Albums

LIFE-AFFIRMING Along with Daniil Trifonov, pianist Igor Levit’s concerts and CDs must recall what it first felt like to encounter Gilels and Richter, two other super-talented Russian pianists who brought  excitement to classical music.  When I saw Igor Levit live, one of the most striking aspects for this sensitive and strong pianist was the fascinating combination of…

NEXT TIME SOMEONE CALLS YOU NEANDERTHAL, TAKE IT AS A COMPLIMENT How fascinating to learn that just about anyone not directly descended from sub-Saharan Africa has anywhere from 1-4% Neanderthal in their DNA. (As luck would have it, I have three percent – who knew?!) And just who were these cousins to Homo Sapiens (us,…

RAISING CAíN Set in the port city of Marseilles, France, this captivating series, here in two seasons (2012 and 2014) — with four more seasons to come on DVD — uses an able-bodied actor, Bruno Debrandt, to play a homicide detective who was shot and crippled while chasing a suspect, and now lives — and…

LET YOUR HEARTH BE GAY Celebrate the holiday season with Broadway Records first Christmas album, Michael Longoria: Merry Christmas Darling. Best known for his star turn on Broadway as Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys, he has amassed 15 numbers for this  romantic holiday album with a throwback 60s vibe but a modern man-to-man sensibility.  His original Christmas…

CONTRABAJO BAND Double bassist, composer, arranger, and producer Pablo Aslan has released an exciting collection of tunes that offer insight to both his instrument and the way his Argentinian roots inform the works. With Gabriel Senanes’s glorious arrangements meeting at the exciting juncture of jazz and tango, Contrabajo — Works for Bass and String Quartet  is…

GO-GO GET THIS ALBUM Head Over Heels  is an exhilarating and seemingly improbable musical mash-up of Sir Philip Sidney’s sixteenth-century work  The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (libretto by James Magruder, adapting from an original book conceived by Jeff Whitty) and the songs of the iconic 1980s’ female rock band, The Go-Go’s (and a few tunes from Belinda…

I LIKE HIM I’ve had a few friends do cabarets in which they sing songs they’ll never get hired to do. Then there are cabarets which are song cycles — those which tell the performer’s life story through songs. (There have also been albums like that: Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides, Now comes to mind.) Philip…

AWESOME SOUNDTRACK ARRIVES THIS WEEK Walt Disney Records releases the soundtrack for the hit film Ralph Breaks the Internet this week. The album features original songs “A Place Called Slaughter Race” (performed in the film by Sarah Silverman and Gal Gadot) and “Zero,” written and performed by Imagine Dragons; as well as “In This Place,”…

IT’S A MYSTERY, ALRIGHT As a reviewer, I have tried  to create a critical and theoretical paradigm for this type of contemporary music that alienates or distracts more  than enraptures, but I’ve become too bored and, well, alienated to care. And when the composition is seven repetitive, ceaseless, caterwauling, cat-screeching violin solos from David Lang, boredom becomes…

MELISSA SOLEMNIS Both Sondheim and sublimity are promised and delivered in Melissa Errico’s newest album. Her emotional, authentic, stirring, gracious, sophisticated interpretations of 15 Sondheim tunes are delivered with her delicate, dulcet, relaxed, pleasant, unpretentious, murmuring warble of a vibrato. Refinement, subtlety, and shadings are ever-present here, even in songs that are not always thought…