This release sounds fantastic. Thanks for highlighting it.Superb!
Thomas Dunford, Lea Desandre & Jupiter - Songs of Passion 2025
https://tidal.com/album/44525583
"With Songs of Passion, a collection of vocal and instrumental music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell – English composers born nearly a century apart – mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, lutenist Thomas Dunford and Ensemble Jupiter have created a companion to their previous Erato albums, Eternal Heaven, Idylle and Amazone. Making guest appearances on Songs of Passion are four further singers of the rising generation: baritone (and Erato artist) Huw Montague Rendall, contralto Jess Dandy, tenor Laurence Kilsby and bass Alex Rosen. Dowland is known for his intimate evocations of amorous melancholy in his writing for voice and for lute, while the music of Purcell – the greatest British-born composer of the Baroque era – encompasses a rich diversity of moods and emotions. To the fore on Songs of Passion are two of Purcell’s works for the stage: The Fairy Queen and Dido and Aeneas. Dido’s famous lament, ‘When I am laid in earth’, forms the climax of the album". ©
What is new in my music library? (recent purchases I enjoy)
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Jakob Bro and Midori Takada - あなたに出会うまで – Until I Met You (2025)
In a new duo collaboration that defies conventions and background, Midori Takada and Jakob Bro took up residence in Tokyo’s Avaco Studios to record their first album, あなたに出会うまで / Until I Met You.
The title, taken from a Midori Takada composition, refers to the spiritual bond that arises in every new friendship, whether in music or in life.
Until I Met You is pure acoustic music, a tapestry of dreamlike compositions with beautiful melodies that sees ambient music icon Midori Takada on grand piano, marimba and various percussion instruments and acclaimed Danish composer Jakob Bro on the acoustic guitar.
Although somewhat unexpected choices of instruments, Takada and Bro share the affinity of openness and exploring sound as source material. Taking a step deeper beyond musical training, cultural background and age difference (which also would be besides the point since Midori Takada is by Bro considered forever young at heart, and Bro himself is nearly fluent in Japanese language), Until I Met You is its own ecosystem, a gesture of unity and worldbuilding.
“I try to express myself with sound and have no ambition with my instrument other than to create moments of beauty with my fellow collaborators. I see Midori Takada as someone who can do exactly this. Turn a moment of nothing into something,” says Jakob Bro.
Midori Takada (b. 1951) is a percussionist, composer and performance artist, whose output over the past 50 years weaves through solo, group and theatrical practices. Considered a rebel in the classical world of music, she debuted as soloist in 1978 with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, but later abandoned her Western classical training to study drumming in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire and Gamelan music of Indonesia, and composing works that incorporate the structures of traditional music. She has also worked extensively with improvised music and appeared in numerous productions by the world-renowned director Tadashi Suzuki. As an environmental musician, she has created soundscapes for the Art Institute of Chicago and the Victoria & Albert Museum in the United Kingdom.
Her landmark album, Through The Looking Glass (1983) is considered an essential recording of minimalist music in chime with the peak period ambient and fourth world musics explored by Jon Hassell, Don Cherry and Brian Eno, but born of a distinctly Japanese ceremonial and meditative musical sensibility. The LP reissue sparked a series of sold out solo performances across Europe and the U.S., including the London Barbican, Paris Palais de Tokyo, Berlin Hebbel am Ufer, The Kitchen in New York, and the Getty Centre in Los Angeles.
Nearly 45 years after her first soloist performance with the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, almost as if by fate Takada began her collaboration with Jakob Bro with a 2022 commission by Pierre Boulez Saal, resulting in two improvised concerts in Berlin and Copenhagen. These encounters also led to meeting Nordic greats such as Palle Mikkelborg, Marilyn Mazur, Nils Petter Molvær, Jesper Zeuthen, Anja Lechner, and a performance at the World Expo in Osaka.
Jakob Bro (b. 1978) is a guitarist and composer based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has recorded more than 20 albums as a bandleader with artists such as Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Charles Lloyd and many others, and his various ensembles are depicted in the award-winning film “Music for Black Pigeons” (dir. by Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed), which premiered at the Venice Biennale and has been featured at film festivals around the world. Since 2020 Jakob Bro has had a yearly stint at New York’s Village Vanguard, and he frequently performs in Japan.
“Jakob Bro creates magical music, impossible to categorize or capture. His songs are best described as jewels revolving in mid-air, reflecting and refracting light,” writes Downbeat. “Based on an idea of the slow, simple melody and a nearly Buddhist ideal of relinquishing the ego, Jakob Bro has lifted jazz into a new future,” Danish newspaper Politiken adds. It is Bro’s conviction that “the music has to breathe. It’s important that a kind of organic conversation is taking place.”
The Bro–Takada collaboration began with a commission from Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. They have played World Expo in Osaka and are set to perform at festivals across Europe and Japan in the coming year."©
Midori Takada: Percussion, Piano & Marimba
Jakob Bro: Acoustic Guitar
The Divine Comedy - Rainy Sunday Afternoon 2025
FANTASTIC RELEASE!
"Recorded at Abbey Road in autumn of 2024, Rainy Sunday Afternoon' is The Divine Comedy's thirteenth album and their first studio album since 2019's Office Politics. The band's Neil Hannon most recently wrote the original songs for the Warner Bros blockbuster Wonka. Neil says: "My musical output is, for better or worse, a representation of my personality. A good chunk of that personality revels in the rumbumptious; celebrates the silly. And I made ample use of that for the Wonka songs. I have though, like everyone, a darker, more melancholy side. And for one reason or another it has been much in evidence of late. I needed to use this album as an outlet for those feelings. To work through some stuff. Mortality; memories; relationships; political and social upheaval. Everyone should get to make an orchestral pop album once in a while. It should be available on the NHS." One listen to Rainy Sunday Afternoon will certainly provide a tonic for these turbulent times. Two listens and you'll be addicted."©
I just want to remind everyone how great this album is. Worth refreshing the memory if you haven’t listened to in a while, imo.
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