Yo-Yo Ma - New York Album - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Classic Yo-Yo highlights this musician's extraordi nary career with 13 carefully selected tracks from Yo-Yo Ma's best-selling and award winning catalog.

Over the last decade Steve Marino has recorded multiple solo albums (as Moor Hound), been in countless bands, and toured the country consistently, but his newest full-length, 'Fluff', is the first collection of songs he's released in his own name. In that sense it's his InchdebutInch album. One might expect such a transition, from the artifice of a band name to the intimacy of one's given name, to be born of some newfound, inward focus. It makes sense; it's a story of an artist going back to basics, getting real. It's also not what happened. 'Fluff' is an album about home, and one's place in it, love, and intimacy, and it's the result of Steve marrying his direct, honest songwriting with a deeply collaborative process. He developed the record with fellow Bloomington, Indiana resident, and standout producer/engineer Ben Lumsdaine (Kevin Krauter, Major Murphy, Spissy) and together they open up the songs, giving them tangible depth. The title track, InchFluffInch, with it's precise drums, layered guitars, and visceral, emotive vocals, captures the power of this collaboration. It's a song that is delicate, yet driving, lyrically opaque, yet emotionally direct. It is, like the rest of the album, in perfect balance.

CBS/Sony Classical has been accompanying superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma for decades on his journey through the unsurpassed works written for his instrument by Johann Sebastian Bach. The tag is now pleased to announce the of important landmarks from that journey, Yo-Yo Ma Plays Bach, on a single CD. Ma's first recording of Bach's six Solo Suites, which went on to win the Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Performance and is represented here by the Sarabande from the Sixth Suite, took place in 1982. In the same year, Yo-Yo Ma recorded Bach's complete sonatas for viola da gamba with harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper which was hailed by Gramophone as Inchintelligent and expressive. Inch Yo-Yo Ma's explorations of Bach have also taken him far beyond his instrument's core repertoire to some highly enterprising collaborations with the Baroque specialist Ton Koopman. Inspired by Bach's own practice of recycling his music, the renowned Dutch conductor-organist transcribed a selection of Bach works for solo cello and chamber ensemble, and in 1998 Sony recorded these pieces with Ma playing a Baroque cello, alongside Koopman and musicians from his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra playing period instruments. Finally, as an encore, the album offers the Fancy on Bach Air created for Yo-Yo Ma by John Corigliano and recorded by the cellist in 1999. The American composer based this rhapsodic seven-minute piece on the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1. Wrote ClassicsToday. Com, InchThe music not only sings but also speaks through Yo-Yo Ma s generous cello mastery. Inch