Gemma Summerfield - The Poet's Echo - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Louis Pierre Bergeron/Meagan Milatz - InchBravuraInch / Natural horn player Louis-Pierre Bergeron and pianist Meagan Milatz look to Beethoven as the point of departure for their new album, Le cor di bravura. The composer's Sonata Op. 17, a masterpiece, is the first true sonata for horn and piano in the history of music.

A golden age is brought to life for us by sixty1strings on their new GENUIN album. Their unique instrumentation of mandolin, harp and guitar presents a thrilling program of baroque music from Spain, Italy and France. Konstanze Kuß (Spanish baroque harp), Ekaterina Solovey (baroque mandolin) and Negin Habibi (baroque guitar) plunge into the sensual compositions by Antonio Vivaldi, Marin Marais and Domenico Scarlatti with enthusiasm and panache. Both original compositions and arrangements are performed, and the mandolin serves as a full-fledged, silvery-singing substitute for a diva in a hoop skirt and wig

Here I Stand is the confident debut album of iSing Silicon Valley, the international-award-winning girls' choir based in Silicon Valley, California. Here I Stand celebrates iSing's focus on the power of girls to change the world as they raise their 200+ voices in remembrance, in strength, and in the pure, shared delight of coming together to sing. The album opens with a transcendent performance of the treble-voice version of Eriks Ešenvalds' soaring, dreamlike work for solo voice and chorus, Only in Sleep. The pro-gram includes some of the stunning works commissioned by iSing during it's first six seasons, with themes ranging from social justice, to individual growth and collective power. Among these Never Shall I Forget, Adam Schoenberg's haunting setting for treble voices, string quartet and percussion of excerpts from Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night; Daniel Elder's arrangements for iSing of his powerful commentary on gun violence, 365, and of In Your Light, his musical setting one of Rumi's most ecstatic poems. Given first life on the concert stage and on this recording by iSing's bright young singers, these commissions and commissioned arrangements make exciting, relevant additions to the repertoire for treble voices, here given definitive, top-notch renditions. The album artwork also includes original illustrations by a young choir alumna; together the package puts girls' inspiring talents center stage in heartwarming fashion. Listeners, prepare to be moved by the breadth of performance of iSing girls The musical finesse and the stunning vocal blend of iSing's elite choirs; the clarity of expression of the soloists; and - on the later tracks of the album - the lovely ensemble sound of younger iSing girls ranging in age from 7 to 12.