François-Frédéric Guy is releasing his firsrt recording of the music by Chopin. Secret Garden is Guy’s poetic imagination that combines fantasy and consistency in his phrasing in dialogue with his instrument’s unique and charming timbres. This recital, paying homage to the master pianists of the early twentieth century, revives an art of singing in a way that seems utterly natural, such as the clarity and fluidity of the playing. Secret Garden was recorded on a 1905 Pleyel piano, a sublime instrument restored at the workshop of Pianos Balleron.
Nocturne in B-Flat Minor, Op. 9 No. 1, opens the recording. The warm and [...]
Wayne Alpern is a New York City composer, arranger, and scholar. Alpern is fluent in composing in many styles of music, from pop, jazz, and world idioms that use classical techniques to yield a sophisticated contemporary style that crosses any genre label and sits in the category of “good” music. Going by Duke Ellington’s classification, there are only two types of music, good and bad. Alpern’s innovative compositions, recompositions, and rearrangements have been performed and recorded by distinguished artists from diverse musical traditions. The Shape of Strings features director Monica Bauchwitz and the String [...]
Yolanda Kondonassis has released her new album, Five Minutes for Earth. The project celebrates our planet and illuminates our challenge to preserve it. The composers featured were tasked with creating works or soundscapes of five minutes or less in length that express a powerful experience inspired by Earth in one of its many conditions or atmospheres. Earth at Heart is a non-profit organization with the mission of increasing earth conservation awareness through the portal of the arts. Climate change, air quality, water pollution, man-made disasters, and diminishing resources are all inconvenient topics that have become increasingly [...]
Eydís Evensen is a classical and new-age pianist who finds inspiration from Iceland’s stunning nature and climate. Her mesmerizing debut album Bylur was a calming contemporary classical diary of her life to date – “So many ups and downs. All of my joy, darkness, happiness, heartbreak, and melancholia,” is how she described it – a more literal journey inspires new EP Frost; through one of her homeland’s winters. “It’s such a hard thing to go through, this darkness,” she explains, “but the rising of the sun earlier and earlier as spring nears is hugely important for Icelanders.”
Opening the EP is [...]
