewel to which all other performers are compared. Misia, like her native Portugal, is reverent to tradition as well as mindful of the future. Her love for fado is not without a contemporary flair, and although she is perhaps the most celebrated current interpreter of the genre, her work has received an equal amount of praise and outrage. The haunting Canto finds the perfect middle ground between old and new, fusing lyrics by existing Portuguese poets with (12-string) guitarra and the husky cadences of Misia's otherworldly voice. Inspired by composer Carlos Paredes, Misia brings in a classical string quintet, resulting in a serendipitous blend of modern drama that transcends nationalities. The pairing of traditional with classical is seamless, lending an added weight to the already heavy material. These are songs that travel like bullets to the heart, speaking the oldest language know to mankind: despair. Highly Recommended.

Percussionist Mika Kallio’s fourth solo album, Gong Odyssey, was released in June 2022 and received an enthusiastic reception. The album, which is one of the record cases of the year, features gongs of different sizes, i.e. metallic circular percussion instruments. According to the nature of the gongs, the compositions on the album sway between ambient and improvised music. Kallio boldly throws himself into uncharted territories, conjuring a space of sound, where time ceases to exist.