If you missed it before the Holidays, here is your chance to get a great deal on Yo-Yo Ma's Outside the Box.

One of 2009's most awesome gift boxes, 30 Years Outside the Box collects 90 discs from cellist Yo-Yo Ma's extraordinarily rich and varied career, in a velvet-lined box along with a 312-page book. Today's Barnes & Noble Deal of the Day knocks 40% off the list price of this landmark collection.

Visit: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/best-deals.asp?cds2Pid=29192

Sony Masterworks came away with 5 Grammy Awards last night! Congratulations to the Derek Trucks Band, Sharon Isbin, Yo-Yo Ma, everyone invovled in West Side Story and producers David Lai and Steve Epstein.

Winners:
Best Contemporary Blues Album - Derek Trucks Band / Already Free

Best Musical Show Album - West Side Story / Producer David Caddick & David Lai

Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra) - Sharon Isbin / Journey To The New World (with Joan Baez and Mark O'Connor)

Best Classical Crossover Album - Yo-Yo Ma / Songs of Joy and Peace

Joshua Bell becomes the first American-born violinist to star in the Live From Lincoln Center series on PBS Thursday, January 21 at 8:00p.m. (check PBS.org listings). Included on the program will be performances of Come Again with music icon Sting, Morgen with world-renowned opera star Renée Fleming, I Loves You Porgy with jazz trumpeter Chris Botti, O, Cease Thy Singing, Maiden Fair with acclaimed baritone Nathan Gunn, I’ll Take Manhattan with the incomparable composer/pops conductor Marvin Hamlisch, Eleanor Rigby with rock musician Frankie Moreno, Left Hand Song with singer/songwriter Regina Spektor, Para Tí by Grammy®-nominated Cuban music sensation Tiempo Libre, Oblivion with Dutch bandóneon master and tango phenomenon Carel Kraayenhof, My Funny Valentine with Grammy®-nominated jazz vocalist Jane Monheit, in addition to frequent collaborator, pianist Jeremy Denk.

To commemorate the Mendelssohn bicentennial in 2009, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax, and violinist Itzhak Perlman have collaborated together for the first time and recorded the Mendelssohn Piano Trios. The three players performed these works at Carnegie Hall in March 2009 and will once again dazzle audiences with their interpretation during their Live from Lincoln Center telecast on PBS on May 5, 2010. The Sony Classical release Mendelssohn: Piano Trios documents this incredible collaboration with a studio album that finds the players in resplendent form and is available February 2, 2010. But you can pre-order it now at Amazon

Mendelssohn: Piano Trios Op 49 Op 66 by Yo-Yo Ma

The release contains complete accounts of Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49 and Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 66. This is the first chamber recording these three virtuosos have recorded together.

"Beyond his excellence as a composer, Mendelssohn was the ideal citizen musician," says

Yo-Yo Ma. "By the time of his death at 38, Mendelssohn had produced concerts, founded the Leipzig Conservatory, and conducted the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He produced the first performance of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion following the composer's death; he is also credited with reviving interest in the music of Franz Schubert-he was that central a figure in the cultural life of his community. Our purpose in making this recording was not only to play and to share some great music, but also to celebrate Mendelssohn as a model of excellence."

Emanuel Ax concurs, "The idea of the Mendelssohn Trios seemed very appropriate to me, as we celebrate Mendelssohn's 200th birthday in 2009, and I have always been deeply moved by his music, and the Trios in particular... I hope that the pleasure we had during the rehearsals and recording will come through for our listeners."

"It is always a special experience to make music with good friends," says Itzhak Perlman. "When the idea of recording the Mendelssohn Trios came up it was a very easy decision to make."

It is not surprising that a critic so insightful as Robert Schumann compared Mendelssohn to Mozart on the evidence of the Piano Trio No. 1. The comparison is apt, for the Trio traverses a range of colors and emotions suffused with light and poignancy. In the exquisite balance of his musical forms-the perfection of weight, color, and filigree, woven together in a delicate yet tensile web of sound-Mendelssohn not only made his name as one of the leading lights bridging Classicism and early Romanticism but also redefined the uniquely intimate form of the trio. He took the trio form beyond his Classical roots, seeing in it a genuinely equal partnership among the three instruments, rather than a solo for piano with string accompaniment.

Yo-Yo Ma is a world-renowned, multiple Grammy Award®-winning cellist and is currently celebrating his 30th anniversary with Sony Masterworks. His release Songs of Joy & Peace is approaching GOLD status in the U.S., and he has been fêted in a number of recent media appearances following the release of 30 Years Outside The Box, a definitive box set containing 90-CDs, a 312-page hard-bound book with archival photos, liner notes and more.

The distinguished pianist Emanuel Ax is a multiple Grammy Award® winner and continues to garner worldwide acclaim for his performances. Mr. Ax has been an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist since 1987. Recent releases include Strauss's Enoch Arden narrated by Patrick Stewart and discs of two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman.

Itzhak Perlman is one of the most celebrated violin virtuosos of our time and has become a household name both in classical and crossover repertoire. Perlman's recordings regularly appear on the best-seller charts and have garnered fifteen Grammy Awards. He is also a major presence in the performing arts on television and has been honored with four Emmy Awards.

Ma, Ax, and Perlman's "The Mendelssohn Piano Trios," Live From Lincoln Center program will air nationwide on PBS on May 5, 2010.

TRACKLISTING
PIANO TRIO NO. 1 IN D MINOR, OP. 49
1. I. Molto allegro e agitato
2. II. Andante con moto tranquillo
3. III. Scherzo: Leggiero e vivace
4. IV. Finale: Allegro assai appassionato

PIANO TRIO NO. 2 IN C MINOR, OP. 66
5. I. Allegro energico e con fuoco
6. II. Andante espressivo
7. III. Scherzo: Molto allegro quasi presto
8. IV. Finale: Allegro appassionato

TIEMPO LIBRE has received a Grammy® Award nomination in the category of Best Tropical Album for their latest CD BACH IN HAVANA. Of the Grammy® nomination, Alex Miller, General Manager of Sony Masterworks says, "Tiempo Libre created an album that is unique in sound and spirit. They deserve this nomination and I am proud of them both personally and professionally."

On Tuesday, December 8, Yo-Yo Ma will appear on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. Yo-Yo will perform, as well as discuss his new 90-CD Box Set, Yo-Yo Ma: 30 Years Outside The Box. Check PBS for stations and air-times in your area.

Joshua Bell joins a cast of music superstars and local New York City talent performing during the 86th annual NYSE Euronext holiday tree lighting festivities on Thursday, December 10th from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., with the illumination of the 65 ft. tall and 34 ft. wide Norway Spruce taking place at approximately 4:55 p.m. on Broad Street directly in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

The 86th annual NYSE Euronext holiday tree lighting will feature Grammy®-winning country music star and actor, Billy Ray Cyrus; Grammy-winning jazz group, The Manhattan Transfer; rock bands Twisted Sister with Constantine Maroulis, Kerry Butler and James Carpinello from the Broadway musical, "Rock of Ages;" Collective Soul and Stryper; pop rock band, Honor Society; singer/songwriter and daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, Alexa Ray Joel; country music artist, David Nail; Grammy-winning violinist, Joshua Bell; One Tree Hill actress and singer/songwriter, Kate Voegele; Meet the Browns actress and gospel singer Tamela Mann and teen choir, The Monsignor Donovan Choir. Valerie Smaldone; Dancing with the Stars’, Kym Johnson; the New York Jets Flight Crew and Santa Claus will also make a special appearance during the festivities, which is open to the public.

"The NYSE Euronext holiday tree lighting is an outstanding New York tradition and great kick-off to the holiday season," said Duncan L. Niederauer, CEO, NYSE Euronext. "The all-star celebrity line up and local choir will provide a thrilling and memorable performance. I want to thank each of them for their participation and invite the pubic and the Downtown New York community to join us."

The NYSE Euronext holiday tree has been Downtown New York tradition since 1923. This year’s tree, which hails from Ramapo, N.Y., will be adorned with 10,000 multi-colored lights, 250 multi-colored decorative balls bearing the NYSE Euronext logo, and a 6 ft. star, all supported on a 8 ft. by 10 ft. base fashioned as a holiday gift box. Performances will begin at 3 p.m. and continue through 6 p.m, with the tree lighting (from 4:50 p.m. – 5 p.m.). The full event will be available for viewing on http://www.nyx.com.

Also, adding to the festivities, several of the musicians performing at the tree lighting ceremony will walk the NYSE trading floor and ring the NYSE Closing Bell® at 4 p.m.

Joshua Bell and Kristin Chenoweth at the Fox and Friends Christmas Special Taping. The Fox and Friends Christmas Special will air December 24 and December 25. Check your local listings for channels and times in your area.

Shopping for gifts with a personal touch can always be a challenge. Here are some of our favorites for the Classical aficionado in your life!

Yo-Yo Ma - 30 Years Outside The Box

The definitive collection in a presentation as beautiful and timeless as the music itself. An elaborate, limited-edition 90-CD box set of Yo-Yo Ma’s recorded legacy. Contains a stunning 312-page hard-bound book featuring archival photos, essays, and more.

Yo-Yo Ma - 30 Years Outside The Box

Yo-Yo Ma & Friends - Songs Of Joy & Peace

Joined by friends James Taylor, Diana Krall, Alison Krauss, Chris Botti, Renee Fleming and others, this inspiring album includes 22 songs from The Wexford Carol to Here Comes the Sun

Yo-Yo Ma & Friends - Songs Of Joy & Peace

Joshua Bell - At Home With Friends

At Home With Friends was inspired by Joshua Bell's long-time practice of holding "musical soirees" at his New York residence - eclectic gatherings of musicians, actors, comics, literary figures and others who convene for the sheer joy of sharing their art in an informal setting. This CD of instrumental and vocal duets covers a world of music - genres from classical to pop, bluegrass to Broadway, jazz and World Music of every stripe - and features a colorful roster of musicians including JOSH GROBAN, STING, KRISTIN CHENOWETH, REGINA SPEKTOR, CHRIS BOTTI, and more.

Joshua Bell - At Home With Friends

Vladimir Horowitz - The Complete Original Jacket Collection

For the first time, in one essential collection - all of Vladimir Horowitz's recordings from the golden prime of his storied career. Each recording has been restored to its original LP album format and is presented individually in a sleeve featuring the original album art. This 70-CD box set includes two complete live recital recordings on 4 CDs never before available in any format and is a dream set for any serious collector or Horowitz fan.

Vladimir Horowitz - The Complete Original Jacket Collection

The Joy of Christmas - Original Album Classics

This value-packed collection brings together five unforgettable titles - may long unavailable - in their original album formats, packaged in individual sleeves featuring original album art. Includes Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra's "Pops Christmas Party," The Philadelphia Brass Ensemble's "A Festival of Carols in Brass," Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors," Eugene Ormandy and the Philiadelphia Orchestra's "The Glorious Sound of Christmas" and Marily Horne's "Christmas with Marilyn Horne."

The Joy of Christmas - Original Album Classics

Carols For Christmas - Original Album Classics

This value-packed collection brings together five unforgettable titles - may long unavailable - in their original album formats, packaged in individual sleeves featuring original album art. Includes Leonard Bernstein's "The Joy of Christmas," Placido Domingo and The Vienna Choir Boys' "Ave Maria," Eileen Farrell's "Carols for Christmas," Mario Lanza's "Lanza Sings Christmas Carols" and The Robert Shaw Chorale's "The Many Moods of Christmas."

Carols For Christmas - Original Album Classics

Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff: Zenph Re-Performance

This new compilation of re-performaces is made from original masters that the colossal Russian composer and pianist recorded during his lifetime and celebrates the 100th anniversary of Rachmaninoff's U.S. recital debut. Newly recorded in crystalline stereo sound, it features Rachmaninoff playing five of his own compositions in performances originally recorded by Rachmaninoff himself from 1921-42.

Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff: Zenph Re-Performance

Dennis Russell Davies - Joseph Haydn - The Complete Symphonies

Before there was Mozart, before there was Beethoven, Haydn defined the symphony, and he inspired both composers (who were his admiring friends, as well) - every music lover needs to know this music. The only new, integral Haydn (1732-1809) symphony cycle to be released during this bicentennial year - all 104 symphonies, on 37 discs.

Dennis Russell Davies - Joseph Haydn - The Complete Symphonies

Kristin Chenoweth - A Lovely Way To Spend Christmas

The film, Tony and Emmy Award-winning star celebrates the holiday season with a wide range of Christmas songs from "Christmas Island," to Kristin’s personal favorite "Come On Ring Those Bells," in addition to well-known Christmas classics such as "Silver Bells" and "I’ll Be Home For Christmas." The album also features new compositions of "Home On Christmas Day" and "Born On Christmas Day." A Lovely Way To Spend Christmas is an eclectic combination of full orchestral arrangements, along with big band, a bit of tropical island flavor, pop and country.

Kristin Chenoweth - A Lovely Way To Spend Christmas

Handel's Messiah Rocks

Available on CD and DVD, Handel's Messiah Rocks brings the renowned beauty of Handel's Messiah - the Western world's most famous oratorio - to contemporary audiences with rock music at its center. Featuring Tony Award winner LaChanze, Tony Award Nominee J. Robert Spencer, MiG Aylesa from Rockstar: INXS, and the Boston Pops conducted by Keith Lockhart.

Handel's Messiah Rocks

Kristin Chenoweth will make the following TV appearances in promotion of her new Lifetime Movie 12 Men of Christmas and her Holiday Album A Lovely Way To Spend Christmas:

The View : Wednesday December 2nd
The Rachel Ray Show: Thursday December 3rd
CW11, Fox and Friends: Saturday December 5th
Fox and Friends Christmas Special: December 24th and 25th

Tune in to PBS on Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 8:00pm eastern for Live From Lincoln Center's telecast of violin favorite Joshua Bell with friends from Lincoln Center's intimate Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse. Included on the program will be performances of tracks off of his new album At Home With Friends; "My Funny Valentine" with Emmy and Tony Award-winner Kristin Chenowith, "O, Cease Thy Singing, Maiden Fair" with acclaimed baritone Nathan Gunn, "I'll Take Manhattan" with the incomparable pianist/composer Marvin Hamlisch, "Para Ti" with Grammy nominated Cuban band Tiempo Libre, and "Eleanor Rigby" with popular musician Frankie Moreno.

At Home With Friends
by Joshua Bell

Read full Press at JoshuaBell.com

Check out The Artists of the Royal Conservatory on their new site www.arcensemble.com. They will be blogging from the recording studio next week as they record Walter Braunfels's String Quintet and Adolf Busch's String Sextet.

Musical America, the country’s leading source of information on all things related to classical music, announced yesterday that Joshua Bell will be honored as Instrumentalist of the Year. Joshua will be presented with the award on December 14th at Lincoln Center.

Read the full story below:

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NEW YORK, N.Y. Nov. 10 – Musical America, the country’s leading source of information on all things related to classical music, whether in its printed directory or online at MusicalAmerica.com has announced its awards for 2010.

They’re a distinguished group. Conductor Riccardo Muti, who has led most of the world’s great orchestras at one time or another and been music director for a few of the most distinguished, is 2010’s Musician of the Year.” His fellows are composer Louis Andriessen, violinist Joshua Bell, mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, and “collaborative pianist” Warren Jones; it’s hard to argue with any of the choices.

Now in its third century as the indispensable resource for the performing arts, today announced the winners of the annual Musical America Awards, recognizing artistic excellence and achievement in the arts.

The announcement coincides with the publication of the 2010 Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts, which, in addition to its comprehensive industry listings, pays homage to each of these artists in its editorial pages.

INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR: JOSHUA BELL

Joshua Bell is today’s most celebrated American violinist. Early this month he performed and worked with young musicians at the White House in First Lady Michelle Obama’s program celebrating the arts in America. A winner of multiple Grammy Awards and Emmy nominations, he also appeared on screen as himself with Meryl Streep in Music of the Heart. The old-school Romantic warmth of his tone and lyrical interpretive style, coupled with a rare catholicity of music interests, have received particular praise. His new CD of duets, At Home with Friends, was recently released on Sony Classical.

The annual Musical America Awards will be presented in a special ceremony at Lincoln Center on December 14.

Grammy Award winning violinist Joshua Bell has played to crowds in major concert halls, a Washington D.C. metro station and most recently, the White House. Tomorrow, Tuesday November 10th from 2pm-3pm, he will perform tracks off of his new album At Home With Friends with the hot young Latin band Tiempo Libre and pianist Frankie Moreno live at Greenspace on WNYC.

Also appearing on WNYC will be Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, stars of the 2007 film "Once" and the duo behind the Oscar-winning group The Swell Season, debating which is more potent: the love song or the break up song in a Soundcheck Smackdown.

Sony Masterworks is now on Twitter. Follow us at www.twitter.com/sonymasterworks!

Kristin Chenoweth will star in the first even revival of Promises Promises on Broadway. Promises Promises will begin previews on Sunday March 28th and open on April 25th at the Broadway Theater. Co-Staring with Kristin is Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) making his Broadway debut. Promises Promises is directed by Tony and Emmy Award winner Rob Ashford.

Based on the 1960 Academy Award-winning Billy Wilder film The Apartment that starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, PROMISES, PROMISES tells the story of the Consolidated Life Insurance Company and Chuck Baxter, one of its charming young employees. In an effort to advance at the company, Chuck lends executives his apartment for their extramarital romantic trysts. But things become slightly complicated when Fran Kubelik, the object of Chuck's affection, becomes the mistress of one of his executives. With Simon's funny and touching book and Bacharach and David's hit-packed score ("I'll Never Fall In Love Again," "Promises, Promises," and "Knowing When to Leave"), PROMISES, PROMISES is a unique and popular part of the musical theatre canon that will now return to the stage for the first time in over forty years, for a new generation of theatergoers.

The original production of PROMISES, PROMISES debuted on Broadway in 1968 at the Shubert Theatre and ran for 1,268 performances through January 1, 1972. The production was nominated for eight Tony awards, winning for Best Actor in a Musical (Jerry Orbach) and Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Marian Mercer). The original cast recording was honored with a Grammy Award in 1969.

Joshua Bell and Sharon Isbin have been invited to perform at the White House Music Series created by First Lady Michelle Obama to celebrate the arts. The concert will be streamed live on www.whitehouse.gov on November 4th at 1:45 pm eastern and will air on SIRIUS XM Radio's Symphony Hall channel, SIRIUS channel 80 and XM channel 78 over the following weekend.

Upcoming Guidance on Next Week's Arts and Education Events: Music Series Celebrating Classical Music & Awards for After School Arts, Humanities Programs

On Wednesday, November 4th at 1:45 PM, First Lady Michelle Obama, the honorary chair of the Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), will speak about the importance of after-school and out-of-school arts and humanities education by giving the Paths Coming Up Taller Award, the country's highest honor in this field. The award will be given to 15 successful programs across the country that reach underserved children and youth, and 4 international programs from China, Egypt and Mexico. These include programs such as the Shakespeare Remix program at the Epic Theater Ensemble in New York, where inner-city teens adapt and perform Shakespearean texts to reflect their own lives and the Harmony Project in California, which provides free music instruction and instruments to at-risk children in Los Angeles' Central and South neighborhoods. This event held in the State Dining Room will be pooled press.

Also on Wednesday the White House will continue its Music Series which was created by First Lady Michelle Obama to celebrate the arts, demonstrate the importance of arts education and to encourage young people who believe in their talent to create a future for themselves in the arts community be it as a hobby or as a profession. At 2:15 PM in the East Room Mrs. Obama will introduce a Classical Music Student Workshop Concert featuring Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell, Grammy Award-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin, renowned cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and acclaimed pianist Awadagin Pratt. The concert will also include child protégés Sujari Britt and Jason Yoder who will accompany Alisa Weilerstein in duets. Other music workshops will be held in the White House earlier in the afternoon focusing on violin, cello, piano and classical guitar for 120 middle and high school students from across the country.

In the evening, Joshua Bell, Sharon Isbin, Alisa Weilerstein and Awadagin Pratt will perform in the East Room, where President Obama will make remarks. This concert will be streamed live on www.whitehouse.gov and will air on SIRIUS XM Radio's Symphony Hall channel, SIRIUS channel 80 and XM channel 78, over the weekend. These Classical Music Concerts will be pooled press.

 

Around this time last year Yo-Yo Ma hosted a contest on Indaba Music.com where musicians from around the world were challenged to collaborate with Yo-Yo on Dona Nobis Pacem, a track off of his album Songs Of Joy & Peace. Two winners were chosen, The Pikes Peak Ringers a Handbell Choir based out of Colorado and Toshi O, a rockin' heavy metal guitarist from BC. Check out their winning submissions here.

On Wednesday November 4th, The Pikes Peak Ringers and Toshi O will have a once in a lifetime opportunity to join Yo-Yo Ma in the recording studio to record their Indaba collaboration of Dona Nobis Pacem.

Members of the Pikes Peak Ringers will be tweeting from the recording session all day. Log on to twitter.com/sonymasterworks to follow the action!

Handel's Messiah Rocks brings the renowned beauty of the three-centuries-strong Handel's Messiah- the western world's most famous oratorio- to contemporary audiences with rock music at its center. Handel's Messiah Rocks, a contemporary oratorio in three parts, explores the Mystery of Faith, the Power of Love, and the Hope for Peace. The melding of Handel's original work for orchestra and voice with the contemporary vernacular of rock, raises questions of light, darkness, sadness, and beauty, which together illuminate the journey of the Messiah.

The music and the artists who breathe life into this oratorio align to pose these questions to the listener, no matter their orientation to faith or religion: "How will we be in the world now with each other? Can we love first?" In the pursuit of answers to these timely and universal questions, Handel's Messiah Rocks, just as the original Messiah did when it first premiered in 1742, speaks to the very best in each of us, inspiring hope that our actions matter.

For those who love this important classical piece, we hope you will enjoy hearing it in a whole new way. For those unfamiliar with it, we welcome you to this great musical experience and hope it will inspire you to explore the original work created by George Frederic Handel and Charles Jennens in 1742. Handel's Messiah Rocks highlights the glorious talent of our soloists Tony Award winner LaChanze, Tony nominee J. Robert Spencer, and international rock star, MiG Ayesa, backed by a 5 piece rock band, symphony orchestra and choir. We hope you will enjoy this entirely new, and entirely joyful experience.

Handles Messiah Rocks CD and DVD is available now!

Last week the Harvard Graduate School of Education presented a Silk Road Project residency with acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Silk Road Ensemble musicians. The series of workshops, panels and discussions culminated in a performance and the presentation of the inaugural Harvard Graduate School of Education Thelma E. Goldberg Arts in Education Award to Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project, a nonprofit artistic, cultural and educational organization founded in 1998 by Mr. Ma to promote innovation and learning through the arts.

"I am honored that our work is being celebrated with this award, which recognizes the arts as essential to mainstream education," commented Yo-Yo Ma, artistic director of the Silk Road Project. "One of our principal goals at the Project is to promote learning that is driven by passion as opposed to learning simply to meet requirements. Our colleagues at Harvard have been voices of inspiration and valued counsels for our educational work, and I am looking forward to engaging with them deeply this week about innovative ways to bring about and support this kind of integrated learning."

The October 2009 residency is part of a multi-year affiliation initiated in 2005 between the Silk Road Project and Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Since then, annual residencies have resulted in intensive artistic and intellectual collaborations. Silk Road Ensemble members have performed, interacted with students, conducted workshops, shared works in progress and composed new works. The Silk Road Project has worked with Harvard faculty to facilitate multicultural engagement in the arts, literature, history and music of the Silk Road region, giving rise to cross-disciplinary undergraduate coursework.

On Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Barnes & Noble "Live at Lincoln" (Lincoln Triangle, 1972 Broadway at 66th Street) will host Sir James Galway who will perform selections from his newest release "Celebrating 70" as well as sign copies of "The Man with the Golden Flute: Sir James, a Celtic Minstrel".

