Zoryana Kushpler - Shostakovich: Chamber Music - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

As genre conventions continue to morph and blur, there's a wealth of stunning new music being made wherever groups of musicians have the imagination and ingenuity to transcend the old boundaries and just play whatever comes naturally. Sun Speak are such a group and their album Probiotic Orchestrations is full of music that's urgent, powerful, accessible and humorous, pulling together sounds and textures from the worlds of rock, jazz, electronica, Americana and the outer reaches of progressive music into compelling whole. Guitarist Matt Gold and drummer Nate Friedman first came together as Sun Speak ten years ago amid the white heat of the Chicago experimental scene, where they'd worked with such luminaries as Makaya McCraven and Patricia Barber. On this, their sixth , they continue to develop their own distinctive sonic world with the aid of fellow Chicagoan Daniel Pierson who joined as engineer/sound sculptor and now increasingly takes a collaborative role as a third member of the band on keyboards. Now the trio are dispersed and live in different corners of the USA, but in 2024 they came together in a remote seaside cabinin New Hampshire, writing and recording every day in an intense undisturbed whirlwind of creativity. Probiotic Orchestrations is the result - a dazzling mix of improvisation and composition, exploring rhythm, colour and texture with the directness of rock and the fearless improvisatory flair of jazz.

Various Artists - Grammont Selection 4 / Various [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/28/2011

Ukrainian mezzo-soprano Zoryana Kushpler was an ensemble member of the Vienna State Opera from 2007 to 2020 and performs regularly on the major international stages and festivals as both an opera and Lied singer. Kushpler pays special attention to music from and around her home country. Less than six months after the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in violation of international law, she gathered the Luhansk Symphony Orchestra, which had fled it's home town in it's entirety, in Lviv to record opera arias by Ukrainian composers and arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs for this CD production in collaboration with conductor Ivan Ostapovych. The resulting album InchUkrainian InterMezzoInch offers an insight into the work of the most important Ukrainian composers such as Mykola Lysenko, Julij Mejtus, Borys Lyatoshynsky, Oles Chyshko, Viktor Matyuk, Anatoliy Kos-Anatolsky or Oleh Kiva, which is characterized by the special local color and themes such as love, longing and homeland.