Ellen Ruth Rose - Night Voiced: New Chamber Music for Viola - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

On her fifth album, Ellen Arkbro brings her instincts for structurally elegant songwriting to extended improvisations. Her durational works move like water They can be choppy on the surface, disturbed by harsh gusts of wind, or suspensefully still, belying the roiling forces deep below. Her towering organ chords billow and undulate, seeking internally discordant phrases and resolving them incrementally, slipping against one another with a luxuriant friction. While Arkbro's For Organ and Brass (2017) took a formalist approach, testing the mechanical limits of it's instruments, and Sounds While Waiting (2023) took a contextual one, offering up an explicit (if tongue-in-cheek) social-spatial function, Nightclouds is unabashedly Romantic and representational. Arkbro, steering directly into the storm, conjures the mortal awe of the sublime. LP

From the Heart of Ra, a work for viola and piano, was written for violist Leslie Perna, who plays the work here. It is in six sections, each representing how ancient Egyptians thought of the soul and it's journey in the afterlife. The album also includes Six Bagatelles for String Trio, Seven Musical Portraits for Two Violas, and Three Musical Meditations for String Trio. Leslie Perna, violist, has appeared as a teacher, performer and recording artist (Albany, Aquebis, Berklee, Capstone, Centaur and CRI labels) across the Americas, Europe and Asia. After earning a Bachelor of Music degree from Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory and a graduate degree from Boston University, she studied chamber music at the Chautauqua and Blossom music festivals, and with members of the Cleveland, Emerson, Kolisch and Muir quartets. Her performances have been broadcast internationally on radio and television in the Americas and Canada, including National Public Radio, public radio stations across the country, Brazil's Radio and TV MEC, and ABC's Nightly News with Peter Jennings.

In late 1964, ABC-Paramount prepared to Ray Charles Sings For You. The album was assigned catalog number ABC-500, with liner notes and artwork completed. However, the was shelved in favor of issuing Ray Charles Live in Concert in January 1965. As a result, Ray Charles Sings For You remained unreleased, and it's tracks were scattered across various compilations over the years. Now, for the first time ever, this lost album is officially restored and released as the artist originally intended. Featuring tracks like InchMy Baby Don't Dig Me,Inch InchWithout Love (There Is Nothing),Inch and InchWorried Life Blues (Someday Baby).Inch The album's significance lies in it's historical context and the quality of it's performances, offering listeners a glimpse into a prolific period of Charles's career.