Almost six years before the film version with Julie Andrews became an international sensation, THE SOUND OF MUSIC premiered on Broadway on November 14, 1959 - an instant hit, starring musical theater legend Mary Martin, that went on to win 6 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The last musical in the incomparable collaboration of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, THE SOUND OF MUSIC introduced a spectacular array of songs that immediately became standards - "My Favorite Things," "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," "Maria," "Do Re Mi," "Edelweiss" and the soaring title song. The definitive original cast recording is where the phenomenon really began to capture the public's imagination, and it returns in this commemorative edition with new liner notes, new photos and rare bonus tracks. The Sound of Music Original Cast Recording 50th Anniversary Edition will be available on November 3rd.

TRACKLISTING:

1. Act I: Preludium
2. The Sound of Music
3. Maria
4. My Favorite Things
5. Do-Re-Mi
6. Sixteen Going on Seventeen
7. The Lonely Goatherd
8. How Can Love Survive?
9. The Sound of Music (reprise)
10. Laendler
11. So Long, Farewell
12. Climb Ev'ry Mountain
13. Act II: No Way To Stop It
14. An Ordinary Couple
15. Processional
16. Sixteen Going on Seventeen (reprise)
17. Edelweiss
18. limb Ev'ry Mountain (reprise)

BONUS TRACKS: (subject to change)

19. "From Switzerland: The Pratt Family" - 1962 spoof of The Sound of Music, performed by Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett (from live 1962 recording Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall)
20. "Edelweiss" (in German) - Michael Kraus, from the live 2005 Vienna Volksoper recording of the first Austrian production of The Sound of Music
21. "Sok dig till bergen" (Climb Ev'ry Mountain, in Swedish) - Tommy Korberg, from 1995 Swedish recording

Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Robert Spano, presented the world premiere of composer Angel Lam's new work: Awakening From a Disappearing Garden for solo cello and orchestra on October 15, 2009.

Yo-Yo's relationship to the composer goes back to 2005-2006, when she was awarded a Carnegie Hall Emerging Composer Commission. The resulting work, Empty Mountain Spirit Rain, was developed in part in a workshop setting with the Silk Road Ensemble in March 2005 and was also part of the Carnegie Hall/Tanglewood Music Center/Silk Road Project workshop in August 2006. This piece has been part of the touring repertoire for the Silk Road Ensemble for several years and has been recorded by the SRE.

Lam's music reflects the beauty she finds in everyday life. Her works begin life as a narrative; through her own short stories that form an integral part of her compositional method, drawing on Western and Chinese classical sources.

In Awakening from a Disappearing Garden, (commissioned by Carnegie Hall through the generosity of Henry R. Kravis in honor of his wife Marie-Jose'e) Lam's story is "about two women, two different generations, two different eras, in a society that had turned our nature upside down and then upside down again . . ."

The New York premiere will take place at Carnegie Hall as part of it's "Ancient Paths Modern Voices: A Festival Celebrating Chinese Culture" on November 7, 2009.

In memoriam of the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death, Sony Classical remembers one of the greatest composers of all time...

Franz Joseph Haydn, one of classical music's greatest luminaries, was instrumental to the development and evolution of the genre in his era. While making his mark over a century later, Leonard Bernstein's name has also become synonymous with excellence in classical music and carries a monumental legacy of its own. Thus, it is only fitting that on the 200th Anniversary of Haydn's death one great artist remember another. Sony Classical proudly presents, Leonard Bernstein Conducts Haydn. This 12-disc set is comprised of some of Haydn's most celebrated works and is representative of the evolution of his music and unrivaled genius.

Purchase Leonard Bernstein Conducts Haydn

Each week Wine Enthusiast will present a song from the Sony Music catalog and you get to tell us what type of wine you would pair with the song and why. Your pairing automatically gives you a chance to win one of three prizes:

Weekly Grand Prize:
Sony Music CD prize pack including all 10 albums featured throughout this contest and
$100 Wine Enthusiast
Merchandise Certificate

Weekly Honorable Mention:
Sony Music CD prize pack including the current weeks featured album and
$25 Wine Enthusiast
Merchandise Certificate (2 Winners)

We could all use a little change! To that end Masterworks Broadway has updated its website with a new look and feel. Easier navigation and search, new sections on composers, titles and our extensive catalog are only a few of the improvements. Change is good! See it for yourself at www.masterworksbroadway.com.

Visit NYC.com through September 16th to enter to win a copy of all 4 of Eldar's albums: Virtue, re-imagination, Live At The Blue Note and Eldar.

Enter To Win

On August 14th at the national Flute Association Convention in NYC, renowned flutist James Galway led a successful challenge to the Guiness Book's world record for the "Largest Flute Ensemble". NPR's All Things Considered gets the inside story, from reporter Lara Pellegrinelli who also got in on the action.

Half a century after walking onto the world stage as the first classical guitar quartet, Los Romeros continue to shape and contribute to the lexicon of classical guitar. On their latest release, "Celebration" the internationally-acclaimed "Royal Family of the Guitar" celebrates the occasion of their fiftieth anniversary. The result of their festivities is a record whose repertoire embodies the literature representative of their musical journey. From the "Malaguenas" of their father (the first piece they played as a quartet) to "De Cadiz a la Habana" (especially written for this recording) and "Tonadilla" (written by revered composer Joaquin Rodrigo) the expanse of their artistry is apparent and as vibrant as ever.

Perhaps the mightiest and most influential of all pianists of the 20th century, Vladimir Horowitz left the world a matchless catalog of recordings - a Masterworks legacy that is renewed with this second release from the Yale Archive recordings. They capture Horowitz in his golden prime, playing his signature repertoire live in concert at Carnegie Hall, where he celebrated the milestones in his storied career. From Schumann's passionate Fantasy in C Major, Op.17 to Balakriev's breath-taking steeplechase Islamey, this release is an exploration deep into the heart of the Romantic age guided by one of classical music's greatest artists.

Purchase Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall - The Private Collection: Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Balakariev

Sony Masterworks cordially events you to join us in celebrating the release of Eldar's upcoming album, Virtue. On 8/25 the Jazz piano phenomenon will be performing highlights from the release at J&R World's 23 Park Row location in New York City. The performance will take place at 12:30pm in the second floor performance area and is sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

Other upcoming performances include a 4-day run at New York's renowned Jazz Standard, located at 116 East 27th Street in New York City. Performances will take place each day at 7:30pm and 9:30pm. Tickets can be purchased in advance at JazzStandard.net. For more background and upcoming activities visit EldarJazz.com.

Sting, Regina Spektor, Josh Groban and jazz trumpeter Chris Botti are among the guests who join violin virtuoso Joshua Bell on his new album, "At Home With Friends." The sixteen song set, which also features appearances by Dave Grusin and Anoushka Shankar, was born out of the informal jam sessions Bell regularly holds at his house. Due September 29 on Sony Classical, Bell shows off a wide range of styles, from jazz to classical to Appalachian-inspired instrumentals, as well as dipping into opera, Latin influences and pop music.

"I called it that to reflect the evenings that I try to organize at home- I like eclectic evenings of music; salon type evenings," Bell tells Billboard.com. He recently converted his Manhattan home to accommodate these types of gatherings and on "At Home With Friends," he's taken that concept and incorporated it into the record's feel. "I think the arrangements are quite intimate," he says. "They're not big orchestral things. Generally, the idea is that if I could get all these guys free in an evening, we could do it all acoustical."

Read the full story at Billboard.com

Pre-order At Home With Friends at Amazon.com

As the world commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the death of beloved American tenor Mario Lanza, Masterworks celebrates Lanza's remarkable career with the release of Serenade - A Mario Lanza Songbook, a collection of timeless favorites featuring seven tracks that have never before been released.

Watch Sony Classical artist Joshua Bell make two special performances on the 44th Annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon! The Grammy Award-winning violinist is scheduled to perform a very special version of "Yankee Doodle" on September 6th between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m PT and will be joined by Frankie Moreno to perform "Eleanor Rigby" from Joshua's upcoming CD At Home with Friends on September 7th between 11:15 a.m and midnight PT.

The 21 1/2-hour, star-studded variety show simultaneously entertains, informs and raises funds for the service and research programs of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. It is broadcast live from the South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa in Las Vegas, from Sept. 6 - 7, 6:00 p.m. PT and can be seen on 180 MDA "Love Network" (http://www.mda.org/telethon/FindYourStation.pdf) stations across the country or live on www.mda.org. Please note all scheduled appearances are subject to change.

Check your local listings

Zenph Re-Performances Of Rachmaninoff Playing His Own Works In Crystal Clear Sound

The Third Release From Zenph Studios And Sony Masterworks Available On September 22, 2009

Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff

Sony Masterworks and Zenph Studios announce the third release in an ongoing collaboration to breathe new life into legendary performances that have been marred by the poor recording quality of past times. Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff follows upon the success of Zenph Studios' productions of Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of The Goldberg Variations (2007) and Art Tatum's Piano Starts Here (2008). This new compilation of re-performances is made from original masters that the colossal Russian composer and pianist recorded during his lifetime. Available on September 22, 2009, the release celebrates the 100th anniversary of Rachmaninoff's US recital debut, which took place at Smith College in Northampton, MS.

The recording features Rachmaninoff playing five of his own compositions: the Prelude in C-sharp minor, the Etudes Tableaux in C Major and E-flat Major, Op. 33, "Daisies" and Moment Musical in E-flat minor, Op. 16. It also includes Rachmaninoff's renditions of Kreisler's Liebesleid and Liebesfreud, Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee, Mendelssohn's scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Tchaikovsky's Lullaby, and Bach's Violin Partita No. 3.

Sony Masterworks has newly recorded in crystalline stereo sound, performances originally recorded by Rachmaninoff from 1921-42. The production team selected and customized an instrument that Rachmaninoff likely played during his lifetime - a 1909 nine-foot Steinway D grand piano. This release lets the listener experience his performances without the hissing or popping that were once considered as much a part of those monaural 78s as the music itself. Zenph Studios eliminates the need for such compromise, returning Rachmaninoff's performances to their original luster, like a team of artists restoring the painting of an Old Master.

In re-recording Rachmaninoff's own performances, producer Steve Epstein and engineer Richard King, who have won twenty Grammy® Awards between them, have studied the original recordings in tremendous detail. Zenph's team, led by Dr. Anatoly Larkin, analyzed the execution of each and every note - determining its length, the strength of attack and the exact nature of pedal action, in addition to scores of other variables. This information was then processed as computer files. The files were sent to the customized grand piano, which articulated this information as music. The performances are identical to the originals, except for the vastly improved quality of the sound. With these re-performances, it is possible to experience the kind of recording Rachmaninoff would have made had he lived in the era of high-resolution audio production.

The selection of pieces provides the perfect picture of Rachmaninoff as a composer and pianist of distinctly Russian pedigree. His love for the work of his compatriots is represented in Rimsky-Korsakov's dizzying Flight of the Bumblebee and Tchaikovsky's Lullaby, which the pianist seems to play in one huge breath of sound. The inclusion of Mendelssohn's scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream reflects Rachmaninoff's indebtedness to the elegant emotionalism of the German composer.

Rachmaninoff's playing of his own compositions shows off the composer's technical mastery as an architect of profound musical moments. His splendid rhythmic drive, deliberate touch, incredible strength and organic sense for dynamics were tied to a brilliant sense of each piece's structure, from vivid portraiture to virtuoso feats, each tinged with the composer's indelible sense for melancholy. In all of his performances, Rachmaninoff selected one climatic emotional moment and constructed an entire understanding of the piece around it. In the new recording, each tone rings out like a bell.

Rachmaninoff was known for his exacting standards during his recording sessions; biographer Max Harrison relates that he used a hammer to smash the 78s for takes he deemed unsatisfactory. The team at Zenph Studios is proud to restore the brilliance to these exquisite artifacts of musical genius. Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff is a recording in which the composer and pianist would have recognized himself.

All 13 tracks are presented twice on the CD, once in regular stereo, and again for headphones. For the second version, the "dummy head" was positioned where Rachmaninoff's head would have been during the recording, so listeners hear the music as Rachmaninoff himself might have heard it when he was seated at the piano.

CONTENTS

1. Kriesler/Rachmaninoff: Liebesleid
First recorded in New York City, October 25, 1921

2. Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3, No. 2
First recorded in New York City, April 4, 1928

3. Rimsky-Korsakov/Rachmaninoff; The Flight of the Bumblebee
First recorded in New York City, April 16, 1929

4. Mendelssohn/Rachmaninoff: Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream
First recorded in New York City, December 23, 1935

5. Rachmaninoff; Etude Tableau in C Major, Op. 33, No. 2
First recorded in New York City, March 18, 1940

6. Rachmaninoff: Etude Tableau in E-flat Major, Op. 33, No. 7
First recorded in New York City, March 18, 1940

7. Rachmaninoff: Moment Musical, Op. 16, No.2
First recorded in New York City, March 18, 1940

8. Rachmaninoff: "Daisies," Op. 38, No. 3
First recorded in New York City, March 18, 1940

9. Tchaikovsky/Rachmaninoff: Lullaby, Op. 16, No. 1
First recorded in Hollywood, February 26, 1942

10. Bach/Rachmaninoff; Prelude from Violin Partita No. 3
First recorded in Hollywood, February 27, 1942

11. Bach/Rachmaninoff; Gavotte from Violin Partita No. 3
First recorded in Hollywood on February 26, 1942

12. Bach/Rachmaninoff: Gigue from Violin Partita No. 3
First recorded in Hollywood, February 26, 1942

13. Kreisler/Rachmaninoff: Liebesfreud
First recorded in Hollywood, February 26, 1942

RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical, deutsche harmonia mundi, Masterworks Broadway and Masterworks Jazz are labels of Sony Masterworks. For e-mail updates and information regarding RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical, deutsche harmonia mundi, Masterworks Broadway and Masterworks Jazz artists, promotions, tours and repertoire, please visit www.sonymasterworks.com.

Yo-Yo Ma: 30 Years Outside The Box encompasses Mr. Ma's entire recorded career and then some; including essays from his friends and colleagues, and photos from throughout his 30 year journey - plus through an exclusive offer, a personalized note from Yo-Yo to you, his fan, and a signed never before released photo.

Learn more about Yo-Yo Ma: 30 Years Outside The Box and then visit The Official Yo-Yo Ma Store to pre-order this exclusive offer.

Bartok: String Quartets Nos. 1-6

Beethoven: The Early String Quartets (Op. 18, Nos. 1-6)

Beethoven: The Middle String Quartets (Op. 59, Nos. 1-3; Opp. 74 & 95)

Beethoven: The Late String Quartets (Opp. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133 and 135)

Debussy/Ravel/Dutilleux: String Quartets 

Great Collaborations  

The members of the Juilliard String Quartet jointly stated, "We are thrilled that a substantial amount of our recorded legacy will now be available through the latest technology, for listeners of all ages. With Nick Eanet now joining the Quartet, we look forward to continuing our relationship with this great label."

Alex Miller, General Manager of Sony Masterworks, said, "The Quartet has a long and celebrated relationship with the label and we are delighted to begin making their remarkable and diverse catalogue available to the public digitally."

The first six recordings will include the complete string quartets of Beethoven and Bartok (the latter a Juilliard String Quartet specialty). On CDs, the Beethoven quartets comprised a total of nine discs (three three-disc sets); the Bartok quartets comprised two discs; the French collection one disc; and Great Collaborations two discs. All of the titles to be digitized have been released previously on CD; all titles also appeared on the LP format with the exception of the French disc, which was released on CD only.

The Great Collaborations release includes Dvorak's Piano Quintet with Rudolf Firkusny, piano; Barber's Dover Beach with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht with Walter Trampler, viola, and Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Schumann's Piano Quintet with Leonard Bernstein, piano; Copland's Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and Strings with Aaron Copland, piano, and Harold Wright, clarinet; and Franck's Piano Quintet with Jorge Bolet, piano.

Each title of the new releases will include a digital booklet of liner notes.

About the Juilliard String Quartet

The Juilliard String Quartet is internationally renowned and admired for performances characterized by clarity of structure, beauty of sound, purity of line and an extraordinary unanimity of purpose. Celebrated for its performances of works by composers as diverse as Beethoven, Schubert, Bartok and Elliott Carter, it has long been recognized as the quintessential American string quartet. 

This 2009/10 season is the inaugural season with first violinist Nick Eanet. Highlights include Da Camera of Houston, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Shriver Hall Concert Series in Baltimore, dates at The Juilliard School, and tours in Japan and throughout Europe.

Recent seasons heard the JSQ in concert at the Kennedy Center, on tour in Australia, at the Konzerthaus Vienna, at the Palacio Real in Madrid, and at the Cité de la musique in Paris with an accompanying two-day residency at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique. The Juilliard String Quartet offered special programming in recognition of Elliott Carter's 100th birthday, performing the world premiere of his new Clarinet Quintet with Charles Neidich at The Juilliard School, the European premiere of the work at the Konzerthaus in Berlin, and his String Quartet No. 2 in concerts around the world. As ardent advocates of Carter's complex and visionary string quartets, the Juilliard's landmark recording of Quartets Nos. 1-4 was released by Sony in 1991.

The Quartet celebrated its 60th anniversary season with complete Bartok cycles (the Juilliard Quartet played the American premiere of the Bartok cycle at Tanglewood in 1948) in major cities throughout the U.S. and Japan. In honor of both the Juilliard's 60th birthday and the Shostakovich centennial, Sony BMG Masterworks released a 2-CD set of the Juilliard Quartet's recordings of Shostakovich Quartets Nos. 3, 14, 15 and the Piano Quintet with Yefim Bronfman.  The Juilliard Quartet also celebrated Mozart's 250th birthday, performing Quartets K. 421, K. 428 and K. 465, newly informed by first-edition parts recently donated to The Juilliard School. Other recent highlights include a pair of concerts presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Disney Hall; the world premiere of Ezequiel Vinao's Quartet II, "The Loss and the Silence," commissioned for them by The Juilliard School in honor of its 2006 centennial; and international performances of Bach's "Art of the Fugue."

In 2003 the Quartet marked the celebrations of its 40th anniversary as Quartet-in-Residence at the Library of Congress with a twelve-concert complete Beethoven cycle interspersed with works by American composers whose work the Quartet has championed throughout its existence.  The JSQ has performed complete Beethoven cycles in seven-concert series at Alice Tully Hall in New York, at Casals Hall in Tokyo, at Michigan State University and, most recently, at the International Beethoven Festival in Bonn and at the Tonhalle in Dusseldorf.  

At Carnegie Hall, the Quartet appeared on Maurizio Pollini's "Perspectives" series with pianist Martha Argerich, and in the Hall's 100th anniversary gala.  Annual guests at Tanglewood's Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Juilliards played in the Hall's opening concert and are the lead-off artists in the recent recording celebrating its 10th anniversary.  They are frequent guests at the Miyazaki Festival in Japan and at festivals in Europe including the Lucerne Festival and the Schubertiade in Feldkirch.  In a departure from the classical norm, the Juilliard Quartet has twice been the featured ensemble - comedic and musical - on Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion." 

As Quartet-in-Residence at New York City's Juilliard School, the Juilliard String Quartet is widely admired for its seminal influence on aspiring string players around the world. The Quartet continues to play an important role in the formation of new American ensembles and was instrumental in the formation of the Alexander, American, Concord, Emerson, La Salle, New World, Mendelssohn, Tokyo, Brentano, Lark, St. Lawrence, Shanghai and Colorado string quartets. 

In a momentous occasion at Tanglewood in 1997, the Juilliard String Quartet's founder and first violinist Robert Mann retired from the group after fifty years. Earlier that season, Musical America named the Quartet "Musicians of the Year," making it the first chamber music ensemble ever to appear on the cover of the publication's annual International Directory of the Performing Arts.

In its history, the Juilliard String Quartet has performed a comprehensive repertoire of some 500 works, ranging from the great classical composers to masters of the current century. It was the first ensemble to play all six Bartok quartets in the United States, and it was through the group's performances that the quartets of Arnold Schoenberg were rescued from obscurity. An ardent champion of contemporary American music, the Quartet has premiered more than 60 compositions of American composers, including works by some of America's finest jazz musicians. 

The ensemble has been associated with Sony Classical, in its various incarnations, since 1949. In celebration of the Quartet's 50th anniversary, Sony released seven CDs containing previously unreleased material as well as notable performances from the Quartet's award-winning discography. With more than 100 releases to its credit, the ensemble is one of the most widely recorded string quartets of our time. Its recordings of the complete Beethoven quartets, the complete Schoenberg quartets, and the Debussy and Ravel string quartets have all received Grammy Awards. Inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Academy for Recording Arts and Sciences in 1986 for its recording of the complete Bartok string quartets, the Juilliard Quartet was awarded the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Prize in 1993 for Lifetime Achievement in the recording industry. In 1994, its recording of quartets by Ravel, Debussy, and Dutilleux was chosen by the Times of London as one of the 100 best classical CDs ever recorded. 

Nick Eanet, Violin (Pronunciation: Eanet, rhymes with "senate")

Nick Eanet began his violin studies at the age of three with Nicole DiCecco, and was an avid chamber musician almost from the beginning, playing quartets by the age of five. When he was only eleven, his young quartet was invited to perform at a festival by Shinichi Suzuki in Matsumoto, Japan. At the age of twelve, he was admitted to The Juilliard School Pre-College where he studied with Dorothy DeLay, continuing at the college with Robert Mann. After graduating from Juilliard with a bachelor of music degree, Mr. Eanet joined the Mendelssohn String Quartet as leader and first violinist.

During his years with the Mendelssohn String Quartet, Mr. Eanet performed around the world in major venues such as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Library of Congress. His teaching responsibilities included posts at Harvard University and the North Carolina School of the Arts.  Numerous summer festival appearances include the Mostly Mozart Festival, Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Maui Chamber Music Festival, Steamboat Springs Strings in the Mountains Festival, among others. His playing, hailed by the New York Times as "brilliant and passionate," is in great demand: In addition to performing with the Sea Cliff Chamber Players and at Bargemusic, Mr. Eanet is a key member of Amadeus Virtuosi, a chamber orchestra that he also conducts.  He has premiered and recorded the violin music of Frederich Nietzsche, available on the Newport Classic label. 

Mr. Eanet's exposure to solo work also began when he was quite young.  At age eight he was invited by Zubin Mehta to appear as soloist with the New York Philharmonic in one of the orchestra's Young People's Concerts. Two years later, he performed as soloist on the Philharmonic's subscription series and its New Year's Eve gala concert. Mr. Eanet has since performed as soloist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra led by James Levine at Carnegie Hall, the Minnesota Orchestra with Sir Neville Marriner, the New York Youth Symphony, and others. 

From 1999 until he joined the Juilliard String Quartet, Mr. Eanet was the concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, a position appointed by James Levine. During his tenure with the orchestra, Mr. Eanet performed across Europe and Japan, and regularly appeared in orchestral and chamber music concerts at all three venues at Carnegie Hall. Nick Eanet is a native Brooklynite.

Ronald Copes, Violin

Praised by audiences and critics alike for his insightful artistry, violinist Ronald Copes has received international acclaim as concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician.  Having appeared as a featured performer in the Marlboro, Tanglewood, Bermuda, Cheltenham, Colorado and Olympic music festivals, Mr. Copes has toured extensively with Music From Marlboro ensembles, the Los Angeles and Dunsmuir piano quartets, and, since 1997, with the Juilliard String Quartet in concerts throughout Europe, Asia and North America. 

He has recorded numerous solo and chamber music works for radio and television broadcast as well as for Sony Classical, Orion, CRI, Klavier, New World Records, ECM and the Musical Heritage Society. Devoting considerable energy to the development and presentation of contemporary string literature, he has worked closely with composers and has given the first performances of a number of solo and chamber works. 

