This is a day in the life of a city, its denizens shaking off sleep and moving through the busy streets and promenades only to return home and (presumably) start the process all over again. Vangelis' city is cosmopolitan, tastefully blending exotic sounds and disembodied voices, at once futuristic yet reassuringly familiar. Where Direct was remote, The City is almost sensual; swiftly coursing rhythms and bursts of sensation create a tactile quality. As program music, it succeeds at connecting events seamlessly for the first half of the disc. You can actually see the weak morning light dissipate the darkness on "Dawn" and watch the characters shuffle through their morning ministrations on "Morning Papers"…

John Adorney - Collection (feat. Daya) (1998-2024)
MP3 320 Kbps | Run Time: 18:40:00 | 2.52 GB
Genre: New Age, Classical, Electronic, Piano, Relax | Label: EverSound

John Adorney is an award-winning composer and producer whose eight solo CDs, Beckoning (1998), The Other Shore (2002), Waiting for the Moon (2004), Trees of Gold (2006), The Fountain (2009), The Fire in the Flint (2012), The Wonder Well (2014), The Wind Pearl (2015), A World Awakens (2016), and Toward a Gentle Place (2017), have garnered glowing reviews from around the world. John's Invisible Songbird (2018) was voted Best New Age Album of 2018 by the website newagemusic.guide. John's 12th solo album, The Garland was released in 2019, and his second installment in the Toward a Gentle Place series, A Silver Thread, was released in 2020. The third and final album in the series is The Touch Stone, released in April 2021.

When one speaks today of the history of the Italian solo concert, one thinks first of Bologna (Torelli, Corelli) and Venice (Albinoni, Vivaldi). It is sometimes overlooked that important impulses for the further development of the genre also emanated from Naples. In addition, cellists in particular owe a lot to the Neapolitans, which this CD aims to clarify. The best known are probably the six concertos by Leonardo Leo (1694-1744) with their light, sometimes gallant tone; of them the A major concerto is represented here along with four individual works by Nicola Fiorenza (died 1764), Nicola Porpora (1686–1768) and Nicola Sabatino (approx. 1705-1796).

This second volume of Hyperion’s newest Lieder series features the great dramatic and musical gifts of mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager. Internationally renowned on the opera stage, the concert hall and the recording studio, Kirchschlager is an ideal performer of these most varied, complex and emotionally charged songs. She is accompanied by the multi-Gramophone Award-winning Julius Drake, who curates the series.

The starting point for Barbara Hannigan’s third recording for Alpha is a work by Gérard Grisey (1946-98) that is particularly close to her heart. Grisey wrote: ‘I conceived the Quatre Chants pour franchir le seuil [Four songs for crossing the threshold] as a musical meditation on death in four parts: the death of the angel, the death of civilisation, the death of the voice and the death of humanity… The texts chosen belong to four civilisations (Christian, Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian) and have in common a fragmentary discourse on the inevitability of death.’ Luigi Nono (1924-90) was a politically engaged composer. His stunning monody Djamila Boupacha, a heart-rending cry for solo soprano, pays tribute to a freedom fighter tortured by French paratroopers during the Algerian war; Picasso also portrayed her in charcoal.

Dominic made quite a stir in the progressive rock world with his first album ‘Impermanence’ which was released in 2023. The album received great critical acclaim and he was voted #8 Best new artist in the 2023 Prog Magazine readers poll. Dominic’s second album ‘Blazing Revelations’ was recorded and mixed in an abandoned radio station over a period of 10 months in 2024. A labour of love for Dominic and his band, the album showcases an eclectic array of styles, from symphonic Prog to Canterbury-esque excursions and acid folk.

One of the greatest debuts in the history of rock, Mr. Tambourine Man was nothing less than a significant step in the evolution of rock & roll itself, demonstrating that intelligent lyrical content could be wedded to compelling electric guitar riffs and a solid backbeat. It was also the album that was most responsible for establishing folk-rock as a popular phenomenon, its most alluring traits being Roger McGuinn's immediately distinctive 12-string Rickenbacker jangle and the band's beautiful harmonies. The material was uniformly strong, whether they were interpreting Bob Dylan (on the title cut and three other songs, including the hit single "All I Really Want to Do"), Pete Seeger ("The Bells of Rhymney"), or Jackie DeShannon ("Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe")…

Italy's premiere progressive rock outfit produced five albums of peculiar and outlandish music in the '70s. Fronted by madcap vocalist Demitrio Stratos, Area provided backing to the John Cage collaborator's extended vocal techniques and bizarre verbal utterances. The ensemble arrangements drew on progressive rock, jazz, and improvisation, and coalesced into a sound akin to Soft Machine, National Health, or Caravan. Maledetti is a critically acclaimed Italian progressive album, yet the group bridges many genres, including jazz and avant-garde.