Utopia Ensemble - Musical Universe - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Helge Albin writes InchInteracting is the fourteenth album released by TBB. The title track itself is a way of highlighting my way of orchestrating different sections in the band and how they Interact with each other. I've always wanted the big band to play with the flexibility of a quartet, So I chose players who can play like that. Keeping this band together for over 40 years! Wow! Wow! Wow! What a journey! Touring all over the world, mostly featuring the band and it's soloists by itself, but also with special projects together with jazz Giants like Dave Liebman and Michael Brecker. To me, music's purpose is to express and modulate emotion, and with music being a language beyond words (which makes perfect sense to me!) I wish that the music in this album will give you a musical adventure about this!Inch

The instrumentalist, composer, and Tielman Susato (c. 1510/15 - after 1570) was one of the most illustrious figures in the musical life of Renaissance Antwerp. He founded the first music publishing house to use movable type in the Low Countries in 1543. Music printing had mainly been based in Italy, France, and Germany until Susato set up his press in Antwerp. He was one of the first to publish works by Orlando di Lasso, the most renowned composer of the late Renaissance. Susato was also an accomplished composer who wrote and published several books of masses and motets in the typical imitative polyphonic style of the time. He was well connected in the highest circles of the city and the country, often dedicating his publications to prominent citizens or rulers. The Utopia Ensemble here presents a florilegium of works composed and/or published by this dazzling figure of Renaissance vocal music.

Founded ten years ago, Ensemble Ouranos is now one of the best French wind quintets in the world. For this new recording, their first for Alpha Classics, Mathilde, Arnaud, Amaury, Philibert, Rafael and Nicolas have brought together composers and works that are particularly close to their hearts Le Tombeau de Couperin glorifies the French wind school, and Shostakovich is their passion, so recording this transcription (by David Walter) of the famous quartet for the first time was at the top of their wish list. The two works have one thing in common homage, since Ravel composed in tribute to his friends who died in the war, and Shostakovich to the victims of the Second World War. Another tribute - a lighter one - is paid to summer with Barber's superb Summer Music, the only original piece for wind quintet on this album. Added to this are Ravel's famous Pavane and an arrangement by Nicolas Ramez of the poignant Elegy from Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk