Carolyn Wonderland - Truth Is - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

With incendiary guitar chops and raw, powerful vocals, fiery Texas blues rocker Carolyn Wonderland draws instant comparisons to fellow Texans Stevie Ray Vaughan and Janis Joplin. Blistering guitarist, fire-breathing singer and gifted songwriter releases an exuberant and astonishing collection of songs, deeply rooted, yet fired by a rocker's sensibility. The Houston, Texas native just left blues great John Mayall's Blues Breakers as first female lead guitarist in a band whose previous lead players include Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor and Peter Green. Tempting Fate was produced by Dave Alvin, with guest appearances by Alvin, Marcia Ball and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The tracks pit brilliant originals with revelatory versions of songs by Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, John Mayall and Billy Joe Shaver.

The works on this recording were written at various periods in Claude Debussy's life, and reflect different aspects of him from a young man stylistically unsure of himself to the confident maître, from a jobbing composer struggling to fulfill sometimes incongruous commissions to a man worn down by illness and outer events. The disc opens with Printemps - a work originally for choir, piano and orchestra written in 1887 during Debussy's stay in Italy as a winner of the Prix de Rome, but only published 25 years later in an orchestration made by Henri Büsser under the composer's supervision. Three of the works that follow were commissions - the Rapsodie from a lady saxophonist, the Marche écossaise from an American general of Scottish descent and the Deux Dances from the instrument-maker Pleyel wanting to market a new model for a chromatic harp. Chronologically the last work on the programme, Berceuse héroique is Debussy's contribution to a tribute to the king of Belgium at the beginning of the Great War. Having rejected the idea of writing a heroic march in the safety of his own home he instead opted for a lullaby for piano, which he orchestrated the following year. The closing work on the disc, however, is Nocturnes, for which Debussy borrowed the title from a series of atmospheric paintings by James Whistler. Made up of three equally atmospheric movements, it is today one of Debussy's best-loved compositions for orchestra. Nocturnes also forms the end of a trilogy of Debussy albums from the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui. Critical acclaim for the team range from 'superb' (BBC Music Magazine, about La mer) and 'unquestionably world-class' (Klassik-Heute. De, about the orchestra) to 'a magnificent disc' - the French magazine Classica's verdict on the three ballet scores Jeux, Khamma and La Boîte à joujoux.

2024 . Tinsley Ellis unplugs and channels his masterful guitar skills and soul-baring vocals into a bracing collection of solo acoustic tracks steeped in the traditions of Muddy Waters, Skip James, Son House, Robert Johnson and even Leo Kottke. Nine newly-written originals sit alongside reverent, yet spirited, versions of House's InchDeath Letter Blues,Inch Willie Dixon's InchDon't Go No FurtherInch and Kottke's InchSailor's Grave On The Prairie.Inch