Mr. Copes has garnered prizes in several national and international competitions including the Artists' Advisory Council, the Merriweather Post and the Concours International d'execution Musicale in Geneva.  For two decades, he served as Professor of Violin at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and, in 1997, joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in New York City. During the summer he is on the artist-faculty of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival.

Samuel Rhodes, Viola

Samuel Rhodes is celebrating his 41st year as a member of both the Juilliard String Quartet and the faculty of The Juilliard School where he is chair of the viola department. He has been a participant in the Marlboro Festival since 1960 and is a faculty member of the Tanglewood Music Center. His solo appearances have included several recitals at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and an unaccompanied recital at The Juilliard School. This celebratory season includes recitals in Hamburg, Germany, and at Juilliard. In June 2001, Mr. Rhodes was invited to play a recital in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the festival Viola Space in Tokyo, Japan. He gave the world premiere of Figment IV for solo viola by Elliott Carter in January 2008 in Paris. In 1998, Mr. Rhodes had the honor of being invited to join the late Isaac Stern as a coach at his Chamber Music Workshops in Jerusalem, Israel; Miyazaki, Japan and Carnegie Hall, New York.

A native New Yorker, Samuel Rhodes studied the viola with Sydney Beck and Walter Trampler. He has a bachelor of arts degree from Queens College, New York, and a master of fine arts degree from Princeton University where he studied composition with Roger Sessions and Earl Kim. As a composer, Mr. Rhodes wrote a string quintet for two violins, two violas and cello, which has been performed by the Blair, Composer's, Galimir, Pro Arte and Sequoia quartets. The Pro Arte Quartet recently recorded the work with the composer as guest artist.

Mr. Rhodes has been artist-in-residence at Michigan State University and has been awarded honorary doctorates by Michigan State, the University of Jacksonville and the San Francisco Conservatory. He has appeared as a guest artist with many ensembles including the Beaux Arts and Mannes trios and with the Brentano, Cleveland, Guarneri, and Mendelssohn quartets.

Joel Krosnick, Cello

Joel Krosnick has performed as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician around the world. As a member of the Juilliard String Quartet since 1974, he has performed the great quartet literature throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. With his sonata partner of more than 30 years, pianist Gilbert Kalish, Mr. Krosnick has performed recitals throughout the U. S. and Europe. Since 1976, they have given annual series of recitals in New York City and recently presented the series American Milestones of the Last 100 Years at The Juilliard School.

With Mr. Kalish, Mr. Krosnick has recorded the complete sonatas and variations of Beethoven and the sonatas of Brahms as well as works by Poulenc, Prokofiev, Carter, Hindemith, Debussy, Janacek, and Cowell for the Arabesque label. Especially noteworthy is their CD devoted to the cello and piano music of Ralph Shapey. Yet to be released is a CD, Forgotten Americans. 

Mr. Krosnick completed his bachelor of arts degree at Columbia College where he began his lifelong commitment to contemporary music. He has performed and premiered a large number of new works by composers including Donald Martino, Ralph Shapey and Richard Wernick. Joel Krosnick's recording of the Sonata for Solo Cello by Artur Schnabel appears on the CP2 label, and his CD of Roger Sessions' Six Pieces for Solo Cello is presented on Koch Classics.

A dedicated and passionate teacher, Mr. Krosnick is chair of the cello department of The Juilliard School and is a member of the faculty of Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in Maine. He has been associated with the Aspen, Marlboro and Tanglewood music festivals, and appeared for the third time as a member of the artist-faculty of the Piatigorsky Seminar at the University of Southern California. A recipient of the Chevalier du Violoncelle Award from the Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center at the Indiana University School of Music, Mr. Krosnick holds honorary doctoral degrees from Michigan State University, Jacksonville University, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Sony Masterworks and Zenph Studios are proud to announce the third release in an ongoing collaboration to breathe new life into legendary performances that have been marred by the poor recording quality of past times. Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff follows upon the success of Zenph Studios' productions of Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of The Goldberg Variations (2007) and Art Tatum's Piano Starts Here (2008).  This new compilation of re-performances is made from original masters that the colossal Russian composer and pianist recorded during his lifetime.  Available on September 22, 2009, the release celebrates the 100th anniversary of Rachmaninoff's US recital debut, which took place at Smith College in Northampton, MS.  

The recording features Rachmaninoff playing five of his own compositions: the Prelude in C-sharp minor, the Etudes Tableaux in C Major and E-flat Major, Op. 33, "Daisies" and Moment Musical in E-flat minor, Op. 16.  It also includes Rachmaninoff's renditions of Kreisler's Liebesleid and Liebesfreud, Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee, Mendelssohn's scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Tchaikovsky's Lullaby, and Bach's Violin Partita No. 3. 

The selection of pieces provides the perfect picture of Rachmaninoff as a composer and pianist of distinctly Russian pedigree.  His love for the work of his compatriots is represented in Rimsky-Korsakov's dizzying Flight of the Bumblebee and Tchaikovsky's Lullaby, which the pianist seems to play in one huge breath of sound.  The inclusion of Mendelssohn's scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream reflects Rachmaninoff's indebtedness to the elegant emotionalism of the German composer. 

What is a Zenph Re-Performance? 

Zenph's unique technique turns audio recordings into live performances that precisely replicate the original recording, but offer vastly improved sound quality.  Zenph captures the musical nuances of the original recording, with details about the pedal actions, volume and articulations down to millisecond timings. The process allows for the production of pristine new renderings that transcend the limitations of the original recording process.

Purchase Zenph: Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff

New John Williams Composition Performed at President Obama's Inauguration by Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill, Gabriela Montero and Itzhak Perlman

Now Available Exclusively at iTunes

"Air and Simple Gifts" is a classical quartet written by American composer John Williams for the January 20, 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. The piece was first heard by the public in Washington, DC, and on simultaneous broadcasts around the world in a performance by Anthony McGill (clarinet), Itzhak Perlman (violin), Yo-Yo Ma (cello) and Gabriela Montero (piano). The premiere of Air and Simple Gifts came immediately before the oath of office. Barack Obama officially became the President at noon, as stipulated by the United States Constitution, while the piece was being heard.

John Williams based the piece on the familiar nineteenth-century Shaker hymn Simple Gifts by Joseph Brackett. The source piece is famous for its appearance in Aaron Copland's score for the ballet Appalachian Spring. Williams chose the selection knowing that Copland is one of President Obama's favorite classical composers.

Read more about Yo-Yo Ma's Inaugural Performance in the Community section of his website.

Best Musical Show Album
(Award to the Album Producer(s), and to the Lyricist(s) & Composer(s) of 51% or more of a new score. (Artist, Lyricist & Composer names appear in parentheses.))

South Pacific
David Caddick, David Lai & Ted Sperling, producers (Richard Rodgers, composer; Oscar Hammerstein II, lyricist) (New Broadway Cast With Kelli O'Hara, Paulo Szot & Others)
[Masterworks Broadway]

Best Chamber Music Performance
(Award to the Artists.)

Right Through The Bone — Julius Rontgen Chamber Music
ARC Ensemble

Yo-Yo Ma is iTunes Pick of the Week at Starbucks! Anyone who visits a Starbucks beginning on Tuesday November 4th will be able to pick up a free Yo-Yo Ma download card redeemable for the music video "The Wexford Carol" featuring Alison Krauss.  So, don't forget to visit your local Starbucks next week and get your card and maybe one for a friend while supplies last. Offer ends 10/11.

(Sony BMG Masterworks/NY) On October 14, 2008 Sony BMG Masterworks will release KRISTIN CHENOWETH's new Christmas CD A LOVELY WAY TO SPEND CHRISTMAS. For her third album, Chenoweth covers a wide range of Christmas songs from "Christmas Island," popularized by The Andrew's Sisters to Kristin's personal favorite "Come On Ring Those Bells."

Recorded at Capitol Recording Studio's legendary Studios A & B where Sinatra, Judy Garland and Nat King Cole all etched their Christmas standards, A Lovely Way To Spend Christmas is an eclectic combination of full orchestral arrangements, along with big band, a bit of tropical island flavor, pop and country.

In addition to well-known Christmas classics such as "Silver Bells" and "I'll Be Home For Christmas," Chenoweth reinterprets Louis Armstrong's modern standard "What A Wonderful World" and children's favorite "Sing," (originally written for Sesame Street's loveable Big Bird) into a Christmas songs with the help of acclaimed producer Robbie Buchanan (Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Barry Manilow) and Executive Producer Jay Landers (Streisand, Midler, Manilow, Celine Dion and Josh Groban).

The album also features new compositions of "Home On Christmas Day," co-written by Grammy Award winning producer Walter Afanasieff (Mariah Carey, Celine Dion) and Jay Landers and "Born On Christmas Day," with lyrics by Grammy winning pop/soul singing legend Peabo Bryson.

On choosing to record a Christmas album Chenoweth says "From the minute I signed with Sony Classical eight years ago, I wanted to record a Christmas album. I grew up listening to Barbra Streisand's Christmas album, and that was such an inspiration to me. Christmas is my favorite holiday and I am blessed and excited to be able to do my own Christmas album."

This fall Kristin will be featured in a new comedy Four Christmases directed by Seth Gordon and starring alongside Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn. She also continues her role in ABC's Pushing Daisies for which she was recently nominated for an Emmy. Kristin can also be heard as the voice of the fairy, Rosetta, in Walt Disney Picture's Tinkerbell this fall and she just wrapped filming the independent film, Into Temptation, directed by Sundance filmmaker Patrick Coyle opposite Jeremy Sisto.


Track Listing:
1 I'll Be Home For Christmas
2 Christmas Island
3 The Christmas Waltz
4 Do You Hear What I Hear?
5 Marshmallow Ride / Sleigh Ride
6 Sing
7 Silver Bells
8 Come On Ring Those Bells
9 What Child Is This?
10 Home On Christmas Day
11 Born On Christmas Day
12 Sleep Well Little Children / What A Wonderful World


For more information please contact:
Kristen Foster – PMK/HBH, Kristen.Foster@pmkhbh.com, 212-373-6108
Angela Barkan – SONY BMG, angela.barkan@sonybmg.com, 212-833-8575

 

You can enter the iTunes Live competition to win a pair of tickets to see Ahn Trio and Hayley Westenra live at Koko in London on Tuesday July 29th, 2008. Visit iTunes Live: London Festival '08 to win!

"Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific" was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and picked up 7 among those 11 for best musical revival, best musical director (Bartlett Sher), best leading actor in a musical (Paulo Szot), scenery, costume, lighting and sound last Sunday.

Sony BMG Masterworks proudly announces the upcoming release of the New Broadway Cast Recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific.  The CD will be available nationwide on May 27, 2008.  This much-anticipated Lincoln Center Theater production of this treasured American musical directed by Bartlett Sher will have its Official Opening at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65th Street) on Thursday, April 3.  Previews began March 1.  Produced by David Caddick and David Lai, the CD will be recorded on Monday, April 14 at New York's Legacy Recording Studios (509 West 38th Street).

Based on James Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Tales of the South Pacific, Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific has music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan.  Set on a tropical island during World War II, the musical tells the sweeping romantic story of two couples -- US Navy nurse Nellie Forbush and French plantation owner Emile de Becque and Navy Airman Joe Cable and a young local native girl Liat -- and how their happiness is threatened by the realities of the war and by their own prejudices.

Celebrate the upcoming world-premier performance of Runaway Bunny at the Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium on April 29th with our Runaway Bunny Player!

A virtuoso pianist of the mid-twentieth century, William Kapell was an important link to early-twentieth century giants such as Horowitz and Rubinstein and the leader of the new guard of American pianists represented by Van Cliburn, Gary Graffman, and Leon Fleisher. Brooding good looks and explosive interpretations of Russian piano literature made him a star. His death in a plane crash at the age of 31 put an end to a career marked by fiery personality, technical mastery, and unstinting devotion to his craft. Many considered him the first virtuoso American pianist - certainly the most famous one until Van Cliburn - whose early death denied him more enduring popularity. These recordings are a stirring reminder of the talent upon which his fame rested during his lifetime.

These recordings, which first came to attention in 2004 with an article in The New York Times, include Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, Bach's Suite in A Minor, BWV818, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Mozart's Sonata in B-flat, K. 570, and Chopin's Nocturne, Op. 55 No. 2, in E-flat, plus five works Kapell never previously released: Debussy's Suite bergamasque, Chopin's Barcarolle and Scherzo No. 1 in B Minor, Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7, and "God Save the Queen." These selections are taken from live performances recorded during his final three-month tour of Australia in 1953, shortly before his death.

The lavish digipak packaging for this release features liner notes by Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page, who considers the recordings, "magnificent playing by any standard and a colossal enhancement to our understanding of William Kapell." The public owes the existence of this important recorded document to Roy Preston, a Melbourne, Australia department store salesman who passionately and obsessively made home recordings of radio broadcasts. Page puts Preston's remarkable contribution in the context of its time:

"It is nothing less than extraordinary that they should have come to light all these years later: back in 1953, the vast majority of live renditions - even those by the most celebrated of artists - vanished immediately into thin air. Today, at a time when any radio or television program will be recorded by thousands of people and perhaps even put out over the internet, it is difficult to conceive of how elusive such permanence once was."

This digitally remastered two-disc set - the latest in Sony BMG Masterworks' reDiscovered series - compiles performances from four of the concerts on Kapell's tour of Australia and makes them available for the first time as a lasting tribute to the incredible talent and influence of William Kapell.

Prize-winning pianist Denis Matsuev was invited by the Rachmaninoff Foundation to record two recently discovered early  works of Sergei Rachmaninoff - Fuga in D Minor and Suite for Orchestra in D Minor (transcription for piano by  the composer) - both written in 1891 when Rachmaninoff was completing his education at the St.Petersburg Conservatory. Unknown Rachmaninoff presents the world premiere recordings of these two compositions, along with performances of three of Rachmaninoff's Etudes Tableaux, Op.39 (Nos. 2, 6 & 9); the second edition of his Sonata No.2, Op.36; and two of his Preludes (G Minor, Op.23 No.5 and G-sharp Minor, Op.32, No.12). Mr.Matsuev recorded this repertoire on Rachmaninoff's piano at the Rachmaninoff residence, Villa Senar in Lucerne - also at the behest of the Foundation. The release date is March 18. 2008.

Matsuev is touring eastern U.S. in March 2008 with the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia under the direction of conductor Mark Gorenstein. From March 17-31, Matsuev, Gorenstein and the SSOR will play eleven concerts in ten cities in Florida, New York, and Massachusetts (see schedule below).  Matsuev will be featured in the third piano concerti of Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. The tour coincides with the release of Unknown Rachmaninoff  (88697 1559125), Matsuev's fourth recording for RCA Red Seal/Sony BMG.

Denis Matsuev's U.S. tour is part of an extraordinary year that began in September as he opened the Houston Symphony Orchestra's season, playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 under conductor Hans Graf, and presented a recital at Carnegie Hall in November 2007 ("delicacy...poetic instincts...thrillingly precise...Tumultuous ovations elicited five encores." -New York Times), which RCA Red Seal recorded for later release.  Later in the season he tours Europe and Israel in both recital programs and in collaboration with conductors such as Vladimir Spivakov, Yuri Simonov and Yuri Temirkanov, goes on to perform with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra in the new Mariinsky Hall in St.Petersburg in June, he makes his July debut at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Leonard Slatkin.

The critics agree: Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen's new Beethoven cycle is an essential edition to the catalog. Reviewers from around the world have judged these performances revelatory, with many honoring the first release (Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 3 and 8) as the Best of the Year. The second recording in the Hybrid Super Audio CD series - now in stores - pairs enthralling performances of Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7.

As Alex Ross wrote in his widely-read blog, "...Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, whose all-Beethoven concert at Mostly Mozart was an undisputed knockout, have launched a Beethoven cycle for RCA. The first disc, pairing the Third and the Eighth, preserves most of the virtues of the live experience: precise attacks, danceable rhythms, vivid phrasing, a grainy, gutsy sound quality from the musicians, no-nonsense tempos from Järvi... it's earthy, propulsive music making, Beethoven as pure physical specimen... Missing, of course, is the joy of witnessing performances such as this in a responsive hall and with a responsive crowd."

The esteemed orchestra and its Grammy®-award winning conductor will complete their Beethoven symphonic cycle in 2009. They recently travelled to Japan to perform all nine symphonies; Yomiuri hailed the concert as "reviving the original excitement in Beethoven's music".

Pianist Murray Perahia performs J.S. Bach's Keyboard Partitas Nos. 2, 3 and 4 on his new Sony Classical recording, in stores March 18, 2008. One of the greatest living Bach interpreters, Perahia's longtime affinity for the music of Bach is reflected in his discography, which features critically acclaimed performances of the solo Keyboard Concerti, the 'Goldberg' Variations, and English Suites, among other works. These previous Bach recordings have garnered a Grammy® Award, several Grammy® nominations, a Gramophone Award for Best Instrumental Recording, and Top 10 Billboard Classical Chart positions.

In a refreshing juxtaposition of repertoire, Midori's first new recording in five years, features J.S. Bach's Unaccompanied Sonata No.2 in A Minor with Bartok's Sonata No.1 in C-sharp Minor. The SONY BMG Masterworks recording becomes available on January 1, 2008. Pianist Robert McDonald joins Midori in the Bartok. 'Both in my own personal listening and in concert programs, I really enjoy combining works from diverse historical periods - I believe they shed light on one another in the most wonderful way,' says Midori, 'so I thought it would be terrific to put these two great sonatas next to one another on a recording.'

The 2007-2008 season marks Midori's first quarter-century before the public. In a year characteristically replete with activity, Midori will play over 90 concerts, making six trips to Europe and three to Asia. Among the highlights of Midori's season will be bringing a unique project to Lincoln Center combining the music of J.S. Bach, Takemitsu and Schnittke; traveling to Florida with the Cleveland Orchestra and to Japan with the Philadelphia Orchestra; making her third all-new music recital tour, this time to Europe; devoting significant energy to her myriad community engagement initiatives in the U.S. and in Asia, and significantly increasing her commitment to USC's Thornton School of Music, as she assumes the position of Chair of the Strings Department in September. On September 21st, the International Day of Peace, Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, designated Midori an official Messenger of Peace, a great honor accorded fewer than 20 people since the U.N. program's inception over ten years ago.

Another significant milestone of Midori's 2007-08 season is the 15th Anniversary of her very first community engagement program, Midori & Friends. The program, started by Midori in response to cutbacks in arts education in New York City schools, has blossomed from modest beginnings to a 4-tiered, 26-week program offering instrument instruction, elementary music theory, family concerts, and jazz and world music concerts, in addition to classroom appearances by Midori and other guest artists, to school children throughout the city of New York. Since its inception this program has reached 150,000 underprivileged children. As part of her other community engagement programs this season, Midori will visit Cambodia (Music Sharing International), Minnesota (Partners in Performance), Iowa (Orchestra Residencies Program), Montana (Partners in Performance) and South Dakota (Orchestra Residencies Program).

NPR's All Things Considered did a story about choral music this past sunday and used the Westminster Abbey Choir recording of Miserere from the disc of the same name.

You can get the track on iTunes now or listen for free on Rhapsody!

Sony BMG Masterworks is happy to offer a sampler of the artists featured on the Carnegie Hall 08/09 Season DVD.

With colorful orchestral arrangements and delightful narration, a new recording on Sony Classical brings together musical versions of three of the world's most beloved and best-selling stories for children - The Runaway Bunny, Paddington Bear and Tubby the Tuba.

The new CD will be in stores on Tuesday, April 8, 2008. Three weeks later (April 29), at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium, internationally renowned Israeli violinist Ittai Shapira will join narrator Brooke Shields, composer/conductor Glen Roven and the American Symphony Orchestra for a world-premiere performance of Roven's The Runaway Bunny.

Acclaimed German piano sensation Martin Stadtfeld explores Bach Keyboard Concertos No. 1, 2 and 5 with the Lucerne Festival Strings conducted by Achim Fiedler on his new Sony Classical CD. The recording, which also includes the Preludes and Fugues in E-flat minor and B-flat minor, will be available March 11, 2008.

'Thrilling gifted young artist,' is the way Musical America described the 26-year-old pianist who records exclusively for Sony Classical. In 2003, his debut recital recording featuring Bach's Goldberg Variations met with ecstatic accolades and one year later he won the German Echo Klassik Award for 'Young Artist of the Year.' A subsequent recording of Bach's Three-Part Inventions and Italian Concerto garnered a second Echo Klassik for the 2005 'Solo Recording of the Year.' Stadtfeld was also the recipient of the 2002 Leipzig International Bach Competition.

The pianist will make his U.S. debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Jarvi performing Bach's Concerto No. 4 and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 on March 14.

The internationally acclaimed ensemble Ahn Trio will make their Sony BMG Masterworks debut on April 1 with Lullaby For My Favorite Insomniac. Sisters Angella (violin), Lucia (piano) and Maria (cello) continue their commitment to modernize and reinvent the standard piano-trio structure on this, their fourth album.

The new album is a fusion of established works with material specially commissioned for the trio. Violinist Angella Ahn explains, 'I don't think there is anything really like playing music that was written for you, working with the composers and with each other, and introducing this music to our audiences. It's really fun.' Included on the record are several tracks that build on the music of fellow Julliard-graduate and award-winning composer Kenji Bunch, a variety of commissioned works by Michael Nyman and Astor Piazzolla and innovative arrangements of music by Pat Metheny and David Bowie. The trio is joined vocally on the record by singer-songwriter Susie Suh. As a special addition, four bonus tracks are included with the new album, which features remixes by Tao of Sound, DJ Spooky, Superdrive and Ra.D.

Those of you who watched the Grammy Awards last week were lucky enough to catch a live performance from Masterworks Jazz artist Eldar during the speech from NARAS president Neil Portnow. The piece he was playing was called "Place St. Henri" and is available on his Grammy-nominated album "re-imagination" , available on Amazon and iTunes.

For more information, go to http://www.eldadrjazz.com

Betty Buckley "Quintessence" In Stores & Online Now Playbill Records announces their second collaboration with Tony Award ® Winner and Broadway legend, Betty Buckley, entitled QUINTESSENCE, a stunning tribute to Buckley's eighteen year working relationship with legendary jazz great, Kenny Werner. This album is the pair's ninth album together and is a perfect bookend to the recently released Betty Buckley 1967, released this past October. 'Quintessence', oozes with the seasoned finesse of a musical virtuoso—a performance that travels the artistic landscape of one of the most distinguished and celebrated performers of today. Fans of Betty Buckley and Kenny Werner can expect a beautiful musical valentine.

Buy now on iTunes or via the SonyBMG Store (powered by Amazon)

New Masterworks signing The Ahn Trio (http://www.ahntrio.com/) are happy to debut their recording of "My Funny Valentine" exclusively on Rhaposody at http://www.rhapsody.com/ahntrio.  Their album "Lullabies for My Favorite Insomniac" will be available in the US on April 1.

Rhapsody subscribers and those of you with an internet connection, listen up!  The Rhapsody version of "Quintessence" features FOUR bonus tracks: Amelia, Where Do You Start?, Heart Like a Wheel / The Water Is Wide, and A Time For Love / You Are There.  You can listen to these tracks FOR FREE by going to http://www.rhapsody.com/goto?rcid=alb18143952&variant=play&lsrc=RN_im

Legendary pianist Leon Fleisher sat with us to record a special 3-part series about his life and career.  You can listen and subscribe for free via iTunes at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=114360093, and check out the iTunes exclusive version of The Essential Leon Fleisher (featuring a never-before-in-the-digital-age recording of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring") at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=269525478&s=143441

Congratulations to Bruce Springsteen on his win in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category for his version of "Once Upon A Time In The West" from We All Love Ennio Morricone, available from Amazon and iTunes.

