Storey Littleton - At a Diner - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Footprint Records is proud to present a very special Christmas gift the album 'A Christmas Wish,' performed by the Gothenburg Youth Choir under the choral direction of Anne Johansson. The Gothenburg Youth Choir, one of Sweden's most acclaimed, consists of boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 25. Anne Johansson, who has dedicated her professional life to teaching secondary-school children to sing, is an authority on young voices. The album contains arrangements of traditional Christmas songs from Sweden and France, as well as compositions by Benjamin Britten, Max Reger, and others- it is the perfect accompaniment to the Yuletide season. The Gothenburg Youth Choir wishes you and your family a very Merry Christmas!

Various Artists - Zzbra / O.S.T. [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/21/2012

For over half a century, the Polish royal court chapel of the Vasa dynasty was one of the best ensembles in Europe. Known for his cultural tastes, King Zygmunt III - thanks to (for that time) enormous funds allotted to music ensemble activity - was able to hire the best musicians from all over Europe (chiefly Italians). The superb financial conditions he offered meant that numerous instrumentalists, singers and composers decided to travel to the 'cold country in the far North'; thus, the Vasa court was a center of activity for the most distinguished Italian artists of the late 16th and early 17th centuries - for example, Luca Marenzio. Unfortunately, little of their indubitably prolific compositional œuvre has survived to our day. The Vasa chapel composers' œuvre for solo violin still remains in the sphere of unanswered questions. Aside from surviving and well-known works for large ensemble, the violinists mentioned multiple times in sources must also no doubt have performed works for smaller ensemble, including solo sonatas; however, no evidence concerning the type or quantity of repertoire has survived. The works presented on this album represent an attempt to reconstruct the possible state of violin music at the Vasa court in the first half of the 17th century, and were written by composers in various ways associated with the Polish court. The composers make broad use of highly-developed chromaticism and bold harmonic combinations; they often utilize distant tonalities, going far outside the meantone temperament system in effect at the time. To showcase this music in a sound most closely approximating the original, it seems natural to record it in a church interior, utilizing the only instrument surviving and restored Vasa-period instrument in Poland an organ built in 1633 by Hans Hummel and Jerzy Nitrowski at the Basilica of St. Andrew the Apostle in Olkusz, the