Hashem Assadullahi - Pieces - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Limited deluxe with alternate cover artwork. Rod Stewart's InchUltimate HitsInch stands as the definitive anthology of his illustrious solo career. Timed to coincide with his 80th birthday celebrations and his anticipated Glastonbury Festival InchLegendsInch slot, this collection encapsulates over five decades of musical innovation and chart-topping success.

This sensational recital-featuring some of the greatest keyboard music to emerge from these islands-is the perfect vehicle for Mahan Esfahani's abundant talents. His accompanying booklet notes are an added bonus, guaranteed to inform, illuminate and provoke by turns. Performed for the most part on a double-manual harpsichord made by Robert Goble & Son, Oxford (1990), kindly loaned by Bob Robertson and based on an instrument made by Carl Conrad Fleischer, Hamburg (1710); tracks 12, 15, 18 & 19 performed on virginals made by Huw Saunders, London (1989), kindly loaned by Huw Saunders and a copy of an instrument made by Thomas White, Old Jewry, London (1642).

Facets is saxophonist/composer Hafez Modirzadeh's latest radical entreaty against the cultural hegemony of the Western notion of equal temperament and his argument that musicians should be free to explore a variety of tonal possibilities, even on piano. His 2012  Post-Chromodal Out! was the first documentation of this concept, where the piano was tuned to a variety of temperaments. Performed with pianist Vijay Iyer, The New York Times called that album InchDauntless... There's heady discipline at work here, along with the stirrings of a hard-fought individualism.Inch With his new , Modirzadeh has distilled the idea to a single re-tuning, which is performed in duets with three towering musicians in contemporary improvised music  Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey and Craig Taborn, each interrogating the piano's new possibilities with imagination and ingenuity. Modirzadeh himself utilizes alternate fingerings and embouchure adjustments on his instrument to achieve intervals between major and minor, and the pieces sway with an elasticity reminiscent of Persian poetic meter. With eight keys re-tuned and the remainder left in equal temperament, the music explores the coexistence of familiar with unfamiliar, and in the process, discovers new logic and mysterious beauty with