Alternately, you can listen to the track for free on Rhapsody

Russian pianist Denis Matsuev, one of classical music's most electrifying rising stars, pays tribute to his countryman on his new release Unknown Rachmaninoff.  Matsuev's exceptional performances of Rachmaninoff's virtuosic Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 39, Nos. 2, 6, and 9 and Sonata No. 2, Op. 36 will make listeners understand why he has been lauded by The Times, London as "possibly the new Horowitz".  Following these stunning pieces is the world premiere of two long-lost works recently discovered by the Rachmaninoff Foundation, Fuga in D minor and Suite for Orchestra in D minor, that are certain to thrill current devotees and amaze fans just discovering Matsuev's extraordinary talent.

Murray Perahia, one of the most acclaimed pianists of his time, is releasing Johann Sebastian Bach: Partitas 2, 3 & 4, his first new studio recording in three years.  Perahia will be touring throughout 2008 in support of the release as well as appearing as soloist and conductor with Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in March and April.

The Jascha Heifetz Original Jacket Collection from RCA Red Seal, as well as the Itzhak Perlman Original Jacket Collection from Sony Classical, are both due out March 25th as limited edition, specially priced deluxe 10-CD sets that feature vintage CD-size reproductions of the original LP jackets on both the front and back.  The Jascha Heifetz collection reflects all facets of his career, from the early Bach recordings of 1961 to his final recital of 1975 while the Perlman collection is a first time CD recording with string serenades by Beethoven and Dohnanyi performed by Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zuckerman on viola, and Lynn Harrell on cello.

Check out The 5 Browns, Eldar, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Nathan Gunn, The Birth of Christ, and more on our new Sony BMG Masterworks You Tube Channel!

We just launched a brand new site dedicated to The Music of Star Wars.  It features never-before-seen photos from the Lucas archives as well as info and sound clips from all the Star Wars soundtracks.

Go to http://www.starwarsthemusic.com/ for more details.

Kristin's new show "Pushing Daisies" has been nominated for a People's Choice Award in the category of Favorite New TV Comedy!  Vote for it now at pcavote.com!

Great news!  Eldar's latest release, "re-imagination", has received a 2007 Grammy Nomination for Best Contemporary Jazz Album! We could not have done this wihout you! Spread the news and to purchase this release :



Available Now!

Check Out Itunes, Amazon, or Visit the Sony Music Store to purchase your copy today!

Joshua Bell will be featured in a special segment  with his violin doctor, Sam Zygmuntowicz,  on The CBS Sunday Morning Show on December 30th. Check your local listings for showtimes and channel. This airdate is subject to change.

 

As the American pianist Leon Fleisher accepts the 2007 Kennedy Center Honor and prepares for a year of celebrations of his 80th birthday, Sony BMG Masterworks announces the release of The Essential Leon Fleisher, a commemorative anthology that features highlights from his greatest recordings. A special digital-only edition, with exclusive bonus tracks, will be available December 11 on iTunes, and the 2-CD set will be in stores on January 15, 2008.

The digital-only edition of The Essential Leon Fleisher will feature the first-ever release on CD of the pianist's 1963 recording with the Juilliard String Quartet of the Brahms Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34, as well as his long-unavailable recording of the piano transcription of Bach's 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.' Both the CD and digital editions will include another first for the digital era – the opening movement (Molto moderato) of the Schubert Sonata in B-Flat Major, D.960, from Fleisher's first recording for Columbia Masterworks in 1954. The CD version also will offer the Scherzo movement from the Brahms Piano Quintet.

Acclaimed from his youth as one of the most remarkable pianists of his time – the legendary conductor Pierre Monteux hailed him, when he was only 15, as 'the pianistic find of the century' – Leon Fleisher was a student of Artur Schnabel and made his New York Philharmonic debut in 1944, when he was only 16. In 1952, he became the first American to win Belgium's prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition. Fleisher went on to build a distinguished solo career in the 1950s and 1960s, when he recorded exclusively for Columbia Masterworks on the Epic label. His concerto recordings with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra set standards that are unsurpassed, and his solo recordings reflect a virtuosity that is as adventurous as it is discriminating.

Fleisher's career took a dramatically different turn in 1965, when at the age of 37 two fingers of his right hand were disabled as the result of a neurological affliction known as focal dystonia. He then began to devote himself to performing the fascinating body of music written for piano left hand, and to conducting and teaching. In recent years, however, new forms of treatment and therapy have restored Fleisher's use of his right hand, and he has been able to resume playing with both hands.

The extraordinary renaissance of Fleisher's career has been documented in his first two-hand recordings in some forty years, as well as an Oscar-nominated documentary short by filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn. This year also saw the release of a new recording of the Brahms Piano Quintet with the Emerson Quartet, some 44 years after the recording of the same work that appears on The Essential Leon Fleisher.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who leads the guest presenters for Fleisher's Kennedy Center Honor, recently named the first movement of the pianist's recording of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 as one of his top five favorite recordings. 'This is such a virile and full-blooded performance,' Ma says. 'Leon Fleisher plays the second theme of the first movement with a classical rhythmic groove that I've never heard from anyone else.'

In addition to the works listed above, that movement is included on The Essential Leon Fleisher, along with select movements of Fleisher's recordings of the Beethoven Emperor Concerto, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 and the Grieg Piano Concerto, as well as a complete performance of the Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand. Also featured are two works for piano left hand "the Brahms transcription of the Bach Chaconne and the 'Groteske' movement from Korngold's Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano Left Hand" and Ravel's Alborado del gracioso.

RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Masterworks Broadway and Masterworks Jazz are labels of SONY BMG Masterworks. For email updates and information regarding RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Masterworks Broadway and Masterworks Jazz artists, promotions, tours and repertoire, please visit www.sonybmgmasterworks.com

The Essential Leon Fleisher -- Tracklisting

1. Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 73 'Emperor' Allegro
The Cleveland Orchestra - George Szell

2. Bach: Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1004 (arr. Johannes Brahms)
V.Chaconne

3. Brahms: Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Andante, un poco adagio
III. Scherzo (Allegro) - Trio
IV. Finale (Poco sostenuto) - Allegro non troppo - (Presto, non troppo)
Juilliard String Quartet

4. Schubert: Sonata for Piano in B-flat Major, Op. post. (D. 960)
I. Molto moderato

5. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503
III. Allegretto
The Cleveland Orchestra - George Szell

6. Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
I. Maestoso
The Cleveland Orchestra - George Szell

7. Grieg: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16
II. Adagio
The Cleveland Orchestra - George Szell

8. Korngold: Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano Left Hand, Op. 23
III. Groteske. Möglich rasch
Jaime Laredo, violin - Joseph Silverstein, violin - Yo-Yo Ma, cello

9. Ravel: Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major
Boston Symphony Orchestra - Seiji Ozawa

10. Ravel: Alborada del gracioso

11. Bach: Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti Sing Favorites Songs & Carols
From Around The World In Their First Holiday Concert,
Recorded And Filmed Live in Vienna

The Three Tenors "Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti" celebrate the holiday season on this Sony Classical release The Three Tenors Christmas, capturing a festive concert performance in Vienna's Konzerthaus recorded and filmed live. The Three Tenors Christmas features music that the Three Tenors have never-before recorded together in their first album of Christmas music. The three superstar singers share the spotlight here, as in their legendary stadium concerts, singing favorite songs and carols from around the world, with Steven Mercurio conducting the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen. The Three Tenors Christmas is available on CD and DVD. The program was recorded in Surround Sound, and the DVD features Dolby Digital 5.1 Discrete Surround Sound.

Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti, opera's three most famous singers, as a trio have enjoyed the most phenomenal success in the history of classical music over the past decade. The Three Tenors concerts have enjoyed a popularity that transcends musical genres, particularly with their concerts celebrating each of the World Cup Soccer finals in the summers of 1990 in Rome, 1994 in Los Angeles and 1998 in Paris. Recordings and videos of each of these concerts have sold in the millions internationally, inspiring annual tours by the Three Tenors to stadium venues all over the world. The Three Tenors Christmas is the first time these singers have come together to sing holiday music.

The tenors are heard together in a wide array of seasonal favorites. They include 'O Tannenbaum,' 'White Christmas,' 'Amazing Grace,' 'Silent Night,' 'Dormi O Bambino,' 'Susani,' 'I'll Be Home for Christmas,' 'Sleigh Ride,' 'Winter Wonderland,' 'La Virgen Lava Panales' and 'Feliz Navidad.' The three also sing arrangements of lullabies by Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 'Happy Christmas/War Is Over,' and a song Pavarotti wrote with Vittoriano Benvenuti entitled 'Ave Maria, Dolce Maria.'

Domingo and Pavarotti share the stage in 'O Holy Night,' Carreras and Pavarotti are heard in 'Adeste Fideles,' and Carreras and Domingo sing together in 'Carol of the Drum.' Pavarotti alone sings 'Tu Scendi dalle Stelle,' Domingo sings 'Un Nuevo Siglo (written by his son Placido Domingo Jr.), and Carreras is heard in 'Pregarna (El Can de L'Anima a La Verge).'

The Three Tenors Christmas is scheduled for broadcast on public TV stations around the U.S. (check local listings) during the holiday season.

“The Glenn Gould Trilogy “, a unique radio play 'composed' by Michael Stegemann,
provides on 3 CD's a unique insight into the life, music and thoughts of Glenn Gould, the brilliant pianist who would have turned 75 on 25th September 2007.

Berlin/London, July 2007: The Canadian musician Glenn Gould (25th September 1932 – 4th October 1982 in Toronto, Canada) was without any doubt one of the leading pianists of all time. Even today, the unconventional interpretations and eccentric personality of the "James Dean of the piano" continue to exude an unbroken fascination.
In good time for Glenn's 75th birthday on 25th September and the 25th anniversary of his death on 4th October, Sony Classical will be releasing a special 3-CD box on 4th September 2007 to mark this double jubilee: "The Glenn Gould Trilogy – A Life" is a fascinating journey through the life, the music and the thoughts of Glenn Gould. Radio play, biography, talking book, music and original spoken commentaries are blended on the three CD's to create an enthralling portrait, as unusual and gripping as the charismatic and eccentric artist himself.

"The Glenn Gould Trilogy" was designed by Gould biographer Michael Stegemann, with Gould's own Solitude Trilogy serving as the source of inspiration. For Gould was not only a brilliant musician, he was also a visionary radio and media pioneer: his idea of 'contrapunctal radio' and the Solitude Trilogy that he created, based on this idea, for CBC between 1967 and 1977 served as the basis for Stegemann's work. Gould's Solitude Trilogy consists of three revolutionary radio plays, which Gould himself called 'docudramas', about life in northern Canada (The Idea of North, The Latecomers and The Quiet in the Land). Not dissimilar to a Baroque fugue, each of the three parts of the Solitude Trilogy is composed as a collage of overlapping texts (spoken by different narrators), sounds and noises that complement each other in terms of content. CD 1: The Idea of Music takes us up to Gould's first recording of Bachs Goldbergvariations for the CBC in 1954. CD 2: The Drop-Out describes his legendary record début with Bach's Goldberg Variations (1955) and follows the years when he gave regular recitals until the 'concert drop-out' in 1964, when he retired from the concert platform completely, while CD 3: The Quiet in the Studio is devoted to the years up to his death, years when Gould only communicated with his public through the media of records, radio and television.

The Glenn Gould Trilogy – A Life was produced jointly by West German Radio (WDR/Cologne), Studio Akustische Kunst (editor: Markus Heuger) and SonyClassical/SonyBMG in studio sessions that stretched over several months. A English language version was made, and a separate German one for the German-speaking market. For the narrators of the English version, we were fortunate enough to engage the services of Tom Zahner and Leslie Malton among others.
The Glenn Gould Trilogy is one of the few radio plays designed not only to yield stereo, but also surround sound, thus enabling the special character of this collage-like composition to be enjoyed to even more realistic effect.
The CD's will therefore be released in the Hybrid Super Audio CD format, which, in combination with a Super Audio compatible CD player and equipment able to reproduce surround sound, enables the listener to enjoy a fascinating, multidimensional experience. But the CD's can also be played in stereo on any normal CD player.

The Glenn Gould Trilogy takes us on a trip into the life and mind of a charismatic and shrewd eccentric who anticipated the potential, and also the limitations and dangers, of total media networking as scarcely any other musician of his time did. Glenn Gould was always in search of a perfect interpretation. A unique genius, enduringly controversial and ever eager to argue his point, he remains unsurpassed to this day.

Available for purchase on Amazon and Sony Music Store

“Destined to become a classic.  Aside from the transcendent beauty of the work, this piece has already demonstrated its power to unite people.”  -Liam Neeson

After decades of sectarian conflict and bloodshed, Protestants and Catholics recently came together for a special evening in Dublin, Ireland to celebrate what unites them: The Birth of Christ.  Hosted and narrated by Liam Neeson, Andrew T Miller’s The Birth of Christ (SONY BMG Masterworks 2007) musically brings the Gospel of Luke to life, and revivifies the passion, unity, and peace found in the Nativity story.  Miller commented “I hope that people realize that grace and peace often come in unexpected ways, to places overlooked and ignored.”  This historic world premiere of The Birth of Christ reunited the very same Protestant Choirs of the Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedrals that Handel used to unveil his “Messiah” in 1742, along with St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral Choir, a Catholic ensemble.

“The Catholic and Protestant singers involved in this project put aside their differences for “One Blessed Night” and raised their voices in unison around the central mystery of their faith,” Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace) said.  If you listen closely, you will not only hear their unity, but experience the inspiring peace it generated.

Accompanied by a full orchestra in Europe’s revered Christ Church Cathedral, The Birth of Christ is a contemporary classical piece scheduled to air on Public Television, nation-wide, throughout the 2007 Christmas Season.  The CD and DVD will be available from Sony BMG Masterworks on November 6th.

Composer, Andrew T. Miller, a Seattle native, said, “I was determined to premiere this work abroad to underscore the universality of the Christmas story, and the power of music to overcome strife and conflict.”

“The birth of a tiny Child in a Bethlehem manger has fascinated mankind for centuries.  In this dramatic cantata Miller and his accomplished soloists take us back to the first century,” said Raymond Arroyo, Executive Producer of The Birth of Christ and host and creator of EWTN’s international news magazine The World Over Live.  “Each of the characters are faced with a choice, a personal choice to obey the call of God or to reject it.  These are choices that we all face each day.”

Tony Award Winner and Broadway legend, Betty Buckley, has been named the first female artist signed to Playbill Records, a join-venture partnership with SONY BMG Masterworks Broadway.  Buckley’s first CD as a newly signed artist to Playbill is entitled Betty Buckley 1967 and will be released on October 16th, 2007.  This will mark Playbill Records’ second studio-album release, following its successful, label-launching record, the self-titled Brian Stokes Mitchell.  Buckley’s second album for the label, Quintessence, is slated to release on Valentine’s Day 2008.

To purchase visit:  








TOUR DATES:

Saturday, October 20
Town Hall
NYC

Friday, November 9 & Saturday, November 10
Mulroy Civic Center Theatre at Oncenter
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY

Friday, December 28
The Lensie Performing Arts Center
Santa Fe, NM


December 31, January 3, 4, 5
The Royal Room at the Colony Hotel
Palm Beach, FL

Visit Betty Buckley online at www.bettybuckley.com !

Tony Award Winner and Broadway legend, Betty Buckley, has been named the first female artist signed to Playbill Records, a join-venture partnership with SONY BMG Masterworks Broadway.  Buckley’s first CD as a newly signed artist to Playbill is entitled Betty Buckley 1967 and will be released on October 16th, 2007.  This will mark Playbill Records’ second studio-album release, following its successful, label-launching record, the self-titled Brian Stokes Mitchell.  Buckley’s second album for the label, Quintessence, is slated to release on Valentine’s Day 2008.

Betty Buckley 1967 features this artist’s unique vocal talents at the ripe age of 19, in her very first professional recording and reveals a voice whose beauty is second to none.  From the moment the recording begins, one can’t help being uplifted by the joyous sounds of a young woman who was primed to become one of the Great White Way’s most impressive talents of a generation. 

This never-before-released recording showcases Buckley in an enormous array and range of songs including a refreshingly upbeat rendition of Bye, Bye Birdie’s One Boy, the classic Gershwin number They Can’t Take That Away From Me, a free-spirited Call Me, and the simplicity of Buckley and a piano in Where is Love?  The album was originally recorded and engineered by T Bone Burnett. 

“It is truly remarkable to finally see this album be released after forty years.  To listen to this recording, I remember a girl who loved to sing for the pure joy of it,” said Betty Buckley.

Philip S. Birsh, President and Publisher of Playbill and Playbill Records President, stated “Betty is an astounding talent.  I have seen her perform in theatres filled to capacity and in the intimacy of a recording studio.  No matter the setting, the reaction is always the same; those present are moved and mesmerized by the sheer beauty of her voice.”

Richard Jay-Alexander, Executive Producer of Playbill Records, echoes those same sentiments and adds, “I’m so happy we found a queen for our king at Playbill Records.”

Buckley herself is stunned by the release of this album after four decades.  However, this album proves that the music and talent featured in “1967” is just as timeless and significant as the person who sang them.

Because Buckley never got to see her first album actually become a record, Playbill is pressing special, limited-edition 12-inch vinyl LPs of “1967” to commemorate the release.  This special collector’s item will be available only through PlaybillStore.com

2007 continues to be a landmark year for Buckley.  She recently began filming the highly anticipated, newest film from director M. Night Shyamalan entitled “The Happening”.  She will make her debut at New York’s Town Hall in a special one-night-only performance on October 20th, 2007.  Buckley’s second release on Playbill Records, Quintessence, celebrates Buckley's 17-year working relationship with musical director and pianist Kenny Werner. Backed by a quintet of musicians, Buckley offers original renditions of Amelia, I've Grown Accustomed to His Face, Cry Me a River, No One Is Alone and So Many Stars.

Before landing her first Broadway role on her very first audition, before Cats made her a household name, before it all, there was 1967.  This album is simply the prelude to a brilliant and unmatched career.

About Playbill Records: Playbill, the internationally recognized and authoritative publication for theatre, music and the performing arts expanded the reach of its famous yellow and black trademark logo with this newly minted record label in the summer of 2006.  Since then, the label has produced a successful, original album and has expanded its trusted “Editors Choice” rating system for a new series of Broadway themed discs culled from the best archival original cast recordings ever produced.  The first of its kind entitled “Scene Stealers” was released on April 1st, 2007, and features a 22-year old Buckley in her first role on Broadway in the show 1776. 

The 5 Browns were recently featured on CBS Saturday Morning Early Show.

If you missed this appearance, you can view it now!

Share this with friends and pick up The 5 Browns new release, BROWNS IN BLUE, at any local retailer or online!

Eldar recently performed on CW11 Morning News and we have video of his performance. Check it out!

Joshua Bell
*****

Corigliano: The Red Violin Concerto; Sonata for Violin and Piano Jeremy Denk, piano; Marin Alsop conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (Sony Classical)

There are plenty of reasons to pay attention to this new recording of the concerto John Corigliano based on his popular film score for The Red Violin. You have the Hollywood angle, of course, as well as the presence of celebrity busker Joshua Bell, and the friction that attended Marin Alsop’s arrival as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. But still more persuasive is a subtler bit of background. The composer’s father, also named John Corigliano, was for many seasons the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. The Red Violin Concerto is the younger Corigliano’s attempt to write a piece that would please a musician who played all the great traditional concertos in his day.
That being the case, Bell is the right player for the job. Corigliano’s cinematic opus calls for an entire catalog of string techniques, orthodox and otherwise; Bell makes it all sound effortless and natural. He performs thrilling athletic feats, yet also commands the extraordinary sweetness needed in the concerto’s sumptuous andante. Alsop steers with a firm hand, and the orchestra—heard here in a live recording—sounds spectacular, boding well for this relationship.

Read all about it at The Rest Is Noise

Three-time Oscar® winning composer Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) re-teams with long-time collaborator David Cronenberg on the new thriller Eastern Promises.  Sony Classical will release Shore’s score for Eastern Promises – featuring classical music superstar violinist Nicola Benedetti and the London Philharmonic – on September 11, 2007.  Focus Features world-premiered the film at the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday, September 6, 2007.  It opens wide on Friday, September 21, 2007.

Eastern Promises’ score has already received rave reviews.  According to Variety, “Howard Shore's score contributes mightily to the sense of intrigue and mystery.”

The score to Eastern Promises marks Howard Shore’s twelfth feature film with David Cronenberg. Their works together includes The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers (for which Shore won a Genie Award), Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, Crash, eXistenZ, the short Camera, Spider and A History of Violence.

Eastern Promises follows the mysterious and charismatic Russian-born Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen), a driver for one of London’s most notorious Eastern European organized crime families, the Vory V Zakone. Nikolai’s carefully maintained existence is jarred once he crosses paths with Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), an innocent midwife trying to right a wrong, who accidentally uncovers potential evidence against the family, which ultimately unleashes the wrath of the Vory.  Now several lives – including Nikolai’s – hang in the balance as a harrowing chain of murder, deceit, and vengeance reverberates through the darkest corners of both the family and London itself.

“With Eastern Promises we enter the world of the Vory V Zakone, the Russian mafia.  Our inspiration was derived from Russian folk music, the tattoo art of the Vory and the story of a young Russian girl entrapped by the Russian underworld in London”, says Shore.  “As I set out to write, the violin became a predominant voice.  I met violinist Nicola Benedetti in London and found her incredible contribution added depth, richness and beauty to the recording.”

Shore is among the most respected film composers at work today. For his work on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, he won three Academy Awards®, four Grammy® Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. He received his third Golden Globe Award for his score of Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. Shore has earned the ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards Henry Mancini Award; the National Board of Review’s Career Achievement Award; the Hollywood Film Festival’s Outstanding Achievement in Music in Film award; and, twice, the Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy & Horror Films Saturn Award, among other honors.
 His many film scores include the ones for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, Gangs of New York and After Hours; Tim Burton’s Ed Wood; Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia; David Fincher’s Panic Room, The Game, and Se7en; Penny Marshall’s Big; and Chris Columbus’s Mrs. Doubtfire. In addition to his film projects, Mr. Shore is currently writing The Fly, an opera commissioned by Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and Los Angeles Opera, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang and David Cronenberg to direct.

The original motion picture soundtrack of Eastern Promises is featured on www.focusfeatures.com.

EDGAR MEYER, MASTER OF THE DOUBLE BASS,
RELEASES ‘BEST OF’ COMPILATION ALBUM

In recent years, Edgar Meyer – called “the best bassist alive” by San Diego Magazine – has built an extensive catalogue of recordings for the Sony Classical label as a virtuoso performer and innovative composer. His new album, which is scheduled for release on September 4, brings together many of his favorite selections from those earlier albums, including solo, duo and group performances mingling elements of classical, pop, country and folk music.

The Best of Edgar Meyer includes tracks that will be featured prominently in Ken Burns’s epic documentary series on World War II. Having won international acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival last spring, The War will premiere September 23, 2007 on PBS.

Meyer began studying bass at the age of five. Throughout a lifetime of performing and composing, he has turned the double bass – an instrument with, as The New Yorker once put it, a “relatively unchronicled history” – into a modern virtuoso instrument that is equally at home in classical music and in the American vernacular. In 1994, Meyer became the first bassist to win the Avery Fisher Career Grant. He is also a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Award and three Grammy Awards.

Meyer says that “music is a common language with many different dialects.” Melody and rhythm “are fundamental, crossing all lines and creating a spectrum, not a bunch of little boxes.” Accordingly, Meyer has appeared as a guest performer on recordings by a wide range of musicians, including Garth Brooks, Mary Chapin Carpenter, James Taylor, Lyle Lovett, the Indigo Girls, the Chieftains, and others.

