If there is one place where Kaz Hawkins' talent is perfectly expressed, it is the stage. This album recorded at the Summer Camp Festival in Brezoi, Romania is irrefutable proof. Having become one of the most important blues festivals in Europe, Brezoi has long crowned Kaz Hawkins as one of its queens, with the Northern Irishwoman being one of the headliners of the event each year. This public recording of 12 tracks is a new stone in Kaz Hawkins' musical edifice which is growing day by day to now approach the summits of the genre. A pure treat.

Harpist Constance Luzzati’s new album Jupiter offers a fresh perspective on favourite pieces of the 18th century originally composed for the harpsichord and viola da gamba.

Distilled sparingly over the course of Franz Schubert’s all too brief life, the few works that make up his output for violin and piano fascinate and intrigue, writing the episodes of a story that is undoubtedly fragmentary, yet in reality deeply unified in a mysterious yearning for elsewhere. Situated somewhere between the miniature of the lied and the large symphonic forms, these pieces open countless windows onto Schubert’s contrasted and tormented universe. Nathalia and Maria Milstein’s choice of a splendid Blüthner piano of 1857 plays a crucial role in the quest for unheard-of sound worlds on which this disc invites us.

Welcome to Palette. Each work on this album invites you to a unique sonic universe. Together, the pieces represent a new era in my repertoire and practice. In several of these works, I have actively participated in the compositional process as a co composer, contributing with my creativity and knowledge. The pieces are constructed in partnership with a number of open and creative composers, and in several cases, years of collaborative work prepared the ground for their blooming colors. They result from intertwined contributions, generating works that none of us could have imagined alone.

Bringing together Brahms's three Sonatas for violin and piano is both an obvious choice and a challenge. Obvious because, as all three come from the composer's mature works, they share a similarity of inspiration – nature, the voice – and aesthetics; a challenge because each, however, has its own character and expression, the first melancholy, the last dramatic and the second lyrical and exalted. By placing them side by side, Sergey Ostrovsky and Natalia Morozova dive into Brahmsian interiority, all the facets of which the musicians capture with infinite delicacy.

The extensive body of work by Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), which is often limited to his monumental nine symphonies (eleven if the two scores prior to the First are included), is characterised by the expression of his deep Catholic faith. Bruckner received his training as a young singer at the age of thirteen at the Abbey of Saint Florian, located a few kilometres from Linz in Austria. His faith is exalted in both his religious and orchestral works, as evidenced by his dedication of his Ninth Symphony to 'Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam'. It is not surprising that almost half of Anton Bruckner's catalogue, which consists of around 150 opuses in the Werke Anton Bruckner (WAB), are choral scores.

During the années folles, Paris was both a temporary home base for many artists and a formidable creative laboratory, mixing jazz, Latin music and neo-classicism. The guitar benefited from this effervescence, expanding its repertoire and winning its place in the concert hall.

The twelfth of her studio albums, Lemons, Limes, and Orchids is a crowning showcase of Joan's voice in all its metamorphic splendour. “I was ready to make an album that truly featured my voice. The basics were recorded like they used to be- with me singing live along with the band. My good friend said told me this is the sexiest album I’ve ever made. Honestly, I think she’s right. The record is a nocturne about love and loss — what else is there? — and a reckoning with our collective disorientation, part hymn to holding on and part benediction of letting go.

After the immense success of her Bach-Abel album (ALPHA783), Lucile Boulanger celebrates the French viol through the centuries: 'This transchronological dialogue traces the history of a dynasty of composers in a subjective, even emotional way', from the seventeenth century (Marin Marais, Sainte-Colombe, Nicolas Hotman) to the twenty-first, with contemporary works by Philippe Hersant, Claire-Melanie Sinnhuber and Gerard Pesson, some of which were specifically written for Lucile Boulanger: 'There is no longer any need to prove that my instrument is an integral part of our musical landscape. The viol is alive and well. For several decades now, it has inspired new compositions; its vocabulary is constantly expanding', concludes the violist.

It all starts with the voice. At turns heavy and hulkingly powerful, yet agile and pointedly precise, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s vocal not only embodies the tradition of the Sufi qawwali but it is the emotive essence of singing itself.

Perennial DownBeat Critics Poll winner, trombonist Michael Dease has embraced his role as a torchbearer for his mentors and the great jazz ancestors over his 15 deeply-swinging, state-of-the-art mainstream recordings. For The Other Shoe, Dease teams with the formidable composer Gregg Hill, expanding his rhythmic & harmonic palette with a flexible, in-the-moment perspective while remaining true to the sensibilities at his musical core. With the prodigiously talented pianist Geoffrey Keezer as a central foil, Dease brings along a wide-ranging collection of musicians, each specifically brought in for their unique outlooks and talents, including clarinetist Virginia MacDonald, Liany Mateo on bass, and drummer Colleen Clark, among others.

Acid jazz pioneer Chris Bangs returns with a brand new album for 2024, following his early-2023 release ‘Firebird’, and 2022’s collaboration with Mick Talbot, ‘Back To Business’. His latest long-player ‘Dream World’ is set for release on the Acid Jazz label on 20 September – a characteristic font of latin jazz from the maestro producer.

A trumpet-tuba duo: what an unusual idea! At the height of the pandemic, the brothers Thomas and Romain Leleu came up with the notion of creating a unique ensemble. While virtuosity (whose Latin origin in the word virtus, at once ‘strength’ and ‘virtue’, should never be forgotten) was a given for the two musicians, who play with an astonishing rapport, they are even more fascinated by the search for the appropriate sound world for the newly minted pieces they perform. An opportunity to meet two illusionists.

TON and Leon Botstein have helped rescue a growing list of works from oblivion, rediscoveries that bring us wonderful music we might never have encountered otherwise and remind us there is more to music history than the standard fare. This album unites three German-speaking Jewish composers, born within a few years of one another in the first decade of the 20th century. All three were lucky enough to escape the Holocaust and start anew after the traumatic interruption of the war years. Their works recorded here were all written during the 1940s: in Jerusalem, Bombay (Mumbai) and Mexico City, respectively. They show three young composers striving to find their own voices, while at the same time trying to adapt to their new environments.

The fruit of a long-standing collaboration between Jean-Guihen Queyras and choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker (whose acclaimed production Mitten wir im Leben sind has had over 100 performances worldwide and was filmed in 4K for the enclosed Blu-ray disc), this new recording of Bach’s Cello Suites arrives 17 years after his first reading that quickly set the standard. Profoundly influenced by his close connection to dance, the cellist has drawn fresh inspiration from the source. Today, he is ready to offer his latest look at the iconic cycle.