Am 08. März 2024 erscheint Philipp Poisels Live-Album NEON ACOUSTIC ORCHESTRA auf Holunder Records, dass Anfang April unter der Regie von Produzent Frank Pilsl in der Motorworld in Metzingen aufgenommen wurde. Die Stücke stammen allesamt von Poisels 4. Studioalbum NEON (2021) und zeigen sich hier in breit orchestrierten Versionen, denen ein besonderer organischer Charme innewohnt. Der Musiker scharte zur Aufnahme nicht nur seine seit Jahren treue Band und Sängerin Alin Coen um sich, die schon seit PROJEKT SEEROSENTEICH dabei ist, sondern holte sich neben den Streichern auch einen Bläsersatz hinzu. So zeigen sich Poisels einfühlsame, einzigartige Stücke in Versionen, die nicht in Konkurrenz zum feinsinnig produzierten Album stehen, sondern nochmal einen ganz eigenen Kosmos öffnen. Dabei leben sie nicht nur von der Akustik des Live-Moments und der intensiven Darbietung, sondern auch von der spürbaren Begeisterung des Publikums, das hier einem der spannendsten und besten Musiker zujubelt, die das Land zu bieten hat.

Es ist August 2021… Paula Hartmanns erste Single “Nie verliebt” erscheint und bildet den Auftakt für das gleichnamige, im Folgejahr erscheinende Album-Debüt. Fast forward 2023 und in der Rückschau wird klar: Paula Hartmann trat leise, aber mit Nachdruck ins Scheinwerferlicht der Musikwelt. Die Musik der 22-jährigen Berlinerin in ihrer Essenz zu erfassen, bedeutet, sie zu hören; zu vielschichtig und dicht erscheint das gewebte Netz von Geschichten aus der Großstadt. Und es ist diese Qualität, mit der sich ihre Musik Beschreibungen entzieht: Jedes Wort wohl überlegt, kein Ton zu viel, lässt man sich bereitwillig in das fein gesponnene Geflecht fallen und begleitet Paula Hartmann auf ihrer Odyssee durch den dunklen Westen von Berlin – denn wo noch Licht brennt, da tritt Paula Hartmann die Laternen aus. Mit “kleine Feuer” kündigt die Berlinerin nun ihr zweites Album an und bereits die ersten Singleauskopplungen lassen auf Großes hoffen im März des kommenden Jahres. Zur Veröffentlichung des neuen Albums wird Paula Hartmann ab April auf ihrer “kleine Feuer”-Tour in 15 Städten im deutschsprachigen Raum zu sehen sein und ihre neue Musik auch live für Fans erfahrbar machen.

Sonata Arctica have been many things in their storied career. Finnish power metal messiahs, relentlessly touring powerhouses, champions of sublime melody. First and foremost, however, they have been stalwarts in showcasing the magic and the enchantment flowing through heavy metal. They have been embodying the majesty and serenity of Nordic nature since their foundation in 1995 and have been spellbinding their world with ten records, EPs and countless tours. “Clear Cold Beyond” easily is the most relentless Sonata Arctica record to date, a spectacular resurgence of their trademark, lightning fast power metal forged far, far north. “We’ve felt for a while now that we’d need to get heavier again after some unintentionally softer albums,” Tony says. With production duties handles by your truly Mikko Karmila, key figure of their early days, “Clear Cold Beyond” sounds massive, heavy and hungry and takes a bow to their early work when everything was shrouded in a profound sense of magic and mystery. This magic is back now – only with a band that’s 25 years down the road and nothing less than an experienced beast urging to go mental like they never did before.

Over the last couple of decades, Charlie Parr has crisscrossed the world on tour more times than one can count. He also has released over a dozen albums of his songs, acclaimed for their poetic simplicity. Little Sun, his most ambitious album to date, was recorded with Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, My Morning Jacket) and features Parr augmenting his raw and affecting songs with stunning full-band arrangements. The remarkable backing band here includes Marisa Anderson, Victor Krummenacher, Andrew Borger, and Asher Fulero. Masterfully channeling the philosophical and transcendental qualities of the blues, Parr takes us on a journey through the winding streets of his imagination.

"I'll Remember" is a song by American singer Madonna for the 1994 film With Honors. It was released by Maverick and Warner Bros. Records on March 8, 1994, as the lead single from the film's soundtrack album. It was a radical change in image and style for Madonna, who had received huge backlash due to the release of her book Sex, the studio album Erotica and the film Body of Evidence. Warner Bros. decided to release the song for the film after noting most of her previous soundtrack singles had achieved commercial success. It utilizes a synthesized keyboard arrangement to bring about a continuously reverberating heartbeat sound. Madonna's voice is supported by backing vocals.

ATA Records are proud to announce the new album I Too Am A Stranger from The Sorcerers, following previous album successes The Sorcerers and In Search of The Lost City of The Monkey God, which garnered high praise from Mulatu Astatke Who's this? The Sorcerers? It's cool! This is great. Give me the CD man!" and recent Radio 6-listed 7" single Exit Athens, of which Giles Peterson said, "Great Stuff as always".