In turn, the guest artists convened on The Best of Edgar Meyer are some of the most talented and successful classical, country, bluegrass, and folk musicians performing today. These include virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell; banjo master Bela Fleck; Yo-Yo Ma, one of the world’s leading cellists; Mike Marshall, a mandolin and acoustic guitar virtuoso with a deep bluegrass background; and Mark O’Connor, an award-winning Nashville composer-violinist.

The new recording includes 14 tracks, all of which feature Meyer’s expressive, highly personal style and unparalleled bowing technique on double bass:
•    The Green Groves of Erin /The Flowers of Red Hill (arranged by Edgar Meyer), with violinist Mark O’Connor and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, from the album Appalachia Waltz;
•    Sliding Down (Edgar Meyer), with Bela Fleck on banjo and Mike Marshall on mandolin, from the album Uncommon Ritual;
•    Two tracks from the album Edgar Meyer – Please Don’t Feed the Bear and Early Morning (Edgar Meyer),  featuring Meyer playing various instruments;
•    Two tracks with Joshua Bell on violin  – Concert Duo, The Prequel and Concert Duo, Movement 1, from Short Trip Home, a genre-shattering album that seamlessly interweaves elements of bluegrass, folk, rock, blues and classical music, with many of the pieces composed by Meyer;
•    Uncommon Ritual (Edgar Meyer) with Bela Fleck on banjo and Mike Marshall on mandolin, from the album with the same title;
•    Pile-up (Edgar Meyer), with Bela Fleck on banjo, from Music for Two, an album of the best live performances from the critically acclaimed duo tour;
•    Duet for Cello and Bass (Edgar Meyer), with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, from Appalachian Journey;
•    Spanish Romantic composer Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, with Mike Marshall on mandolin, from Uncommon Ritual;
•    By the River (Edgar Meyer), with Bela Fleck on guitar and Mike Marshall on mandolin, from Uncommon Ritual;
•    Movement III (quarter note = 190) from Concerto in D for Double Bass and Orchestra (Meyer), with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hugh Wolff.
•    Prelude from Suite for Solo Cello No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011 & Gigue from Suite for Solo Cello No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011 (Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites – Performed on Double Bass)

World-renowned actor Patrick Stewart and Grammy®-winning pianist Emanuel Ax join their considerable talents on this tour-de-force recording of Richard Strauss's melodrama Enoch Arden. 
 
Patrick Stewart, narrator
Emanuel Ax, piano
Preview selections from this release by viewing our mediaplayer!
 
Richard Strauss: Enoch Arden – A melodrama for piano and speaker after Alfred Lord Tennyson
 
Based on the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem of love and sacrifice, Enoch Arden tells the tale of a young Scottish sailor who leaves his family to make his name in the treacherous seas of the East.  Ten years pass, and passions and fortunes change as with the tide, and the long-lost and battered Arden returns to a very different home than he left behind.
 
This release also features Emanuel Ax's performance of Strauss' Five Piano Pieces for solo piano, Op. 3
 
Click here to access our digital booklet for this release. 

The 5 Browns -- Ryan, Melody, Gregory, Deondra and Desirae -- are back with Browns In Blue, an all-new album of romantic and jazz-inspired piano music drawn from a wide variety of sources and performed with the sublime virtuosity that propelled these brothers and sisters to the top of the nation's classical music charts with two previous albums: The 5 Browns (8 weeks at #1 on the 2005 Billboard Classical Chart and No Boundaries (21 weeks at #1-2006).  One of the year's most eagerly-awaited classical releases, Browns In Blue will be available October 2.

With Browns In Blue, The 5 Browns extend their individual and collective mastery of the piano and their command of classical repertoire through a series of emotionally complex interpretations of works ranging from the romantic tonalities of Rachmaninoff (Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,18th Variation), Chopin (Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48), Debussy (Clair de lune), and Saint-Saëns (Carnival of the Animals: “The Swan” and “Aquarium,” featuring violin virtuoso Gil Shaham) to the jazz-influenced contemporary masterpieces of Gershwin (“Embraceable You” and  from An American In Paris “Home Blues”) with special guest performance by trumpeter Chris Botti) and W.C. Handy (“Aunt Hagar's Blues”) to the fiery dynamics of Piazzolla (Tango) and the brooding smoldering passion of Brahms (Intermezzo, Op. 118 No. 2).  Included as a special bonus track is the newly recorded “Everybody Loves Somebody” featuring the vocals of Dean Martin.

The 5 Browns round out Browns In Blue with the newly-commissioned five-piano piece, John Novacek's folk-inspired Reflections on Shenandoah.

Browns In Blue finds The 5 Browns moving beyond No Boundaries as the gifted young pianists uncover the pure and vital emotional melancholy of the “blue” moods, inherent in a wide variety of classical and classically-based music.

Whether performing individually or together in various combinations from duo to complex five-piano arrangements, The 5 Browns reveal a deep connection to their material while bringing a fresh energy and presentation of the music to their audiences.  Their goal is a simple one: to share their love of classical music with people everywhere—and especially younger audiences who have never been exposed to classical music.

The 5 Browns caught their first wave of critical attention in February 2002 when People magazine dubbed them the “Fab Five” and recognized them as the first quintet of siblings to study simultaneously as the prestigious Juilliard School.  Around the same time, and before they actually had a record deal, they were becoming a sensation with 60 Minutes and the Oprah television shows featuring their unique virtuosity.

Their popular and critical success grew with the release of their debut album, The 5 Browns, in 2005.  “One family, five pianos and 50 fingers add up to the biggest classical music sensation in years,” proclaimed the New York Post, promising that “When these kids do Rachmaninoff, they'll make you forget about Marshall amps.” 

Playing in schools and civic auditoriums, as well as at traditional concert venues, Utah's 5 Browns became an all-American story with broadcast appearances on many television shows.  They were just as likely to be seen on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The View as Public Radio's highly rated classical show, Performance Today. The quintet garnered extensive print coverage across the board--from The New York Times, to USA Weekend,  from Billboard, to The Sunday London Telegraph, The LA Times and Entertainment Weekly who hailed them as  “… five young Mormons who all play scorching piano.  Thundering down on five Steinways together, they're button-down cute and somewhat otherworldly.”

Their next release, 2006's No Boundaries, solidified the quintet's reputation as the new champions of classical music, spending 20 consecutive weeks as the nation's #1 classical album which garnered invitations from Entertainment Tonight and The Martha Stewart Show.

Steinway Artists since February 2005, the 5 Browns have performed across 50 states as well as the music capitals of Europe and Asia.

“Send them out to schools from shore to shore, with piano teachers on hand to sign up students afterward and the future of classical music will look a lot brighter,” wrote the Dallas Morning News:  “The 5 Browns proved that classical music can reach teens and twenty-somethings on their own ground, but without posturing or cheapening the product.”

Masterworks Broadway is set to release the 2007 Broadway Cast Recording of America’s ever-popular musical GREASE™. Directed and choreographed by two-time Tony® Award-winner Kathleen Marshall the newest production stars Max Crumm and Laura Osnes, the winners of the hit nationally televised talent competition “Grease: You’re The One That I Want,” as Danny and Sandy. Produced by David Lai, the CD will be recorded at New York’s Legacy Studios on August 16th before the show officially opens on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (256 West 47th Street) on August 19, 2007. The CD will be available nationwide on October 2, 2007.

After 12 weeks of nationally televised auditions, 90 million viewers and millions of votes, Laura Osnes and Max Crumm are the ones that America wants to play the iconic roles of “Sandy” and “Danny” in the new Broadway production of GREASE™. The two winners were announced during the live finale episode of the NBC talent competition series “Grease: You’re The One That I Want” on Sunday, March 25, 2007.

Paul Nicholas and David Ian, Nederlander Presentations, Inc. and Terry Allen Kramer by arrangement with Robert Stigwood present a new Broadway production of the quintessential all-American musical GREASE™, directed and choreographed by two-time Tony® Award-winner Kathleen Marshall (The Pajama Game). Featuring book, music and lyrics by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, GREASE™ is a rock n’ roll high school musical celebration of growin’ up, cruisin’ with friends and goin’ steady. The new production will feature songs from the smash hit 1978 motion picture for the first time ever on Broadway including “Sandy,” the Academy Award®-nominated song “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” “Grease” and “You’re the One That I Want,” both of which were #1 hits on the Billboard Top 100. These songs will be heard in addition to the Jacobs/Casey songs made famous by the original Broadway stage production including “Summer Nights,” “Greased Lightnin’” and “We Go Together.” (Complete CD track list on following pages.)


Joining Max Crumm as “Danny” and Laura Osnes as “Sandy” are Ryan Patrick Binder as “Doody,” Susan Blommaert as “Miss Lynch,” Jeb Brown as “Vince,” Stephen R. Buntrock as “Teen Angel,” Daniel Everidge as “Roger,” Allison Fischer as “Patty,” Robyn Hurder as “Marty,” Lindsay Mendez as “Jan,” Jenny Powers as “Rizzo,” Jose Restrepo as “Sonny,” Matthew Saldivar as “Kenickie,” Jamison Scott as “Eugene” and Kirsten Wyatt as “Frenchy.” The ensemble of GREASE™ will feature Josh Franklin, Cody Green, Natalie Hill (“Cha-Cha”), Matthew Hydzik, Emily Padgett, Keven Quillon, Brian Sears, Christina Sivrich, Amber Stone and Anna Aimee White.

The new production of GREASE™ features scenic design by Tony® Award-nominee Derek McLane (The Pajama Game), costume design by two-time Tony® Award-winner Martin Pakledinaz (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Kiss Me Kate), lighting design by Tony® Award-winner Kenneth Posner (The Coast of Utopia, Wicked) and sound design by Brian Ronan (Spring Awakening, Curtains).

GREASE™ originated in Chicago and made its premiere at The Kingston Mines Theater in 1971 before making its New York premiere off-Broadway at the Eden Theatre on February 14, 1972. After 128 sold-out performances, the show made the transition to Broadway taking up residence at the Broadhurst Theatre on June 7, 1972. GREASE™ was nominated for seven Tony® Awards in its spectacular initial run. On November 21, 1972, the show moved to the Royale Theatre before making its final transfer on January 20, 1980 to the Majestic Theatre. It closed as the longest running show in Broadway history after playing 3,388 performances. In 1978, GREASE™ became a hugely popular feature film starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in the lead roles. A Broadway revival opened on May 11, 1994 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre where it played 1,503 performances and earned three Tony® Award nominations. A London revival opened on July 15, 1993 at the Dominion Theatre and ran for 6 years on London’s West End and is still touring the UK today. A West End revival opened at the Piccadilly Theatre on August 8, 2007.

The film version of GREASE™ produced one of the best-selling soundtracks in history and is the highest-grossing movie musical of all time. The two Travolta/Newton-John duets, "You're The One That I Want" and "Summer Nights" were both #1 hits and appear on the UK’s All-Time Best-Selling Singles list. The song "Hopelessly Devoted to You" was nominated for an Academy Award® (1979) for Best Music - Original Song and the film's title song, “Grease” was a #1 smash hit single for singer Frankie Valli.

NBC premiered “Grease: You’re The One That I Want” on Sunday, January 7, 2007. The show featured thousands of hopefuls auditioning for the chance of a lifetime -- a starring role in a Broadway show. On-air judges Kathleen Marshall, producer David Ian and GREASE™ co-creator Jim Jacobs, narrowed down the field of contestants and then left the vote in America’s hands. Each week a new “Sandy” and “Danny” was voted off until America chose their favorite pair to star in the new Broadway production. Hosted by Billy Bush (“Access Hollywood”) and Denise van Outen, “Grease: You’re The One That I Want” was produced by BBC Worldwide Productions. The BBC's Paul Telegdy, Emmy nominated Conrad Green ("Dancing with the Stars") and David Ian served as Executive Producers.

For more information, visit www.greaseonbroadway.com

Available for purchase at the Sony Music Store

Nathan Gunn's first album with Sony/BMG, Just Before Sunrise, will be available August 7th.  Fans are eagerly awaiting the release of Just Before Sunrise, a beautiful group of songs by America's best songwriters for your important quiet times.

As Gunn reveals in the recording’s liner notes, it is this “in-between time” before sunrise that he sought to capture musically. The songs included here are also a direct expression of his own personality-a kind of musical autobiography. “I think you have to have a certain amount of experience behind you before you go off in this direction,” says Gunn. “This is like the kind of recording that singers made in the 1920s-lovely, well-crafted songs written by composers who were still alive. I wanted songs you could listen to in the context of modern life-songs that you could listen to while you’re commuting to work and that you could finish listening to at the end of the day, while you’re lying in bed.” Songs, in other words, for life’s quietest moments.

A broad spectrum of gifted contemporary composers is represented on Just Before Sunrise. In addition to the title song, Gunn has selected two other works by his close friend Gene Scheer: “Say Anything,” and “Jam Tart,” a gently comic number based on one of Gunn’s favorite poems by W.H. Auden.

Ben Moore, a rising composer whose works have also been championed by Deborah Voigt and Susan Graham, is represented on Just Before Sunrise with three songs: “In the Dark Pine Wood” and “This Heart That Flutters” (both to texts by James Joyce) and “When You are Old and Gray” (set to the classic poem by W.B. Yeats).

Gunn has long been an admirer of Tom Waits, whose jazz-and-blues inflected music defies easy categorization. Here Gunn lends his sensitive touch to two Waits numbers: the jaunty “Innocent When You Dream” and the moving ballad “The Briar and the Rose,” from The Black Rider, Waits’ avant-garde riff on Weber’s Der Freischütz.

Gunn is also drawn to the music of John Bucchino, whose songs have become widely known through the performances of pop stars such as Barbara Cook, Andrea Marcovicci, and Patti LuPone. Just Before Sunrise gives Gunn a chance to do his own, original take on Bucchino’s best-known song, “It Feels Like Home.” He is joined on this selection by one of Broadway’s biggest stars, Tony winner Kristin Chenoweth, who has won acclaim for her performances of Bucchino’s songs.
“It Feels Like Home” is usually performed as a melancholy ballad, but Gunn and Chenoweth have given it a gently upbeat flavor. “We wanted it to have a feeling of liberation,” says Gunn. “It’s like when you move to New York, and everyone says, ‘Don’t do it.’ You get a crummy apartment with no furniture in a bad neighborhood-but somehow, to you, it feels right.”
 
Among the other selections on Just Before Sunrise are Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes,” Joe Thalken’s “Time” and “I Have Loved Hours at Sea,” Sting’s “Secret Marriage,” which features Eldar, the twenty-year-old jazz piano sensation (a SONY BMG Masterworks exclusive artist) who has invited comparisons with jazz legends as Art Tatum. Also included is Jimmy Van Heusen’s quirky World War II classic, “Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” which Gunn has included as a tribute to his wife and frequent collaborator, pianist Julie Jordan.

Nathan will give a sneak peek at the title song of his new album, Just before Sunrise, on Good Morning America on
ABC on July 31st. Stay tuned for more updates and news!

In case you missed it you can download and view his performance here.

NEW YORK (Billboard) -

Twenty-eight-year-old violinist Lisa Batiashvili, who is quickly emerging as one of the most vibrant talents of her generation, is among the first signings for Sony BMG Masterworks' new international division.

The Munich-based Batiashvili was born and raised primarily in the formerly Soviet nation of Georgia, a struggling country that became embroiled in a bloody civil war during her adolescence. She first came to international attention when she was just 16, after winning second prize in the highly prestigious International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition, which takes place in Helsinki every five years. (Batiashvili was the youngest prize winner in the event's history.)

Since then, she has been invited around the world to perform with such orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Netherlands' Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Batiashvili's first recording for Sony BMG Masterworks is slated for release in September on the Sony Classical imprint. Accompanying the violinist on the record is the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oromo. The album includes one piece of very standard repertoire -- the Sibelius Violin Concerto -- and one new work, 49-year-old Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg's Violin Concerto.

Batiashvili has a special connection to Lindberg's concerto: She gave this technically grueling work its world premiere last summer at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart festival, in an exhilarating performance conducted by Louis Langree.
The label reports that Batiashvili's future recording projects will include the Beethoven violin concerto and a new piece written by fellow Georgian Giya Kancheli.

Batiashvili's debut recording was made in 2001 for EMI's "Debut" series (which highlights notable musicians just beginning on their professional path) and included Brahms' Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Op. 78; the Bach Solo Partita No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1002; and Schubert's "Rondo Brilliant" in B minor, D. 895.
Reuters/Billboard

"The greatest celebration of girl power since WICKED!"
- The Record

"It may be the most beautiful musical I've ever seen."
- The Toronto Star

"A stunning extravaganza!"
- WCBS-TV

"A swaggering tale of love & rivalry with frolicsome jigs and full-hearted anthems to the Irish soul."
- The New York Times

"A spectacular new musical adventure!"
- WABC-TV

One of the most lavish spectacles to open on Broadway this season is Alain Boublil & Claude-Michel Schönberg's THE PIRATE QUEEN. Commissioned and produced by Moya Doherty and John McColgan, the producers of Riverdance, THE PIRATE QUEEN combines classic storytelling with a sweeping score and joyous dancing to celebrate the real-life story of legendary Irish Chieftain Grace O'Malley: a compelling, inspiring heroine who led an extraordinary life as a pirate, chieftain, lover and mother in 16th-century Ireland. To protect her people and save her one true love, O'Malley must confront the one woman more powerful than her fierce rival, Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Happy Birthday Igor!

Join Masterworks in celebrating the 125th Anniversary of Igor Stravinsky birthday (June 17, 2007).

A New Recording of Stravinsky by Stravinsky
Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky on a Never-Before-Released Complete Recording of
The Soldier’s Tale


Igor Stravinsky, conductor
Jeremy Irons, narrator
The Columbia Chamber Ensemble

  

One of the greatest and most important composers of the last century, Igor Stravinsky was an exclusive recording artist on Columbia Masterworks. Now, in honor of the 125th anniversary of his birth, Sony BMG Masterworks is thrilled to announce an exciting new chapter to this recorded legacy with the release of a “new” complete version of Stravinsky conducting Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale (L’Histoire du Soldat).

Throughout the 1960s, Stravinsky re-recorded all of his works in stunning stereo productions for Columbia Masterworks. In 1967, he recorded the interludes and underscoring of The Soldier’s Tale to complete his 1961 recording of the suite. The 1967 masters were never released, and the components of the completed version lay forgotten in the vaults.

Now, 40 years later, one of the greatest compositions of the 20th century is available, as it should be heard, for the very first time. Edited by Grammy® Award-winning producers Steven Epstein and Simon Rhodes and Grammy® Award-winning engineer Richard King, this definitive release features a delicious new narration by Academy Award®-winning actor Jeremy Irons.

The extensive liner notes include a new essay by renowned Stravinsky scholar, Richard Taruskin, new interviews with Stravinsky’s producer, John McClure and the 1961 and 1967 session musicians, Executive Producer Warren Wernick’s account as to how the final “new” recording was realized, rare session photos and log sheets and more.

Introducing
STRAVINSKY@125
The new six-part podcast series from Sony BMG Masterworks.
Produced and hosted by Jackson Braider

Stravinsky@125 Podcast Series
A New Episdode Every Friday through July 20

The Tale of The Soldier’s Tale
Listen to the fascinating story of how the first complete version of Stravinsky conducting Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale came to be.

More Episodes Coming Soon
When Lenny Met Igor
Igor at Post 43
Toute Suite!
Short Stuff
Stravinsky’s Requiem

Sony BMG Masterworks is delighted to announce the  exclusive signing of uniquely acclaimed violinist Lisa Batiashvili. The Georgian born  Batiashvili has made a significant impact on the international concert  circuit, and will now develop a recording career to match her extraordinary  achievements on the concert platform. Her first Sony Classical release is a  recording of the Sibelius and Lindberg Violin Concertos with the Finnish Radio  Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo. Future projects include the  Beethoven Violin Concerto and a new work by Giya Kancheli.


Chris Craker,  General Manager and Senior Vice President of Sony BMG Masterworks' new  International Division said, "Naturally, we are all very excited to be working  with Lisa Batiashvili. She has just returned from sell-out concerts with the  New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the USA, where I was delighted to witness  standing ovations for her performances. Lisa is undoubtedly one of the most  inspired and gifted violinists on the platform today and, having just opened  our new International Repertoire Centre, this is a major new signing for us, a  truly wonderful start, and we look forward to great times  ahead".


Few young soloists command the degree of warmth and respect from  fellow musicians all over the world as does Batiashvili.  She has become  a  favourite  soloist of many of the world’s most celebrated  orchestras including the  Berlin Philharmonic,  New York  Philharmonic,  London Symphony Orchestra,  Boston Symphony  Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra,  LA Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle,  Orchestre de Paris,  Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Stockholm  Philharmonic and the Finnish Radio Symphony.  Batiashvili’s extensive  touring schedule ensures her continued command of classical music’s most  prestigious stages.  She is also delighted by her collaborations with  such illustrious conductors as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Charles Dutoit,  Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Paavo Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski,  Lorin Maazel,  Zubin Mehta, Sakari Oramo, Sir Simon Rattle, Yuri  Temirkanov, Osmo Vänska  and many more.


Batiashvili’s professional career began in 1995, when, at the age  of 16, she became the youngest competitor to ever be awarded second prize at  the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki.  In 2001, the BBC named her as one  of their “New Generation Artists”.  In the same year, BBC Music Magazine honored her as the "Outstanding Debut of the Year" at the BBC  Proms. In 2003 she won the Leonard Bernstein Award at the Schleswig-Holstein  Music Festival; and in 2007 the Beethoven Ring Prize from the Beethoven  Festival, Bonn. Now, in her mid-20s, she continues to make  an indelible impression on the international music scene with stunning  successes throughout Europe, North America, Australia and the Pacific-Rim  territories.

Lisa plays the  1709 Engleman Stradivarius  – kindly loaned by the Nippon Music  Foundation.

Available Now!

Check Out Itunes, Amazon, or Visit the Sony Music Store to purchase your copy today!

NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED TRACKS EDITED INTO STRAVINSKY’S 1961 STUDIO RECORDING OF THE SUITE FROM THE SOLDIER’S TALE CREATES A ‘NEW’ RECORDING OF THE ENTIRE WORK

Coupled With Stravinsky’s 1966 Recording
Of Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Conducted by Robert Craft

With the recent discovery in the Sony BMG Masterworks archives of immaculate, never-before-released stereo masters, composer Igor Stravinsky’s only stereo recording of his haunting musical fable The Soldier’s Tale is at last complete. This Sony Classical CD features newly recorded narration by Academy Award®-winning actor Jeremy Irons of a new English adaptation by writer Jeremy Sams of the original French text. The Soldier’s Tale will be released May 29, 2007 in time for the 125th anniversary of Stravinsky’s birth on June 17.

The basis for the new version of The Soldier’s Tale is Stravinsky’s 1961 studio recording, with the Columbia Chamber Ensemble, of the instrumental suite from the complete score. A theater piece for small instrumental ensemble, three actors (in speaking roles) and a dancer, premiered in France in 1918, the score is best known through Stravinsky’s streamlined instrumental suite. The disc also includes a bonus track of the 1966 recording of Stavinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, conducted by Robert Craft under the composer’s supervision.

Late in 2005 Sony Classical unearthed documentation relating to a long-forgotten recording session of the remainder of the complete score (including all the interludes and underscoring), which Stravinsky completed in 1967, though it was never released in any format. Both recordings, produced by John McClure, were products of a long and distinguished partnership between Columbia Masterworks (the forerunner of Sony Classical) and Stravinsky (1882-1971), in which the composer conducted or oversaw new stereo recordings of his entire musical catalogue.

Actor Jeremy Irons – who, it turned out, had actually performed the complete work live onstage in London in 2004 – agreed to record all of the spoken material, using Sams’ new adaptation of the original French text by C.F. Ramuz.

