In October 2023, Vanessa Bernardi will obtain her two-year second-level diploma in classical guitar at the A. Buzzolla Conservatory in Adria under the guidance of Maestro Giulio Tampalini. This follows her achievement of a three-year first-level diploma with the highest grades and honours in October 2021. That same year, she also earned a bachelor's degree in History and Protection of Musical Artistic Heritage from the University of Padua (thesis title: "Music in the Time of Covid-19: Musical Initiatives and Distance Education").

From the dawn of time, across the four corners of the world, exile has left its mark on the landscape of men… and on the songs of women. Mediaeval songs by trouveres and nuns (The women who stayed), Iberian and Sephardic songs (The women who left) are woven around Exils, a set of four pieces composed by Thierry De Mey in homage to all those women (from ancient times to our modern and highly topical times) who never reached their place of exile…

Sofya Melikyan’s fascinating album has as its inspiration the great Ricardo Viñes, composer and pianist, champion of young progressive composers (he was Satie’s favourite performer of his music), whose friends included among others Picasso, Gide, Colette, Cocteau.

In his first recording for PASSACAILLE, Real Câmara revives the spirit of the excellent Portuguese court orchestra before the great earthquake of 1755, bringing to life a forgotten repertoire once written for performance at the magnificent court of King John V. in Lisbon: from the divertimenti of Pietro Giorgio Avondano, the Genoese concertmaster of the orchestra, to opera arias by the Portuguese composer Francisco António de Almeida and the Italian composers Rinaldo di Capua and Giovanni Bononcini.

Exiled in the United States since October 1940, Bela Bartok was short of money and worn out by leukaemia. Nevertheless, a few weeks' respite from the disease in August 1943 enabled him to fulfil a commission from the conductor Serge Koussevitzky. For a fee of a thousand dollars, he quickly wrote the Concerto for Orchestra, which was to be premiered at Boston's Symphony Hall on 1 December 1944. Koussevitzky was very enthusiastic about the Concerto, even describing it as 'the best orchestra piece of the last 25 years'. It was the success of this score that prompted the violist William Primrose to ask the Hungarian composer to write a work for him. Bartok had little experience of the instrument and was only convinced when he heard the soloist perform the Walton Concerto on the radio. The score was initially planned in four movements, but the composer's death reduced it to three. Amihai Grosz (a founder member of the Jerusalem Quartet, now principal viola of the Berliner Philharmoniker) joins the Orchestre National de Lille and Alexandre Bloch for this recording.

Arctic Saxophone is the second album where Ola Asdahl Rokkones (b.1983) premieres three new classical saxophone concertos commissioned by him. The album title Arctic Saxophone is not only a reference to his hometown Tromso, but also to the three composers on this recording that all have some link to the Arctic. The two Norwegian composers Alexander Aar?en and Terje Bjorklund both originate from Northern Norway, and the Russian composer Alexander Manotskov caught his inspiration from the Russian city of Arkhangelsk.

The indissoluble and historical link between Spain and the Guitar offers us, with this CD, a new and intense chapter: the "Spanish Masterpieces", as the evocative tille reminds us, follow one another in the interpretation of Nicholas Nebuloni combining great classics of the six-string repertoire to precious record news.

Naïve Records has announced a September 29 release for Julien Martineau's new recording, O sole mio: Mandolin Concertos & Songs. On the project Martineau is joined by the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Wilson Ng. Guests performers include Florian Sempey, Anna Schivazappa, Yann Dubost, Philippe Mouratoglou and Eric Franceries.

Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg was born in Warsaw in 1913. His father worked in the Yiddish Theatre as a violinist. The young composer would also work in this theatre as a pianist, and the music of the Eastern European Jews would form an indelible influence on his music. As would the tragic events that overtook his family in the Holocaust. His parents and his sister were murdered in the Trawniki concentration camp by the Nazis.

Given that not one of the Masses by Jacques Arcadelt was included in our boxed set that revealed his immense musical personality to the world, we now remedy this situation with an indispensable addition. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon chose the Missa Noe Noe, which is presented here in the context of the Christmas liturgy. We have also included motets not only by Arcadelt but also by Josquin Desprez, as he was the great model for musicians of his generation. The recording ends resoundingly with Josquin's imposing Benedicta es coelorum regina for six voices, although in an expanded version for twelve voices by Jean Guyot de Chatelet (1512 - 1588): another Walloon composer to be discovered!

Bahamas was a short-lived French group from Paris, which released one album for Polydor and that's because the musicians involved were all members of famous singer's Christophe backing group. These were Patrice Tison on guitar, Didier Batard on bass), Dominique Perrier on various keyboards and Roger Rizitelli on drums. "When the musicians of Christophe, Alain Bashung, Gérard Manset, Véronique Sanson, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Jean-Michel Jarre got together to record a unique and poetic work where the shadows of the great artists for whom they perform hover strangely overhead."

Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of Black music.

The indissoluble and historical link between Spain and the Guitar offers us, with this CD, a new and intense chapter: the "Spanish Masterpieces", as the evocative tille reminds us, follow one another in the interpretation of Nicholas Nebuloni combining great classics of the six-string repertoire to precious record news.

In October 2023, Vanessa Bernardi will obtain her two-year second-level diploma in classical guitar at the A. Buzzolla Conservatory in Adria under the guidance of Maestro Giulio Tampalini. This follows her achievement of a three-year first-level diploma with the highest grades and honours in October 2021. That same year, she also earned a bachelor's degree in History and Protection of Musical Artistic Heritage from the University of Padua (thesis title: "Music in the Time of Covid-19: Musical Initiatives and Distance Education").

From the dawn of time, across the four corners of the world, exile has left its mark on the landscape of men… and on the songs of women. Mediaeval songs by trouveres and nuns (The women who stayed), Iberian and Sephardic songs (The women who left) are woven around Exils, a set of four pieces composed by Thierry De Mey in homage to all those women (from ancient times to our modern and highly topical times) who never reached their place of exile…