To commemorate the 50th anniversary, Billy Joel's "Piano Man" becomes available as SA-CD Multi Hybrid edition for the first time in the world.The 4-channel SACD layer is a high-quality surround mix of the quadraphonic LP analog 4-channel mix master source, mastered in DSD for the first time at Sony Music Studio in Japan. The 2-channel SACD layer is a high-quality stereo mix newly DSD-mastered from the analog 2-channel mix master source, and the CD layer is a newly mastered source converted from the SACD DSD master to PCM.

Soprano Pia Davila and the ensemble Musica getutscht under the direction of Bernhard Reichel show how Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries transferred the modern dramatic style from secular opera to sacred music during the Counter-Reformation. For example, they told the Passion of Christ in a completely new way - namely from the personal perspective of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. Both lament the painful parting from Jesus, not only as their savior, but above all as their son and lover.

2007 compilation of 'mash ups' from some of the biggest (and coolest) names in Rock and Dance music. Two of the most popular would be 'Rapture Riders'(which mashed Blondie's 'Rapture' with The Doors' 'Riders On The Storm') and 'Proper Education' (DJ Eric Prydz meets Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick In The Wall'). There are others here that have been filling dancefloors recently including 'Franz Buffalo' (Malcolm McLarenn meets Franz Ferdinand), 'Passenger Fever' (Peggy Lee meets Iggy Pop), 'Flashing For Money' (Deep Dish and Dire Straits) and 'Horny As A Dandy' (Mousse T Vs. The Dandy Warhols). A brilliant collection that will surprise, shock and get you groovin'!

It would very much seem that the 19th- and 20th-century Czech piano concerto repertoire begins and ends with Dvořák and Martinů. The present recording, however, serves to prove that this is far from being the case. It contains three piano concertos that have been – undeservedly – overlooked. Vítězslava Kaprálová wrote the Piano Concerto in D minor, characterised by brilliant instrumentation and an engrossing solo part, at the age of 20 as her graduation work.

When trumpeter Henry Moderlak came across a magnificent volume of sheet music entitled L’orgue baroque espagnol, which contained Spanish organ works from the 17th century, he made an interesting discovery: many of the motifs in the musical text reminded him of the trumpet literature of the time. Titles such as Piezas de Clarines referred to the special clarino stop of Spanish organs, which was used in instruments on the Iberian Peninsula in the 17th century: With horizontally arranged pipes, the so-called Spanish trumpets protruded from the organ case into the room and imitated the natural trumpet in shape and sound. What was striking, however, was that the passages in question used the ambitus and range of real natural trumpets – and could therefore actually be transferred to the trumpet: The idea for the «Proyecto Clarin» was born.

Concertos No. 11, 12, and 13 were Mozart’s first Concertos written upon moving to Vienna from Salzburg. In a letter addressed to his father Leopold, he described them as “a happy medium between too easy and too difficult; very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid.” By then, Mozart was free of his father’s dominating presence. He wrote them to win over Vienna, and they did, firmly establishing him as Europe’s premier composer. But with these pieces, he was also seeking confirmation from his father. And the desire for parental approval is a basic one. Indeed, there are many moments in the Concertos, whether sublime or gallant or majestic, where one still feels a sense of child-like wonder.

Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) releases the penultimate volume of an acclaimed project to record Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra. This volume includes Mozart’s Concerto No. 7 for Three Pianos and Orchestra, performed here uniquely on three different types of keyboard instruments: by Robert Levin (tangent piano), Ya-Fei Chuang (fortepiano) and Laurence Cummings (harpsichord). It follows the release of the same concerto in Mozart’s own arrangement for two keyboards (Vol. 11) and is joined on this album by two other Piano Concertos composed in Salzburg in the early months of 1776.

Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 6 in A major, Op. 82 is a sonata for solo piano, the first of the "War Sonatas". It was composed in 1940 and first performed on 8 April of that year in Moscow, with the composer at the piano.

In addition to a few group originals, vibraphonist Mike Mainieri performs some unusual pieces with his quartet (Joe Lovano on tenor, soprano, and alto clarinet; bassist Eddie Gomez; and drummer Peter Erskine) on this CD, including two folk songs and selections by Leonard Bernstein ("Somewhere"), Frank Zappa ("King Kong"), Aaron Copland ("Piano Sonata"), Roger Sessions ("Piano Sonata No. 1"), and Samuel Barber ("Overture to the School for Scandal"). The pianoless quartet (which displays a lot of versatility by Joe Lovano) turns all of the music into creative jazz. The most interesting aspect to this thought-provoking disc is how difficult it is to tell which compositions are taken from classical music and which are new. There is a surprising unity to the potentially difficult material; the performances on the rather moody outing reward repeated listenings.