A team of experts in both the US and UK, including the Grammy®-winning producers Steven Epstein and Simon Rhodes and Grammy®-winning engineer Richard King, were able to take the diverse musical elements of Stravinsky’s recording of The Soldier’s Tale and seamlessly edit them together in a complete version, concluding a musical journey that began some 46 years earlier. The CD was remastered using Sony’s DSD (Direct Stream Digital) technology.

The package for Sony Classical’s newly realized The Soldier’s Tale includes a reproduction of the original cover art for the LP version of the recording of the suite. Extensive liner notes include an original critical essay by the musicologist Richard Taruskin, author of Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra, as well as new interviews with the musicians who played in the original Los Angeles studio sessions under Stravinsky, and an account of how the final “new” recording was realized.

SONY BMG Masterworks and Zenph Studios announce the release of a breakthrough in the history of recorded music. Zenph’s re-performance of pianist Glenn Gould’s renowned 1955 rendition of the Bach Goldberg Variations lets listeners hear this celebrated work like never before and provides for a sonic rediscovery of an iconic recording.

The Goldberg Variations by Gould is one of the jewels of the Masterworks catalogue, continuously in print for over half a century. Zenph’s new technique lets the performance be heard for the first time in state-of-the-art sound on a new SONY BMG Masterworks hybrid multichannel SACD/CD disc, which includes versions tailored for surround sound and headphone listening.

Zenph’s innovative re-performance process takes audio recordings and turns them into nuanced live performances that precisely replicate the original recording but offer vastly improved sound quality. Listeners are now able to go back to the moment of creation and experience Gould’s playing as if they were in the room when the original recording was made.

Re-performances replicate the original musician’s touch, timing and sound – including glitches in the original performance. "We've preserved every single note, including the mistakes,” said John Q. Walker, president of Zenph Studios. “The improvements are all related to the sound quality. This is something that needs to be heard to be fully appreciated.”

Zenph captures the musical nuances of the original piano recording’s every note, with details about the pedal actions, volume and articulations – all with millisecond timings. The digital data is transcribed into high-resolution MIDI files and played back on a state-of-the-art Yamaha Disklavier Pro™ concert grand piano. The process allows for the production of new recordings that transcend the limitations of the original recording process.

SONY BMG assembled its top producers and engineers for the Gould project, including Steven Epstein, five-time Grammy® Award winner for “Producer of the Year,” and Richard King, senior recording engineer for Sony Music Studios in New York and a three-time Grammy® winner.

Hailed worldwide, Zenph’s work was named one of the Best Ideas of 2006 by The New York Times Magazine. “The re-creations are uncanny,” wrote Paul D. Lehrman in Insider Audio magazine. “The timings and variations in the keystrokes are so subtle, it’s easy to imagine the pianist is in the room, his fingers pushing the keys down.”

Last year, at a live re-performance of the Goldberg Variations held at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, members of the Glenn Gould Foundation stood and applauded after the last note faded.

The Glenn Gould Foundation proudly announced the “Glenn Gould and The Future of Music Conference,” a landmark event to take place at The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa-Gatineau as part of the Year of Glenn Gould celebrations.  The three-day event beginning on September 27, 2007 includes complimentary access to the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s exhibition, “Glenn Gould: Sounds of Genius,” the dynamic interactive exhibition celebrating Glenn Gould’s remarkable life. The innovative multimedia exhibition, curated by Sam Cronk, includes sound documents, video extracts of interviews and performances, original radio programs and over 100 of Gould’s original artefacts.  In addition, two and a half days of symposiums; concerts; and John McGreevy’s dramatic musical presentation, “An Evening with Glenn Gould” starring Ted Dykstra at the National Arts Centre will round out the conference.

The Conference itself will bring together scholars from around the world along with business professionals and artists to discuss Gould’s prophetic ideas on technology and their relevance in today’s digital world.  Leading academics and artists such as Canada’s award-winning artists, Paul Hoffert and Glenn Morley; Japan’s leading Gould scholar, Junichi Miyazawa;  the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s music curator, Sam Cronk; Germany’s leading Gould scholar, Michael Stegemann; Carleton University’s professors James Wright and Paul Théberge; American Gould scholar and former head of Music at the National Archives, Timothy Maloney;  worldwide exhibition designer, Stefan Iglhaut and many of Gould’s colleagues and acquaintances have confirmed their participation.  Kevin Bazzana, the author of “Wondrous Strange – The Life and Art of Glenn Gould” and “Glenn Gould – The Performer in the Work” will act as an advisor for all sessions.  Keynote speakers and additional artists’ appearances will be announced shortly.

 
Other notable Year of Glenn Gould events include:

•    “An Evening With Glenn Gould” at Luminato, Toronto’s Festival of Arts (Jun 6 – Jun 10)
•    Glenn Gould Concert and Lecture Series at Stratford, ON (Jul 25 – Aug 19)
•    Official “Glenn Gould” day in Toronto (September 25)
•    Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau – Ottawa – Exhibition: Glenn Gould: Sounds of Genius Exhibition (September 28, 2007 – August 10, 2008)
•    Canada Post Commemorative Envelope (September, 2007)
•    Toronto Symphony Children’s Concert: Happy 75th Birthday, Glenn Gould (December 8, 2007)
•    National Arts Centre Orchestra, Boris Brott, Conductor: J.S. Bach Meets the Great Glenn Gould (February 9, 2008)
•    Announcement of the Glenn Gould Prize Winner (February 2008)

The Year of Glenn Gould will culminate with the presentation of the 8th Glenn Gould Prize and the Glenn Gould International Protégé Prize in Music in September 2008.

The Glenn Gould Prize is one of the most prestigious prizes in music.  Awarded every three years to an international luminary who has made an exceptional contribution to music and its communication to the public, the Prize Laureate is selected by an international jury of the world’s most accomplished musicians, journalists, scholars and music aficionados. In 1993, the Foundation expanded the Glenn Gould Prize to include the City of Toronto Glenn Gould International Protégé Prize in Music. The Protégé, selected by the Glenn Gould Prize Laureate, is an outstanding musical artist who has shown the promise in his/her career that was shown by the young Glenn Gould.

Previous Laureates include Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Yo Yo Ma, the late composer Toru Takemitsu, R. Murray Schafer, Oscar Peterson, Pierre Boulez and most recently, Sir André Previn.  Glenn Gould International Protégés have included Tan Dun, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Wu Man and jazz artist Benny Green.  The next Prize Committee, under the leadership of distinguished Canadian composer and performer Paul Hoffert, will begin the next nominating process during the summer of 2007.
Many other international and local events to celebrate the music and ideas of Glenn Gould are currently in development. Details on all these events and Glenn Gould and the Future of Music conference updates will be posted on the Glenn Gould Foundation’s web site, www.glenngould.ca as they become available.

About The Glenn Gould Foundation
The Glenn Gould Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to extend awareness of the legacy of Glenn Gould as an extraordinary musician and communicator, and to advance his innovative ideas into the future. For more information on the Foundation and to support its mission, please visit www.glenngould.ca.

Eldar, the young jazz piano phenomenon Billboard calls “astonishing” and the Washington Post hails as a “prodigious talent,” breaks new creative ground on re-imagination, his forward-looking third album for SONY BMG Masterworks, available on June 5.

On re-imagination Eldar fully explores his talent as a composer. His rapidly evolving personal style defines every aspect of the project, from the bold originality of his new songs to a fascinating, sophisticated take on a couple of classic jazz standards, collaborating with a few new friends who give the project a fresh and surprising sound.

Master turntablist DJ Logic brings a distinctive edge and texture to the music of re-imagination. Also joining Eldar for the recording are drummer Ali Jackson Jr. and Carlos Henriquez on acoustic bass – both acclaimed for their work in Wynton Marsalis’ quintet – as well as rising guitar star Mike Moreno.

The songs Eldar has created for re-imagination reflect people, places and events in the pianist’s life, which has already been an remarkable adventure at the age of twenty. Emigrating from Russia to the U.S. at age ten, Eldar has toured the world, recorded three albums, and performed at most major jazz festivals and prestigious jazz venues in the decade since. The New York Times praises his "prodigious technique,” and Jazziz marvels at his "encyclopedic knowledge, and endless imagination.”

The opening track on re-imagination – “I Remember When” – is “a song for my parents” says Eldar, adding, “Now and always, I will remember having two of the most wonderful parents one could hope to have.” “Prairie Village” recalls the time he spent in his first American hometown – “a little town … a suburb of Kansas City. It’s where I grew up from the age of ten, when I came to the United States, until I was sixteen. So many kind and special people. A wonderful place to grow up.” Also featured on the disc is the Oscar Peterson tune “Place St. Henri,” which Eldar includes as “a tribute to the first jazz pianist I embraced as a young kid. Oscar Peterson is the biggest influence on my approach to jazz piano.”

Eldar will tour U.S. tour this summer and fall, and will visit Europe and Russia before the year's end.

The 20-year-old has earned widespread recognition and praise for his talents: He was the youngest pianist ever to perform on Marian McPartland’s venerable NPR show Piano Jazz, and has appeared on national television, including CBS' Sunday Morning, Late Night With Conan O'Brien and the 2000 telecast of the Grammy Awards.


www.eldarjazz.com www.shorefire.com www.sonybmgmasterworks.com


Track Listing
(all songs by Eldar unless otherwise noted)
1. I Remember When
2. Interlude #1
3. Prairie Village
4. Out of Nowhere
5. Interlude #2
6. Back Home
7. Place St. Henri
8. Tears
9. South Bixel
10. Dream Song
11. Polaris  

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Grammy Award-winning violin virtuoso, newly-crowned winner of the coveted Avery Fisher Prize and Indiana University's favorite son Joshua Bell will return to his alma mater to join the faculty of the IU Jacobs School of Music, school officials announced May 3.

The 39-year-old native of Bloomington, Ind., will follow in the footsteps of his late mentor and longtime Jacobs School violin professor Josef Gingold and join the school as a senior lecturer in the String Department. Bell began studying the violin at the IU School of Music at age 8 and received an Artist Diploma in Violin Performance from IU in 1989. He will begin his involvement at the Jacobs School in 2008-2009 through two week-long residencies during which he will be involved in a variety of activities, including coaching ensembles, working with students both individually and in groups, and participating in performances, among other activities.

"I can think of no greater place than the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, to accept a faculty position," Bell said. "This continues an association that began back in 1980 when I first became a student of the legendary Josef Gingold, who had a profound impact on me as a musician and as a human being. I would only hope that I can impart even a fraction of his love of music and his wisdom to the students with whom I come in contact."

Bell is the latest addition to a long line of musical superstars who, in the last three years, have chosen to base their teaching careers in Bloomington. The list includes such luminaries as world-famous National Symphony Orchestra maestro Leonard Slatkin, pianists André Watts and Arnaldo Cohen, violinists Mark Kaplan, Alexander Kerr and Jaime Laredo, singers Carol Vaness, Sylvia McNair and Marietta Simpson, ballet master Michael Vernon, bassoonist William Ludwig and hornist Jeff Nelsen.

"Josh's decision to now develop an academic relationship with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music gives us enormous pleasure and further confirms what those individuals who have chosen to center their professional lives already know -- that this environment is truly special, world-class and fully prepared to lead future generations of musicians toward greatness," said Jacobs School Dean Gwyn Richards. "With Josh's roots so firmly planted here, and with the wealth of young musicians who gather here, Bloomington seems an ideal place for this association. We look forward to the collaborations that will result from this appointment to the string faculty."

The appointment of one of the world's greatest and most well-known classical musicians adds a powerful dimension to the school's String Department, which has bolstered its ranks with the recent arrivals of Kaplan, Kerr, Laredo, cellist Sharon Robinson and violist Yuval Gotlibovich. The department also has strengthened its position as a leader in string pedagogy for years to come. Bell, Gotlibovich and Kerr, the former concertmaster of the famed Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, are all under 40 years of age.

"Having Joshua Bell on campus to work, instruct and play with our string students is absolutely unique among all major U.S. music schools and conservatories," said String Department Chair Lawrence Hurst. "Here is a great artist with a career second to none, moving among our aspiring violinists, violists, cellists and bassists, not to mention all the other music students he will influence and touch while here. He is a terrific, musical resource for the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University and the state of Indiana."

Violinist Alex Kerr, the Linda and Jack Gill Chair in Music at the Jacobs School, has been a friend of Bell's and frequent collaborator for more than a decade. He said Bell's decision to join the faculty is a momentous one for the school, which he says is undergoing a "renaissance" and has become "the place to be" for many of the world's premier musicians.

"Josh is one of the most excellent performers on the stage today," Kerr said. "For students to have access to a performer of his caliber is unbelievable and almost unprecedented. It's very rare, in this day and age, for a musician of this magnitude to be giving back to students.

"It will be a really nice challenge for him," Kerr added, "and Josh is always searching for challenges. He's always taking risks. I think that Josh will find that these kids want to be inspired, and he'll also be inspired by them."

By now, Bell's story is well known. Born and raised in Bloomington, Ind., he began playing the violin at age four when his parents -- the late IU Professor Emeritus Alan P. Bell and Bloomington resident Shirley Bell -- bought him his first violin, after they noticed him plucking tunes on rubber bands that he had stretched around the handles of his dresser drawers. He began his studies with Mimi Zweig, director of IU's Summer String Academy for students ages 5-to-18. In true storybook fashion, Bell will join his first violin teacher on the String Department faculty.

"Having known Josh from his very early days as a talented violinist in the String Academy and then to see him expand into the amazing artist he has become, it is very exciting that he will be joining us," Zweig said. "Returning as one of the world's great violinists, his knowledge, wisdom and presence will be an inspiration to our students."

By age 12, Bell was a prodigious violin student of renowned violinist Josef Gingold, who taught at the Jacobs School for more than 30 years until his death in 1995. To this day Bell speaks fondly of his beloved teacher and mentor.

Bell first came to national attention at age 14 when he made his highly acclaimed orchestral debut with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra. A Carnegie Hall debut, the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and a recording contract further confirmed his unique presence in the music world.

Equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestra leader, Bell's career is exceptionally varied. He continues to perform regularly with the world's leading symphony orchestras and conductors. At the same time, his restless curiosity and multifaceted musical interests have taken him in exciting new directions, forging a unique career that has earned him the rare title of classical music superstar. In addition to his concert career, Bell enjoys chamber music collaborations with artists such as Pamela Frank, Steven Isserlis and Jacobs School alumnus Edgar Meyer, as well as occasional collaborations with artists outside the classical arena, including Josh Groban, Bobby McFerrin, Chick Corea and James Taylor. He also works regularly with pianist and Jacobs alumnus Jeremy Denk, who has garnered a reputation as one of the most inspiring collaborative pianists.

Bell made his first recording at age 18, and he already had an extensive catalog of classical recordings when he joined the Sony Classical roster in 1996, hoping to expand his horizons as a recording artist. The result has been a distinctive and wide-ranging body of work that has rewarded him with a Grammy Award and Mercury Music Prize for his recording of Nicholas Maw's Violin Concerto and Germany's Echo Klassick Award for the Sibelius/Goldmark concerto recording. He also won the Gramophone Award for the Barber and Walton violin concertos.

Last month he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, an honor bestowed on a few select musicians -- including Edgar Meyer, who graduated from the Jacobs School in 1984 and is the only bassist to receive the award, and pianist André Watts, who is the Jack I. and Dora B. Hamlin Endowed Chair in Music at the Jacobs School. The prize, a $75,000 accolade presented for lifetime achievement and his name on a plaque with the other recipients, firmly established Bell's reputation as the most revered U.S. violinist of his generation.

Bell received much attention following his three-year involvement with the 1999 film The Red Violin for which he was an artistic consultant and performed all the solo violin music. The soundtrack composed by John Corigliano received an Academy Award for which the composer proclaimed during his acceptance speech, "Joshua plays like a god."

In addition to his Avery Fisher and Grammy victories, this year he was the only U.S. musician named by the World Economic Forum as one of 250 Young Global Leaders.

Local audiences have taken special pride in their native son. The Indiana Historical Society named Bell an "Indiana Living Legend" in July 2000. Additionally Bell received the Indiana Arts Council Governor's Award in 2003 and a Distinguished Alumni Service Award, IU's highest accolade reserved solely for its alumni, in 1991.

Bell has taught master classes and given a number of standing-room only concerts at IU. He also has returned home to perform at the university's annual Summer Music Festival at the Jacobs School of Music.

At the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, approximately 1,600 students from all 50 states and more than 55 countries benefit from the intensity and focus of a conservatory with 170 full-time faculty members who are among the best performers, researchers and educators in the world, combined with the broad academic offerings of a major university. As one of the world's premier music schools, the Jacobs School maintains a distinguished reputation for the quality of its music program and the professional preparation it affords graduates.

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In case you missed it check out the video and story from NBC's Today Show segment.

From NBC.com
Joshua Bell: American Story with Bob Dotson

by Jaclyn Levin

(From Bob Dotson, NBC News National Correspondent)

A lot of people who climb the ladder of success find that it's been leaning against the wrong wall. Joshua Bell made it to the top. Received a big prize. But is not too comfortable with just one ladder. He's our profile this morning on American Story with Bob Dotson. WATCH VIDEO

Bell is something rare, a musician who loves and excels at all sorts of music. Not just performing. Teaching, too.

Not all teachers are found in schools. I met a history teacher named Jimmy Driftwood in a barn. His students were having difficulty remembering the details of the War of 1812. So, Jimmy picked something out on his guitar. He called it the "Battle of New Orleans." Country singer Johnny Horton heard it. Recorded it. And Jimmy Driftwood was offered a big time song-writing contract in Nashville.

He left. But when he came home on trips, he noticed something missing. He didn't hear the old songs his neighbors used to sing. And when he asked folks why, they said, "Jimmy, we don't hear our songs on radio. And we don't see ourselves on TV. We figured they must not matter."

That bothered Jimmy Driftwood. Bothered him so much, he left behind his lucrative recording career in Nashville and moved back, determined to do something about that. He scoured the countryside listening for the old tunes and coaxed his neighbors to come to his barn on Friday nights, so they could fill in the missing notes of their memories.

A funny thing happened. After a while the kids got curious and came to listen. Bluegrass music was back.

Joshua Bell plays Bluegrass. He's also one of the finest Classical violinists. Bell worries that the Classics may -- one day -- be heard only in museums. But when he performs, the music does not flow back into the past. It gathers invisibly around.

Spend some time with Joshua Bell this morning. Help him push Classical music back into Pop Culture. Then let me know what you think. Drop a note in my mailbox on the Today Show webpage, American Story with Bob Dotson. Have a story idea? Put that in there, too.

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Violin virtuoso Joshua Bell was presented the 2007 Avery Fisher Prize by actress Glenn Close at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on April 10. Paying tribute to Bell, who received a $75,000 honorarium and his name added to the list of past winners on a marble plaque installed at Avery Fisher Hall, were Nathan Leventhal, Chairman of the Avery Fisher Artist Program, Frank A. Bennack Jr., Chairman of Lincoln Center, Charles Avery Fisher and Nancy Fisher. Bell was previously honored with an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1986.

Held in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse of Lincoln Center’s Samuel B. and David Rose Building, the evening featured a tribute video to honor Joshua Bell by Live From Lincoln Center’s John Goberman and tribute remarks from Glenn Close. The performances by Career Grant recipients and tributes to Prize recipient Joshua Bell were recorded/produced by WQXR-96.3 FM and nationally distributed by the WFMT Radio Network; hosted by Jeff Spurgeon.

Said Bell: “I’ll never forget when Avery Fisher called me in my home in Indiana 20 years ago to tell me that I had been chosen to receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant. It was the highlight of my career at the time and now I’ve been blessed with another-- with the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. I have watched with admiration as my musical heroes have received this award over the years, and now to have my name added beside those of Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Emanuel Ax is a great honor.”

Just days before on April 3rd, SONY BMG Masterworks released The Essential Joshua Bell, a two-disc collection of excerpts from the violinist’s greatest recordings, bringing a new dimension to the critically acclaimed, best-selling Essential series that celebrates the greatest names in recorded music. Bell himself assisted in choosing the repertoire for this release, featuring his favorite tracks, making it the definitive Joshua Bell collection.

Grammy® Award winner Joshua Bell has been captivating audiences worldwide for over two decades since coming to national attention at age 14 with his highly acclaimed orchestral debut with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Named Billboard Magazine’s “2004 Classical Artist of the Year” and a Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame inductee, Joshua joined Sony Classical, a SONY BMG Masterworks label in 1996. His latest recording, Voice of the Violin, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Charts, and his recording of the Red Violin Concerto will be released September 4th.

His recordings of West Side Story Suite and the Nicholas Maw Violin Concerto received Grammy Awards, and the Sibelius & Goldmark violin concertos captured the Echo Klassik Award. Best known for his work on The Red Violin which won the Oscar for Best Original Score, Joshua plays the 1713 “Gibson ex Huberman” Stradivarius. Bell holds an artist diploma in violin performance from Indiana University. He has been named an “Indiana Living Legend” and received the Indiana Governor’s Arts Award. The only U.S. musician to be singled out by the World Economic Forum, he was named one of 250 Young Global Leaders in 2007. Bell currently serves on the artist committee of the Kennedy Center Honors.

The prestigious Avery Fisher Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement and excellence in music. The late Mr. Fisher’s devotion to music and performers was immortalized with a gift to Lincoln Center in 1974, establishing the Avery Fisher Artist Program. Thirty-three years later, this Program continues to provide recognition to outstanding U.S. instrumentalists and, since 2004, chamber ensembles, in two categories: the Prize and Career Grants. The Prize recipients are chosen by the Executive Committee. Previous recipients also on the marble plaque include: Emanuel Ax, pianist; David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Henry Fogel, President of the American Symphony Orchestra League; Anthony Fogg, Artistic Administrator, Boston Symphony Orchestra; Pamela Frank, violinist; Ara Guzelimian, Dean of The Juilliard School; Nathan Leventhal, Chairman of the Avery Fisher Artist Program; Reynold Levy, President, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; Yo-Yo Ma, cellist; Zarin Mehta, President and Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic; Jane S. Moss, Vice-President of Programming at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; and Joseph W. Polisi, President of The Juilliard School. Mrs. Avery Fisher, Charles Avery Fisher and Nancy Fisher are advisors.

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BID NOW

Behold the ultimate gift for the sophisticated music lover in your
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RCA Red Seal pays tribute to the greatest pianist of the century through
the creation of this unprecedented, ultra-deluxe, 94-CD box set. The
Collection encompasses Rubinstein's entire recording career, and is
comprised of over 106 hours of music. Every recording, including those
previously issued on CD, has been remastered using 20-bit technology,
employing the CEDAR(r) System for noise reduction.

The Box Set Features:
* New Liner notes by a team of noted scholars and writers,
including Harris Goldsmith, Donald Manidi and Harvey Sachs

* An Individually numbered, deluxe-Collection, Box Cabinet housing
all 82 volumes as well as 380 page, hardbound book containing essays,
photographs and detailed indexes to the collection

* Specially designed digipak packaging

* Over 106 HOURS OF MUSIC

* 706 separate recordings of 347 compositions

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Joshua Bell
The Essential Joshua Bell

Like a rock star taking command of the classical concert stage, Joshua Bell has captured the public’s imagination like no other classical violinist of his time. His virtuosity in the most demanding concerto repertoire is second to none, and his bold, charismatic artistry breathes new life into the most venerable masterpieces. Bell’s best-selling recordings for Sony Classical have also taken him in exhilarating new directions, including an Academy Award-winning film soundtrack (The Red Violin) and even a high-spirited collaboration with some of America’s greatest roots musicians.

