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Sarah Jarosz: Build Me Up From Bones. 120 gram, black vinyl LP: $21.99 MSRP. Also available as a 120 gram, opaque red vinyl LP; no website or pricing information was available at the time of the review. Available from Craft Recordings. Sarah Jarosz is a multi-instrumentalist and singer / songwriter who grew up in Wimberley, Texas, a... Read More »

IBIS, Self-Titled. Polydor Records 3581980. 1975 Locanda Delle Fate, Forse Le Lucciole Non Si Amano Piu. Polydor Records 3529073. 1977 Sensations' Fix, Finest Finger. Polydor Records 3559352. 1976 For the uninitiated, Italian Progressive Rock of the 1970s can be differentiated from its German and British peers by its heavier emphasis on the Hammond B-3 organ as opposed... Read More »

Wayne Goins, doing his thing... This next chapter starts with Grant making major moves after his successful adventure with Jimmy Forrest. In our last issue, Grant and the Forrest-led band had completed their first album recorded on December 10 and 19 in 1959 at Delmark Records in Chicago, entitled All The Gin Is Gone (with... Read More »

Chamber music of Brahms and Schumann, how does it get any better? Well, you mix it with music of Hindemith and Enescu, add excellent musicians who perform all deliciously on viola and piano, and then capture the magic in a sterling recording. And thus you have a this exceptional release. I love music for the... Read More »

As lovely a piano recording as we are ever likely to hear. Javier Laso gives us superb performances of two great works of the piano literature. And Gonzalo Noqué, producer and chief recording engineer for Eudora Records, gives us a recording that captures of the sound of a grand piano as well or better than... Read More »

Sarah Shafer (s), Tessa; Raquel Winnica Young (ms), Pi; Dan Kempson (b). Arts Crossing Chamber Orchestra/Efraín Amaya. Albany TROY 1846. TT: 78.30 About a year ago—when it became apparent that the pandemic shutdowns would be dragging on for a while—the noted singer-actor Stephen Pasquale was interviewed by Classic Stage Company's Artistic Director, John Doyle (on Zoom,... Read More »

We are listening to the album: Santana, Santana Krakow Sonic Society is an informal group of music lovers, audiophiles and friends who meet to learn something new about audio products, records, music, etc. The idea for Krakow Sonic Society was conceived in 2005 and this is already meeting No. 129. THE MUSICIAN In the last few years,... Read More »

Anna Marie Wooldridge was born on August 6, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, although she was raised from childhood in Michigan. Alternating between her desires to be an actress and a singer, she started performing while still in high school, and soon relocated to the west coast in the early Fifties, where she performed mostly in... Read More »

Two more titles from the "Polish Jazz" series in the new releases of Warner Music Poland: Young Power, Young Power. Polish Jazz vol. 72 Jaroslaw Smietana Sounds & Colours. Polish Jazz vol. 73 The "Polish Jazz" series is one of the national treasure of Polish culture—and I say it with full conviction. As part of it, selected,... Read More »

Citizen Cope, The Pull of Niagara Falls  Music has become so overproduced that even the most natural of things, the sound of a human voice, is often so auto tuned away from the real thing that it ends up sounding like a futuristic robotic-like facsimile of itself, and since it's digitally rendered—it sounds like a... Read More »

Anyone who's followed my love of great recordings and exceptional productions knows that I value the work of Cookie Marenco and company very highly. Cookie is a real professional who has worked in the industry for decades now, and the artists associated with Blue Coast Records are first-rank, all. Recently I downloaded the DSD256 version... Read More »

Ambient music, like all other genres, has no rules. There may be, however, at least one tenant that many ambient artists collectively follow, or at least strive for, and that's the avoidance of sounding monotonous. This sounds obvious, but painting musically wide-open earthy and outer spacey landscapes is far from simple, even when they seem... Read More »

Complete Peter Serkin. Sony 19439713872. 30 CD's. If Serkin is one of your very favorite pianists, as he is one of  mine, then this is a treasure trove for you. Thirty CDs for under $100. Includes both solo recordings and work with TASHI. Steal of the year. \ Joseph Haydn, String Quartets, Op. 76, 4-6. Chiaroscuro... Read More »

A portrait of Wayne Goins Every Sunday between 10 a.m. and noon, I show up to the Bluestem Bistro in Aggieville to play with my jazz guitar duo partner, "Slick" Rick Smith. Rick is a very cool guy. A former student of mine back in the early 2000s, he's all grown up now and is... Read More »

Schubert's Winterreise, one of the greatest song cycles written, is most often heard with piano and voice. The Ragazze Quartet treats us to a performance arranged for string quartet—and it works marvelously! The Ragazze and baritone Martijn Cornet give us a performance filled with nuance, emotional impact, and synergistic musicianship. Jared Sacks has outdone himself... Read More »

Travis, Good Feeling. 120 gram, black vinyl LP: $21.99 MSRP. Available from Craft Recordings. It's been said that everyone who listened to the Velvet Underground's first album started a band. The same can almost be said for Travis' first album, Good Feeling, which was massively influential on an entire generation of UK bands, especially the likes... Read More »

James Blake, Covers Standing out from the noise in popular music is no easy feat. It takes more than a strong voice to stick out from the crowd these days, with so many choices at our fingertips. From the genre blurring and warbly bass bending "Limit to Your Love," to the hauntingly ethereal landscapes of The... Read More »

This is an ongoing project by Claude Lemaire of Soundevaluations 166. The Doors, Strange Days. Elektra – EKS-74014 (1967), DCC Compact Classics – LPZ-2045 (1992), 33 1/3 rpm. Genre: acid rock, psychedelia, psychedelic rock, blues rock, musique concrète (in small doses). The last track on The Doors debut album is titled "The End" but nothing could be... Read More »

It's rare that one gets to experience a true tour de force, but that is what I've enjoyed the past several months with the Van Baerle Trio's traversal of Beethoven's complete works for piano trio—a marvelous journey through some of the greatest music ever written. I've long held the Beaux Arts Trio in highest regard... Read More »