TRACKLISTING:
DISC 1
1. Tchaikovsky: Danse russe from Swan Lake, Op. 20 (Act III)
2. Dvořák: Song of the Moon from Rusalka
3. Sibelius: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Minor, Op. 47 – 2nd Movement
4. Massenet: Élégie: O doux printemps d’autrefois
5. Mendelssohn: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor, Op. 64 – 3rd Movement
6. Sarasate: Introduction and Tarantella
7. Fauré: Aprés un réve, Op. 7, No. 1
8. Massenet: Pourquoi ma reveiller from Werther
9. Paganini: Variations on The Carnival of Venice
10. Puccini: O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi
11. Beethoven: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 61 – 3rd Movement

DISC 2
1. Bernstein: New York, New York from On the Town
2. Gershwin: Embraceable You from Girl Crazy
3. Bacalov: Mi Mancherai [Theme from Il Postino] – with Josh Groban, vocal
4. Ponce: Estrellita
5. Corigliano: The Red Violin from The Red Violin
6. Corigliano: Pope’s Concert from The Red Violin
7. Corigliano: Anna’s Theme from The Red Violin
8. Corigliano: Pope’s Gypsy Cadenza from The Red Violin
9. Hess: Ladies in Lavender from Ladies in Lavender
10. Meyer: Short Trip Home from Short Trip Home
11. Meyer: Death by Triple Fiddle from Short Trip Home
12. Meyer: BT from Short Trip Home
13. Bernstein: Maria from West Side Story Suite
14. Gershwin: Three Preludes – I: Allegro ben ritmato e deciso
15. Bernstein: Make Our Garden Grow from Candide
16. Gershwin: I Got Rhythm
17. Gershwin: Our Love Is Here To Stay

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“A major talent. Nikolaj Znaider joins the leading violinists of today.” – Gramophone

“Heroic technical command, deep musicality and great expressive depth.” – The Chicago Tribune

“The reincarnation of old-school violinists…Heifetz, Milstein, Menuhin and Kreisler.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer


Wherever violinist Nikolaj Znaider performs, he makes news. A critic’s darling, reviewers worldwide agree that he is one of the leading musicians among the new generation of violinists. As the Chicago Tribune wrote of a performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, when onstage Znaider “absorbs the music so fully into his being as to become the music.”

Spending the last several years performing mostly in Europe, Znaider is now becoming a frequent guest soloist with American Orchestras. Timed to coincide with his Spring 2007 orchestral concerts is his new recording of Brahms’s Works for Violin and Piano. Featuring the three violin sonatas, it also contains the Scherzo in C minor, a movement of the violin sonata Brahms composed in collaboration with Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich. Internationally acclaimed pianist and Sony Classical artist Yefim Bronfman joins Znaider on this brilliant new recording.

Available on Amazon and the Sony Music Store!

Danish-born violinist Nikolaj Znaider, a critically-acclaimed musician with a growing presence in North America, has partnered with Sony Classical recording artist Yefim Bronfman for a brilliant new recording of Brahms’ complete works for violin and piano, including the three violin sonatas and Scherzo in C minor.  The release date on RCA Red Seal is April 24, 2007.

Celebrated as one of the foremost violinists of of his generation, Znaider is regularly invited to work with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors.  His playing has been heralded in the Strad magazine as “extraordinarily intelligent, soulful and impassioned, yet without a hint of indulgence,” and the Chicago Tribune said: “Perhaps not since the young Gidon Kremer burst upon the violin world in 1970 has a violinist caused quite the stir of Nikolaj Znaider.”

His previous RCA Red Seal recordings include a CD featuring concertos by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, an album of virtuoso and Romantic encores, and a CD of concertos by Prokofiev and Glazunov, the former of which was awarded Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice.

Znaider has found an ideal partner in pianist Yefim Bronfman, an exclusive Sony BMG recording artist heralded for his solo, chamber and orchestral performances.  Among his wide array of recordings, Bronfman won a Grammy Award in 1997 for his CD of the three Bartok Piano Concertos with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Other recent albums include his two-piano recital with Emanuel Ax of works by Rachmaninoff, which was followed in March 2005 by their second recording of works by Brahms, as well as CDs of all the Beethoven piano concerti and the Triple Concerto with violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Truls Mork, and the Tönhalle Orchestra Zürich under David Zinman for the Arte Nova label.

Both Znaider and Bronfman have major touring careers;  Znaider ’s concerts this season include a U.S. tour in May, with solo appearances performing Brahms with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; and Mendelssohn with the Milwaukee Symphony and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra.  In addition to appearances this season with the Russian National Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestras of Atlanta, Los Angeles, Montreal, New Jersey, and San Diego, Bronfman will perform recitals in Philadelphia and Aspen, among others.

The three Brahms sonatas for violin and piano – staples of the repertoire – are joined on the recording by the early Scherzo in C minor, written when the composer was a youth, but not published until nearly a decade after he had died.  As Eric Wen recounts in the CD liner notes, “This stormy miniature was part of a joint collaboration with Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich. Together, the three composers put together a four-movement violin sonata, which was dedicated to their friend Joseph Joachim as a birthday gift.”

The sonatas, the first of which was written more than twenty-five years after the Scherzo, are in turn lyrical, passionate and virtuosic.  In the words of Wen, “in the three [sonatas] on this CD, Brahms achieves the exalted status of the great classical violin sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, whom he so admired.”

Check out John Williams new website at www.johnwilliamsguitar.com and visit the TOUR SECTION for new performance dates!



You can purchase his latest release "Places Between" on iTunes, Amazon. or visit the Sony Music Store.

Check out Joshua Bell's interview with the Associated Press about his career and the Avery Fisher award.

MARTIN STEINBERG
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Joshua Bell started playing the violin at age 4 and went on to become one of the world's leading performers. Now, approaching 40, he's venturing deeper into conducting.
In an early present, eight months before his birthday, Bell will receive $75,000 as this year's winner of the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.
The dashing violinist from Indiana, who has won three Grammys, made his professional debut at age 14 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Five years later, he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant for promising American classical performers. The new prize, which Bell will receive in April, honors achievement in a career.
The award is named for the late classical music benefactor and electronics wizard who helped fund Lincoln Center. Previous winners include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianists Emanuel Ax and Andre Watts, and violinists Sarah Chang and Midori.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Bell spoke about his career plans and entering his 40s:

AP: Congratulations for winning the Avery Fisher Prize.

Bell: Thank you. It's nice getting awards when you least expect it because it's not an award you try for or audition for, or even know if you're nominated for. So it's a very nice surprise.

AP: You also won the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Bell: I won the career grant when I was about 18, and I remember that vividly because I got a call from Avery Fisher himself. ... It was a thrill ... because I was in Indiana and the other winners were more of the New York scene.

AP: The new one is for $75,000. It went up from $50,000. Any plans for the money?

Bell: Apparently (laughing). I am lucky enough to own my (Stradivarius) violin, but my dream is to work my way up to getting a Guarneri del Gesu as well, ... like (Itzhak) Perlman has and (Jascha) Heifetz used to have - both in the double case. I can't afford that right now.

AP: $75,000 might not go too far, considering Strads and Guarneris sell in the millions.

Bell: The prize money is nice, of course, but it's the honor that's worth even more than that. To be recognized at the level of the people who have won that prize is special, and it's nice to be part of that group.

AP: Don't you have one of the best Strads, the fabled 1713 Gibson ex Huberman, which had been missing for decades until the man who stole it made a deathbed confession?

Bell: It's definitely in the top level, but there are a few ... out there that would be considered certainly on a collector's value on a higher level. As far as sound level, it's subjective at that point. As much as I love my violin, I doubt it will be the last Strad I have. I had one before that I loved for eight, nine years. I've had this for six years. When you switch violins it gives you a new kick for inspiration because it opens up different ideas of sound because each violin has its own palette of color.

AP: Talking about getting a lift from a new instrument, are you suggesting you're getting tired of the violin? Is this why you're going into conducting?

Bell: No, I'm not tired of the violin. I'm not really conducting yet, but I love leading chamber orchestras without having a conductor. ... With St. Paul (Chamber Orchestra) I'm doing a Mozart symphony, and Beethoven's 7th Symphony is coming up with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields on my European tour (of Britain, Spain and Holland April 17-29). So getting to do that kind of repertoire is great. I've been watching conductors for a long time now, and keep thinking I can step up there and do it.

AP: Have you conducted before?

Bell: Only with the violin in my hands. I do some conducting, some playing. I haven't gone off with a stick and without my violin and conducted a symphony. ... In St. Paul for the past three years I've had a position of artistic partner where I go there and I do three series of concerts a year doing just that.

AP: You'll be leading the Academy of St. Martin on April 1 at Carnegie Hall in a performance of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings." Is this going to be the first time you'll be leading an orchestra in New York?

Bell: I think it is.

AP: So you envision yourself eventually picking up a baton?

Bell: At some point I'd like to give it a try. And also (continue) playing the violin. I'm playing 120 concerts a year. Luckily now I've hired an almost full-time massage therapist. It's quite hard on the body so I don't know how many years I can get to do so many concerts with the instrument without having problems.

AP: 120 is one every three days.

Bell: But they're actually more condensed. It's a lot, a lot of stress.

AP: Do you have any physical ailments?

Bell: Just the normal upkeep. Playing the violin is so awkward. It affects the body. I haven't had tendinitis or anything bad like ... knock on wood, but it's definitely struggling with aches and pains. I'm not getting any younger.

AP: So you'll be 40 in December. Do you feel you've exhausted the violin repertoire?

Bell: No. I'm embarrassed to say what I haven't done - 20th century violin repertoire, I've done only a few. I haven't done the Bartok, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Berg (concertos). ... The problem is I am playing too many concerts and juggling all that I have done and introducing one concerto a year - often a new one. ...
Also, the older I get the harder it is to learn, particularly by memory. I don't like using music for concertos but I may just resign myself to all concertos I learn now. ... because anything I learned as a kid, I can drop it for 15 years (and) I can bring it up again and it will be right there. But things I've learned as an adult, you have to keep drumming it back into your head again.

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On Broadway, it isn’t always the star’s 11:00 number that brings the audience to its feet. From Celeste Holm’s “I Cain’t Say No” in Oklahoma! to Lillias White’s “I’m Getting Too Old for the Oldest Profession” in The Life, some of the musical theater’s most exciting numbers have been sung by supporting characters.

Now, Masterworks Broadway, a label born out of the SONY/BMG merger, gathers a collection of these “sleeper” hits sung by some of the theater’s most talented performers in its new release, Broadway Scene Stealers. Masterworks Broadway draws on the combined catalogues of Sony Classical/Columbia Masterworks and RCA Victor, which includes some of the greatest Broadway show albums in history.

Broadway Scene Stealers, created in partnership with Playbill, the world’s leading theater magazine, promises to be the first in a series of thematically connected “Editors’ Choice” compilations from the vast Sony BMG catalogue. All told, the shows selected for Broadway Scene Stealers have racked up 174 Tony nominations and 62 Tony awards.  Playbill will provide editorial content for all CDs in the series.

While many “Broadway” compilations feature a hodge-podge of movie soundtrack renditions and undistinguished “cover” performances, the “Editors’ Choice” series promises 100 percent authenticity by offering only original cast performances. Executive producers for the series are Playbill president Philip S. Birsh and theatrical producer and director Richard Jay-Alexander who worked with Playbill’s editors and David Foil and David Lai for Masterworks Broadway A&R direction.  Andrew Gans, Senior Editor of Playbill wrote the liner notes.

“We’ve all seen ‘The Best of the Best’ collections,” says Richard Jay-Alexander. “But these collections have been very incomplete, with soundtracks replacing original cast performances. We’re trying to lead people in the direction of mining these shows from a fresh point of view. We’re on a mission to bring back the words ‘original cast recording’ as opposed to ‘soundtrack.’

“Let’s say a kid in high school is looking for audition songs. He’s never going to find some of these numbers. ‘Giants in the Sky’ [from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods] is a beautiful audition song for someone with a personality, but it’s never featured in a collection.”

In two CDS, one devoted to male performances and one to female, Broadway Scene Stealers is a guided tour through some of the Great White Way’s indelible moments. Some of the artists heard in this collection went on to become stars (Barbra Streisand, Dorothy Loudon, John Travolta), while others (Paul Wallace, D’Jamin Bartlett) never made that leap. Jay-Alexander stresses that these performances are “not always showstoppers but managed to steal the spotlight from the stars just long enough to work their way into the audiences’ hearts and minds.”

Ladies first: Broadway Scene Stealers – The Women features several heavy vocal hitters, first and foremost Barbra Streisand, who sings her breakout hit “Miss Marmelstein” from 1962’s I Can Get It for You Wholesale. This was the prelude to a brilliant career that skyrocketed two years later when she landed the part of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl.

There’s also Betty Buckley, who first came to prominence in 1776, a musical with an unusual subject: the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This show was dominated by men, but the twenty-two-year old, pre-Cats Buckley, playing the love-struck Martha Jefferson, came through with a great personal success in the charming ballad “He Plays the Violin.”

The part of Agnes Gooch, the frump who masters the lessons of life in Jerry Herman’s Mame, has long been one of the classic musical theater character parts. Broadway Scene Stealers gives us “Gooch’s Song” in the hands of the role’s creator, Jane Connell.
“If you have Mame represented on a compilation,” says Jay-Alexander, “it’s going to be ‘Mame’ or ‘If He Walked into My Life.’ What happens to ‘Gooch’s Song,’ which made Jane Connell famous and stopped the show?”

Debbie Shapiro Gravitte sings the long-neglected Irving Berlin number “Mr. Monotony.” Originally dropped from both Hollywood’s Easter Parade and Broadway’s Call Me Madam, “Mr. Monotony” turned up years later in the retrospective Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, where it finally found the audience it always deserved.

There are several other Tony-winning performances represented in Broadway Scene Stealers, including Dorothy Loudon (“Little Girls” from Annie); Nell Carter (“Get Some Trash for Your Cash” from the 1978 Fats Waller revue Ain’t Misbehavin’); Debra Monk (“Everybody’s Girl” from 1997’s Steel Pier); Linda Hopkins (“Deep in the Night” from Inner City); Randy Graff,  (“You Can Always Count on Me” from City of Angels). Also included on Broadway Scene Stealers—The Women are D’Jamin Bartlett (“The Miller’s Son” from A Little Night Music) and Susan Johnson (“Ooh, My Feet” from Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella) and Mary McCarty (“When You’re Good to Mama [Mama’s Good to You]” from John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Chicago).

Broadway Scene Stealers—The Men offers an equally rich panoply of songs from some of the theater’s most gifted male artists. Chief among them is Cyril Ritchard, whose portrayal of Captain Hook in the Jule Styne—Betty Comden  and Adolph Green Peter Pan has become one of the classic performances in Broadway musical history. Here he offers his “Captain Hook’s Waltz,” done with incomparable comic relish. Another great show from the 1950s, Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, is represented here with Art Lund’s stunning solo, “Joey, Joey, Joey.”

Unknown young performers can always help give an audience a sense of discovery. Although the Andrews Sisters were the stars of the 1974 nostalgia musical Over Here!, it was John Travolta, in his pre-Hollywood days, who leaped to attention with a smooth-voiced rendition of “Dream Drummin’” and “Soft Music.” One of the best-known songs in this collection comes from Gypsy, the 1959 landmark musical drama starring Ethel Merman as the indomitable stage mother, Rose. Although most hits from a Merman show were sung by Merman, Gypsy gave the young Paul Wallace a terrific showcase with first-act solo, “All I Need is the Girl.”

Also featured on this CD are Lonny Price (“Franklin Shepard, Inc.” from Merrily We Roll Along); Swen Swenson (“I’ve Got Your Number” from Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s Little Me); André de Shields  (“The Viper’s Drag” from Ain’t Misbehavin); Leonard John Crofoot (“Bigger Isn’t Better” from 1978’s Barnum); Ronald Holgate (“The Lees of Old Virginia” from 1776); Austin Pendleton (“Miracle of Miracles” from the record-breaking show Fiddler on the Roof); Ben Wright (“Giants in the Sky” from Into the Woods; and Barney Martin, (“Mister Cellophane” from the original 1975 production of Chicago.)

The digital versions of each of these titles contain bonus tracks. Scene Stealers—The Women features “Nothing” from the original cast of A Chorus Line, performed by Tony Award winner Priscilla Lopez.  Scene Stealers—The Men features “There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York” from the Grammy Award-winning recording of the Tony Award-winning revival of Porgy and Bess, performed by Tony nominee Larry Marshall.  These versions, available on iTunes, also feature printable digital booklets with photos, credits and an exclusive essay by Playbill Senior Editor Andrew Gans.

In addition to drawing on the Sony BMG catalogue, the “Editors’ Choice” series benefits from what Jay-Alexander calls “the breadth of access to Playbill’s 123-year history. This is a very happy marriage.”

Masterworks Broadway proudly releases digitally remastered versions of the Original Broadway Cast recordings of four of the greatest Stephen Sondheim musicals: Into The Woods, Sweeney Todd, Sunday In The Park With George and Merrily We Roll Along.  Each of these four discs, sold separately, contains exciting new additions such as rare bonus tracks as well as new liner notes by Richard Jay-Alexander.  All four titles will be released on March 20, 2007.

Stephen Sondheim is one of the greatest artists and most recognizable names in musical theater history.  With a near constant presence on stages around the world, he is currently represented on Broadway by the hit revival of Company.  Additionally, a revival of Sunday In The Park With George is slated for a 2008 Broadway production.  He has been honored with an Academy Award®, multiple Tony® Awards, multiple Grammy® Awards and a Pulitzer Prize in drama.  Many Broadway stars have shined brightest in his musicals, and these CDs feature unforgettable performances by Bernadette Peters, Angela Lansbury, Mandy Patinkin, Joanna Gleason and many more.

CD details / special features:

INTO THE WOODS - Original Broadway Cast Recording
After premiering on Broadway in 1987, the fairytale-inspired musical was nominated for the 1988 Tony® Award for Best Musical, and won for Best Book of a Musical (James Lapine), Best Lyrics (Stephen Sondheim) and Best Actress (Joanna Gleason).  In addition to Gleason, the cast includes Bernadette Peters, Tom Aldredge, Robert Westenberg, Kim Crosby, Maureen Davis and John Cameron Mitchell.  Suggested list price is $13.98.

Bonus tracks (all available for the first time ever): 
•     “Giants In The Sky” - John Cameron Mitchell
•     “Back To The Palace” - Kim Crosby
•     “Boom Crunch” – Maureen Moore     
                   
SWEENEY TODD - Original Broadway Cast Recording (2 CDs)
Broadway introduced the world to the Demon Barber of Fleet Street with this musical thriller in 1979.  The musical won 8 Tony® Awards including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Hugh Wheeler) and Best Original Score (Stephen Sondheim).  Stars Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury won for Best Actor/Actress in a Musical as standouts in an impressive cast that also included Victor Garber, Edmund Lyndeck, Betsy Joslyn and Craig Lucas.  Suggested list price is $24.98.

Bonus tracks:
•    “Symphonic Sondheim: Sweeney Todd” from Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall - Eugene Perry / Henry Perry / Jerry Hadley / American Theatre Orchestra conducted by Paul Gemignani
•    “Green Finch And Linnet Bird” from Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall - Harolyn Blackwell / American Theatre Orchestra conducted by Paul Gemignani
•    HIDDEN TRACK: “Sweet Polly Plunkett” from Putting It Together - Julie Andrews

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE - Original Broadway Cast Recording
Sondheim’s inspiration for this musical was the painting “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat.  The musical was nominated for several 1984 Tony® Awards including Best Musical, Best Original Score (Stephen Sondheim), Best Actor in a Musical (Mandy Patinkin) and Best Actress in a Musical (Bernadette Peters).  Further accolades were given when Sondheim was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this work in 1985. Suggested list price is $13.98.

Bonus Tracks: 
•    “Putting It Together” from Putting It Together - Julie Andrews / Stephen Collins / Rachel York / Michael Rupert / Christopher Durang
•    “Sunday” from Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall - Chorus & American Theatre Orchestra conducted by Paul Gemignani

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG - Original Broadway Cast Recording
The musical, based on the 1934 play of the same name, earned Sondheim a 1982 Tony® Award nomination for Best Original Score.  Though short-lived on Broadway, the cast album has gained the musical a following over the years. The talented cast includes Jason Alexander, Lonny Price, Tonya Pinkins and Liz Callaway.  Suggested list price is $13.98.

Bonus Tracks:
•    “It's A Hit” (demo from Sondheim’s personal archives, never available before)
•    “Not a Day Goes By” from Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall - Bernadette Peters / American Theatre Orchestra conducted by Paul Gemignani

The recent mergers of Sony BMG combined the Sony Classical/Columbia Masterworks and RCA Victor labels, and led to the formation of Masterworks Broadway, which houses one of the most formidable catalogues of cast albums anywhere, with recent titles such as Tony winner Avenue Q, the revival of A Chorus Line, and Grammy-award winners The Producers and Hairspray, as well as the treasured original cast recordings of West Side Story, the original A Chorus Line, the revival of Chicago, and many others. 

SONY CLASSICAL ANNOUNCES RELEASE OF WE ALL LOVE ENNIO MORRICONE

Sony Classical will release We All Love Ennio Morricone – an all-star tribute album celebrating the music of the revered Italian composer Ennio Morricone, performed by some of the greatest names from the worlds of contemporary pop, rock, jazz, and classical music – on Tuesday, February 20.

Conceived and produced by Luigi Caiola, who worked on the maestro's monumental retrospective, io, Ennio Morricone, in 2003, We All Love Ennio Morricone brings together seventeen exquisite interpretations – most of them newly recorded especially for this collection – of Morricone's best-loved film scores and other musical pieces showcasing the extraordinary range of the composer's influences and sensibilities.

All of the artists participating in We All Love Ennio Morricone have a special connection to Morricone’s music. Many of them have previously recorded Morricone's songs, performed his music onstage, or used his pieces as overtures to concerts, including Celine Dion, Quincy Jones featuring Herbie Hancock, Bruce Springsteen, Andrea Bocelli, Metallica, Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Daniela Mercury, Eumir Deodato, Dulce Pontes, Chris Botti, Vanessa and the O's, Roger Waters featuring Edward Van Halen, Denyce Graves, and Taro Hakase.

We All Love Ennio Morricone
Tracklisting

1. I Knew I Loved You - Celine Dion
2. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Quincy Jones featuring Herbie Hancock
3. Once Upon a Time in the West - Bruce Springsteen
4. Conradiana – Andrea Bocelli
5. The Ecstasy of Gold – Metallica
6. Malèna – Yo-Yo Ma
7. Come Sail Away – Renée Fleming
8. Gabriel's Oboe – Ennio Morricone
9. Conmigo – Daniela Mercury featuring Eumir Deodato
10. La Luz Prodigiosa – Dulce Pontes
11. Love Affair – Chris Botti
12. Je Changerais d'Avis – Vanessa and The O's
13. Lost Boys Calling – Roger Waters
14. The Tropical Variation – Ennio Morricone
15. Could Heaven – Denyce Graves
16. Addio Monti – Taro Hakase
17. Cinema Paradiso – Ennio Morricone

All CDs Are Newly Remastered in DSD (Direct Stream Digital) From Original Source Tape & Play on Standard & Super Audio Players

“These Super Audio CDs are far superior to all previous CD versions in every conceivable way…” – The Absolute Sound

Five new releases featuring legendary performances by Julian Bream, Jascha Heifetz, Charles Munch, Gregor Piatigorsky, Leontyne Price and Fritz Reiner will be added to RCA Red Seal’s critically acclaimed Living Stereo Super Audio series, in stores January 23. The most successful reissue series on CD, with over 1 million units sold to date, is also the first reissue series on Hybrid Super Audio CD. All CDs are remastered in DSD (Direct Stream Digital) from original source tape, play on both standard and Super Audio players, and feature updated original cover art and liner notes.

RCA Red Seal’s Living Stereo has set the standard for remastering and restoring among the most acclaimed stereo recordings made in analog sound. Each Living Stereo title has been remastered by an engineering team led by the award-winning John Newton, using only three of the available six channels (two when the original recording was two-track stereo) in order to remain faithful to the sonic image created by the original producers. Newton remarks, "Two important technologies come together to allow SACD customers to hear these programs in higher fidelity than the original engineers could listen to. By using the best playback channels and heads on a modern transport we heard material that certainly did not come through the original tube type analog tape recorders. This improvement coupled with the incredible clarity of the DSD process allows today's listener to hear more of what is on these historic tapes." Although DSD remastering has added a fresh luster to the sound, no signal processing has been used to “improve” the original tapes of these performances.

The series has been consistently applauded in the press. “The sheer fun of listening to the latest batch of RCA Living Stereo CDs sets the standard for the most basic criterion for spending money on recordings – that one will turn to them again and again. They revel in the glorious sounds of inspired performances of greatly rewarding music,” the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote. Noting that the new format allows the original Living Stereo recordings at last to be heard as they were created, Ultraradio.com writes, “They are revelations … Cheers to BMG for mining its vaults in a proper manner.”

The new Living Stereo releases include:

• SPAIN - The Chicago Symphony Orchestra at its finest, under the impeccable leadership of Fritz Reiner, brings elegance and fire to some of Spain’s greatest orchestral music, with Leontyne Price in a volatile performance of El amor brujo. CD includes ALBENIZ Navarra, Iberia; FALLA El amor brujo, Interlude and Dance from La vida breve, Dances from The Three-Cornered Hat GRANADOS Intermezzo from Goyescas. Multi-Channel Super Audio CD plays back on three channels.

• HEIFETZ – DOUBLE CONCERTOS - The incomparable Jascha Heifetz plays three of the greatest “double concertos” – by Bach, Brahms and Mozart – in distinguished collaboration with cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, violist William Primrose and violinist Erick Friedman. CD includes BACH Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor; BRAHMS Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor MOZART Sinfonia concertante in E-Flat. With New Symphony Orchestra of London; Sir Malcolm Sargent, conductor; RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra; Alfred Wallenstein, conductor and Izler Solomon, conductor.
Multi-Channel Super Audio CD plays back on two channels (Bach) and three channels.





• SCHUBERT Symphony No. 9 “Great”; Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished” - In recordings of inimitable grace and probing depth from conductor Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Schubert’s two most beloved symphonies are coupled for the first time in the Living Stereo series on CD. Multi-Channel Super Audio CD plays back on two channels (Symphony No. 8) and three channels.







• STRAUSS Don Quixote, Don Juan - Rarely has the music of Richard Strauss been brought to life with the sheer beauty and muscular intensity Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra give it in their sublime recordings of Don Quixote and Don Juan. With Antonio Janigro, cello; Milton Preves, viola; John Weicher, violin.
Multi-Channel Super Audio CD plays back on three channels.







• POPULAR CLASSICS FOR SPANISH GUITAR - The mastery of guitarist Julian Bream is perhaps at its best in Spanish music, and this legendary recording – featuring some of the most popular works ever written for the guitar – gains a new luster and brilliance in its new DSD remastering. CD includes HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS Chôros No. 1; Etude in E Minor TORROBA Madroños TURINA Homenaje a Tárrega; Garrotín; Soleares VILLA-LOBOS Prelude in E Minor ALBÉNIZ Suite española; Granada; Leyenda FALLA Homenaje “Le tombeau de Claude Debussy” TRADITIONAL Canciones populares catalanas: El testament d’Amelia TURINA Fandanguillo,
Multi-Channel Super Audio CD plays back on two channels.

Joshua Bell is now featured on The SonyMusicBox

You can view videos from his latest release, "Voice of The Violin" .

Check out the Joshua Bell section and stay tuned for more videos!

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From NPR
Janaury 05, 2007

Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell gives an intimate and passionate recital of Romantic and Twentieth Century music with former NPR artist in residence, pianist Jeremy Denk. Highlights include the Beethoven Fifth Violin Sonata, Bartok's Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Piano and Prokofiev's Five Melodies.

Celebrating its unparalleled catalogue of classic musical theater recordings, Masterworks Broadway premieres Legends of Broadway – a new series of CDs highlighting the careers of four of Broadway’s greatest stars in their signature roles. All four collections – Barbara Cook, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters and Chita Rivera.

Between them, these ladies have won nine Tony Awards and have been nominated for the Tony Award an amazing 23 times. Barbara Cook, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters and Chita Rivera all began their fabled careers in the golden age of the modern Broadway musical, in the 1950s and 1960s. The musicals they created or memorably reinterpreted are among the most popular and enduring – Annie Get Your Gun, Bye Bye Birdie, Candide, Chicago, Follies, Gypsy, Into the Woods, The King and I, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Mame, Show Boat, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, West Side Story and more – and they are all featured in these collections.

Check out the Legends of Broadway mediaplayer for special preview of this fantastic release.

SONY CLASSICAL OFFERS THE ENTIRE
CASINO ROYALE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SCORE
AS AN EXCLUSIVE iTUNES DOWNLOAD,
FEATURING CD CONTENT PLUS 13 BONUS TRACKS - Visit iTunes For This Special Download!

The Most Comprehensive Release Ever Of A James Bond Orchestral Score
Original Music By Four-Time Bond Composer David Arnold

Sony Pictures/MGM Film, Directed by Martin Campbell,
Opens Nationwide November 17th

The James Bond phenomenon gets a new lease of life – in the form of the new Bond, Daniel Craig – in director Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale, for which composer David Arnold returns with an exciting original score. Exclusively to iTunes, Sony Classical will release Arnold’s entire score for Casino Royale – including the content of the CD release plus 13 additional tracks – making it the most comprehensive Bond film score recording ever offered. This deluxe edition of the complete score for Casino Royale will be available for download beginning Tuesday, November 14 – three days prior to the film’s nationwide opening on Friday, November 17.

This latest installment of the James Bond film series stars Daniel Craig as “007”, the smoothest, sexiest, most lethal agent on Her Majesty’s Secret Service in Casino Royale. Based on the first Bond book written by Ian Fleming, the story recounts the making of the world’s greatest secret agent.

The film finds Bond face to face with Le Chiffre (played by Mads Mikkelsen), banker to the world’s terrorists. In order to stop him, and bring down the terrorist network, Bond must beat Le Chiffre in a high-stakes poker game at Casino Royale. At first annoyed by the beautiful British Treasury official Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who is assigned to deliver his stake for the game and watch over the government’s money, Bond soon feels a connection. The attraction becomes mutual as the two survive a series of lethal attacks by Le Chiffre, leading them into further danger and events that will shape Bond’s life forever.

Reinforcing the highly charged, action packed plot of the movie is the original music from David Arnold, the award-winning composer and arranger who previously scored three Bond adventures – Die Another Day, The World is Not Enough and Tomorrow Never Dies. Selected by long-time James Bond composer John Barry as his successor in the Bond soundtracks franchise, Arnold made his debut with Tomorrow Never Dies, the second James Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan. This score garnered high praise across the board, solidifying his stint as the current Bond composer.

Arnold’s ties with Bond run deep. He was seven years old when he realized he wanted to compose music for film. It was at the Luton British Legionnaire club that Arnold saw his first James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, which the composer says "tainted him for life" and was the "substantial event for him that just got him hooked."

In 1996, Arnold worked on a tribute “cover” album of his favorite James Bond themes, entitled "Shaken and Stirred." Collaborating with a diverse range of acts that included Martin Fry, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Propellerheads and Iggy Pop, Arnold blended contemporary pop with orchestral sounds to create a successful album. One of the album’s tracks – “On Her Majesty's Secret Service” – broke out as a successful dance hit, and two were others released as chart singles. Arnold sent his work to MGM and got a response that changed his life. The studio was so impressed that they offered him the opportunity to score Tomorrow Never Dies, his first foray into the Bond franchise. By this time, Arnold's career in film music was flourishing, and he was in demand with both film studios and television companies to create original themes and scores.

Arnold’s other film scores include The Stepford Wives, Enough, Changing Lanes, Zoolander, 2 Fast 2 Furious and Stargate.

Directed by Martin Campbell. Screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Paul Haggis. Based on the novel by Ian Fleming. Produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. Executive Producers Anthony Waye Callum McDougall. Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen with Jeffrey Wright and Judi Dench.

Jay Greenberg will be on NPR''s Performance Today this Wednesday, November 15, as part of their “Young Musicians” series. For information on station and times please go to http://www.npr.org/programs/pt/about.html

Check out the newly redesigned Emanuel Ax site at http://www.emanuelax.com.  It features a full discography, tour dates and a blog from Manny himself.

 


The 5 Browns have all of their videos featured on Sony's Music Box Video Player.

You can view the Firebird, Rhapsody in Blue, and Simple Gifts from their recent release, "No Boundaries" .

Check out their website and view the video player here.

In his first live recording, guitarist John Williams teams up with a guitar virtuoso from the jazz world – England’s John Etheridge – for a fresh take on the infinite variety of world music on Sony Classical’s JOHN WILLIAMS & JOHN ETHERIDGE: LIVE IN DUBLIN. The recording captures the entire set featuring Williams (playing a custom-made classical guitar) and Etheridge (playing a steel string instrument), recorded live on July 8, 2006, at the Dublin Guitar Festival in Ireland. JOHN WILLIAMS & JOHN ETHERIDGE: LIVE IN DUBLIN is available now in stores.


You can purchase this item at the Sony Music Store.











Fright Night is available via iTunes

Create the perfect, spine-tingling atmosphere for your Halloween celebration with Sony BMG Masterworks’ Fright Night – Music That Goes Bump in the Night, a chilling new collection that features almost three hours of classical hits to shock and awe your friends on the spookiest night of the year. Fright Night – Music That Goes Bump in the Night is now available at all digital retailers.

The exclusive iTunes version includes a digital booklet featuring everything you need for a spook-tacular Halloween party – chilling music, cut-out masks, stencils, recipes and more.

Drawing on Masterworks’ unparalleled catalogue of recordings, Fright Night – Music That Goes Bump in the Night includes all the “scary” classics that have been underscoring horror movies and frightening images for years – Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, Gounod’s “Funeral March of the Marionette” and Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz. Also included are memorable themes from such films as Psycho, The Bride of Frankenstein, Vertigo and Jaws, and ear-bending blockbusters by Stravinsky, Ives and Varèse, among many others.



Chorus Line is Hot!


Sparkling reviews are coming in far and wide for A Chorus Line which is playing on Broadway this season. To preview the music, check out the E-Card and for additional info go to their website.



The New Cast Recording of A Chorus Line is available via iTunes and the Sony Music Store

Jay Greenberg's debut release, Symphony #5 - Quintet for Strings, will be available in stores and for download on August 15th. To preview this
album click here to view his mediaplayer.

Born in 1991 in New Haven, Connecticut, he began playing the cello when he was three years old, and he later taught himself how to play the piano. His first formal lessons in theory and composition began when he was seven; three years later he enrolled as a scholarship student in both the college and pre-college divisions of New York’s Juilliard School of Music. Greenberg’s teachers there include Samuel Zyman, Ira Taxin, Samuel Adler, Ernest Baretta, Lance Horn and Kendall Briggs.

“How do you react when you encounter an early compositional gift so extraordinary that you can’t even begin to comprehend it?” Samuel Zyman, who has taught music theory to Greenberg, wrote in The Juilliard Journal in 2003. “How do you explain to others a compositional talent so exquisitely developed at such an early age that you can barely believe it yourself? What would you do if you personally met an eight-year-old boy who can compose and fully notate half a movement of a magnificent piano sonata in the style of Beethoven, before your very eyes and without a piano, in less than an hour? How do you let the world know that the same boy, at age 10, composed a probing, original viola concerto in three movements, fully orchestrated, in just a few weeks?”

The public first heard Greenberg’s remarkable story in a 60 Minutes interview in 2004, in which Zyman said that Greenberg’s potential puts him in the company of music’s most illustrious young prodigies – Mozart, Mendelssohn and Saint-Saëns. Greenberg’s works already have been played by orchestras across the United States including the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphony Orchestras. A premiere performance of the String Quintet at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC is being planned for later this year.

His Overture to 9/11 received first prize in the composition competition at the Juilliard pre-college division in 2003, and he won ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers awards in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Among Greenberg’s most recent commissions are Short Stories for Tenor Saxophone, Percussion and Orchestra, performed at Alice Tully Hall by the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York, and Hexalogue for Winds and Piano, premiered at the Swannanoa Chamber Music Festival.

Follow-up To Best-selling Romance Of The Violin
Features Sensuous, Unforgettable Melodies From Opera And Song
With Soprano Anna Netrebko As Bell’s Special Guest

From the world of opera and song, Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell has chosen some of the most popular and enduring melodies ever written for his latest Sony Classical recording Voice of the Violin. Following the success of his best-selling Romance of the Violin – which has been a fixture on the Billboard Classical charts for over two years – this all-new collection presents Bell and his Stradivarius giving fresh “voice” to works by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Bizet, Dvořák, Donizetti, Massenet and more, accompanied by Orchestra of St. Luke’s, conducted by Michael Stern. Opera’s hottest new star, soprano Anna Netrebko, joins the violinist for a performance of the Richard Strauss song “Morgen.” Voice of the Violin will be released worldwide on September 5, 2006.

Bell’s inspiration for Romance of the Violin – one of the greatest successes in Bell’s recording career – was the opportunity to play beautiful classical melodies that violinists never get to perform. Voice of the Violin goes a step further, sampling the most memorable arias from opera and oratorio, as well as the classical song literature, for melodies that the violin – in Bell’s case, the legendary 1713 “Gibson ex Huberman” Stradivarius – can “sing” most beautifully.

The selections on Voice of the Violin include such favorites as Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise” and Tchaikovsky’s “None But the Lonely Heart,” as well as beloved arias by Mozart (“Laudate dominum” from Vesperae Solenne di Confessore); Bizet (“Je crois entendre encore” from Les Pecheurs de perles); Donizetti (“Una furtiva lagrima” from L’Elisir d’amore); Dvořák (“Song of the Moon” from Rusalka) and Orff (“In trutina” from Carmina Burana). From the song literature – in addition to Strauss’s Morgen” – come favorites by Fauré (“Après un rêve”), Debussy (“Beau soir”), Falla (“Nana”), Mendelssohn (“May Breezes” from Songs Without Words) and Ponce (“Estrellita”).

A star of the Metropolitan Opera as well as leading opera houses and concert stages all over the world, Netrebko will join Bell in a performance of the soulful Strauss song “Morgen,” in the famous orchestral transcription that features a violin solo. Pianist Frederic Chiu, a friend and frequent colleague of Bell’s, accompanies the violinist in a performance of Debussy’s “Beau soir.”

Arrangements for Voice of the Violin were created by J.A.C. Redford, the renowned American composer and orchestrator whose work in film and television has brought him a pair of Emmy nominations and five ASCAP Awards. His film credits include The Trip to Bountiful, Extremities and Oliver and Company. Redford has orchestrated, arranged or conducted for such Oscar-winning film composers as James Horner, Alan Menken and Rachel Portman. Two-time Grammy Award winner Grace Row is producing Voice of the Violin, and the recording is engineered by Charles Harbutt, also a two-time Grammy Award winner.

Bell’s most recent recording for Sony Classical is his critically acclaimed Tchaikovsky disc, featuring a live recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. He was also recently heard as soloist on the original soundtrack recordings of Ladies in Lavender and Dreamer: Inspired By A True Story.

Following its original release in the fall of 2003, Romance of the Violin hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Traditional Classical chart and stayed there for 12 weeks, remaining in the top 10 for 50 weeks in a row. In December of that year, Romance of the Violin was named No. 1 Classical Album of the Year by Billboard, as Bell was cited as No. 1 Classical Artist of the Year. Early in 2005, the recording became one of the first titles to be released by Sony Classical as a DualDisc, and the pace of its sales made it one of the top-selling recordings of 2005.

A violinist of diverse musical interests and accomplishments, Joshua Bell is an exclusive Sony Classical artist. His critically acclaimed recordings for the label have ranged from core-classical works (concertos by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Sibelius and Goldmark) to new concert works written especially for him by such composers Edgar Meyer and Nicholas Maw, whose Violin Concerto, performed by Bell, captured the Grammy for Best Solo Performance With Orchestra. His imaginative new recordings of music from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Bernstein’s West Side Story have been best sellers, and he served as a soloist, advisor and creative partner in John Corigliano’s Oscar-winning score for the hit film The Red Violin.

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 You can download Maria Friedman's new release, "Now and Then", on iTunes!

The walk down the aisle is one of life’s most memorable moments, and it calls for the perfect soundtrack. But will that be Pachelbel or Puccini? Bach or Beethoven? Most of today’s to-be-weds are at a loss to name the classical melodies they love, leaving brides and grooms to spend frustrating hours sorting through music they don’t know. Enter an easy and elegant solution: the perfect ceremony playlist, The Knot Collection of Ceremony & Wedding Music, from the leading wedding website The Knot (NASDAQ: KNOT; www.theknot.com) and Sony Classical (www.sonyclassical.com). The Knot Collection of Ceremony & Wedding Music will be released on Tuesday, May 2, 2006.

Beyond “Here Comes the Bride,” this ultimate collection of ceremony music provides couples with the most comprehensive set of preludes, processionals, interludes and recessionals performed by the world’s most famed classical musicians, from Bach’s “Bist du bei mir,” performed by Yo-Yo Ma, to Mouret’s “Rondeau” (theme from Masterpiece Theater), performed by Wynton Marsalis and the English Chamber Orchestra. The list includes favorite musical selections of The Knot’s Editor in Chief Carley Roney, from classic tunes to surprising songs that make a ceremony personal and memorable. Among the twenty-three tracks are:

PRELUDES

Bach’s “Bist du bei mir” (Yo-Yo Ma, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Ton Koopman)

Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (Yo-Yo Ma, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Ton Koopman)

Haydn’s Serenade from String Quartet in F Major, Op. 3. No. 5 (Tchaikovsky Chamber Orchestra)

PROCESSIONAL SELECTIONS
Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major” (English Chamber Orchestra)

Clarke’s “The Prince from Denmark’s March” (Wynton Marsalis)

Mouret’s “Rondeau” (theme from Masterpiece Theater) (Wynton Marsalis & English Chamber Orchestra)

INTERLUDE SELECTIONS

Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi (Joshua Bell & Academy of St. Martin in the Fields)

Bernstein’s “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story

RECESSIONAL SONGS
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from Symphony No. 9

Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus from Messiah

Vivaldi’s “Spring” from The Four Seasons

Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Also included in The Knot CD are detailed tips for making ceremonial music selections – from choosing an exciting prelude that entertains guests as they wait for the ceremony to begin, to making the most of the processional with a march that is as touching as it is dignified, to selecting interludes that heighten the beauty and meaning of the most important moments in the ceremony. The liner notes include a tear-out worksheet to keep track of your selections that doubles as a wedding day scrapbook memento.

“Couples constantly tell us how painful the process of picking out music for their ceremony is,” said Roney. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with Sony Classical to release a one-disc solution for couples that features the most beautiful performances of classic wedding songs by the world’s top musical artists.”

 

Two-Disc Set With Over Two Hours Of Music Includes Sir James Galway’s
Most Popular Recordings, Including Classical And Pop Favorites

Known the world over as “The Man with the Golden Flute,” Sir James Galway is the most acclaimed flute virtuoso of his day, and RCA Red Seal’s new two-disc anthology The Essential James Galway samples the best of his recordings, including the classical repertoire and his hugely successful pop collections. Galway is one of the best selling classical artists of the modern age – worldwide sales topping 30 million, with over 2.5 million units sold since 1991 alone – and these recordings prove why. The Essential James Galway will be in stores Tuesday, May 23, 2006.

The Irish-born Galway began his career as an orchestral player – he was principal flute in the Berlin Philharmonic during the legendary tenure of Herbert von Karajan – but found immediate success as a soloist. His enormous catalogue of more than 50 albums for RCA Victor reflects a rich and varied appetite for the entire classical repertoire, as well as appealing crossover recordings of folk and pop songs, as well as hits from Broadway and Hollywood.

Sampling the golden “Hollywood sound” that is a virtual soundtrack of contemporary American culture, the best of the greatest film music of the last 80 years is featured on Sony Classical’s new two-disc collection The Essential Hollywood. This new collection includes authentic stereo recordings of celebrated music by such Oscar-winning composers as John Williams, John Barry, Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklós Rózsa, Maurice Jarre, Dimitri Tiomkin, Nino Rota and Franz Waxman, in performances by the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, led by many of the composers and such conductors as Charles Gerhardt, Arthur Fiedler, Riccardo Muti and Esa-Pekka Salonen. The Essential Hollywood will be released on May 23, 2006.

The classic symphonic film score truly arrived in 1933, with Max Steiner’s thundering music for the original King Kong, which is featured on The Essential Hollywood. Though the sound began to fade in the 1970s, it returned triumphantly with the rise of five-time Oscar winner John Williams, with his landmark scores for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the Star Wars films, which are also sampled in the new collection. Included are many of the scores recently chosen by the American Film Institute as “the 25 greatest film scores of all time.”

The Essential Hollywood is no mere “movie themes” collection. It was compiled from definitive stereo studio recordings in the RCA and Sony Classical catalogues, in original orchestrations or arrangements that approximate the way the music sounded on the films’ soundtracks. While classic themes are featured – such as the signature themes from Laura, Jaws, The Pink Panther, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and High Noon – the collection also features extended suites that musically recap the stories of Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, King Kong, Psycho and Sunset Boulevard.

Composers Elmer Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven), Maurice Jarre (Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia), Henry Mancini (Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther), Ennio Morricone (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly), David Raksin (Laura) and Dimitri Tiomkin (High Noon) conduct their own music on The Essential Hollywood. A renowned interpreter of classic film scores, Williams leads performances not only of his music but that of other composers. Also included are excerpts from acclaimed recordings of the music of Bernard Herrmann, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and of Nino Rota, with Riccardo Muti conducting the Filarmonica della Scala.

Too much summer sun? Too much summer fun? Escape the heat, humidity and hullabaloo, and chill out with Simply Summer, Sony Classical’s relaxing new collection of classical favorites. Featuring a serene program of the most beautiful works by Vivaldi, Gershwin, Debussy, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Tchaikovsky and many others, the disc has been carefully programmed to create a calm and soothing atmosphere for the summer season – the perfect soundtrack for poolside, picnics or some personal peace and quiet. Simply Summer will be in stores on Tuesday, May 23, 2006.

Many of the selections heard on Simply Summer were inspired by the season and its rich atmosphere, from “Summertime” from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Legrand’s haunting “The Summer Knows” (Theme from Summer of ’42) to English composer Frederick Delius’s beautiful but rarely heard tone-poem In a Summer Garden. Familiar music abounds including, Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the Nocturne from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream music and the “Summer” concerto from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The performers include such classical greats as Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Wynton Marsalis, Jean-Pierre Rampal and Guiliano Carmignola with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, as well as conductors Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell and Michael Tilson Thomas. (See the following page for a complete track listing.)

So sit back, slide your feet into the warm sand, and let these peaceful classical melodies set the right summer mood. Blissful Brahms. Delightful Debussy. Gorgeous Gershwin. At the beach, in the car, at an evening get-together with friends, or for quiet afternoon on your own – this disc is the perfect musical companion to the gentle pleasures of summertime relaxation. Simply serene. Simply splendid. Simply Summer.

Sony Classical, RCA Red Seal and deutsche harmonia mundi are labels of SONY BMG MASTERWORKS. For e-mail updates and information regarding RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical and deutsche harmonia mundi artists, promotions, tours and repertoire, please visit www.sonybmgmasterworks.com.

Our co-directors of A&R, Warren Wernick and David Foil, bring you the SonyBMG Masterworks Podcast.

Each episode will feature Warren and David talking about our new releases in depth, and will include interviews, sound clips and more!

Episode 1 focuses on four titles in our Classic Library series.

You can check out the official podcast home page or subscribe to the podcast feed directly or through iTunes.