The Afro​-​Georgian Project by Raul Gutierrez & Cugate Artists (CD)

Afro Gerogian Moods is an album that reclaims these principles and makes them its own to challenge the conventional parameters of music and cultural interaction. With a solid base loaded with rhythmic cells linked to the Afro-Cuban liturgical tradition, a lyrical discourse is developed with surprising results. For example, due to the ceremonious effect of the ternary subdivisions on the themes composed by Chabuka Amiranashvili, impregnated with the Persian mysticism suggested in the vocal inflections of the choirs, or by the fortunate chain of resolutions of the melodic motifs that usually appear in passages characterized by their harmonic tensions, as is the case of "Monkiano", composed by Raúl Gutiérrez. It is also worth highlighting the stupendous role of Raúl Cabrera, one of the main arrangers, together with Quillo García Caturla and José Antonio Quintana, who retakes a search for textures and colors that sounds familiar to us because of the references to María Schneider and Thad Jones, but with a more contemporary orchestration, linked to the development of Afro-Cuban music.
April 17, 2024 by yagiz

Tito Puente Special by Raul Gutierrez & His Cuban Big Band (CD)

In Caribbean music, "El que no tiene de Mongo tiene de Tito Puente" (he who doesn't have Mongo has Tito Puente). We will go to the bar or to the terrace smoking some very young cigars and spraying the leather with rums of any solera. In Hopper's paintings no one dances salsa, but you might hear a bolero in the background. The Caribbean is the outdoors with the smoke of barbecues. Let's not get exquisite either: the early morning has no heart, but salsa has its lineage. To all those centers (rums, cigars, hunting, hides, madrugada and above all lineage) travel the darts -very poisoned with good music, pardon the oxymoron- of this album.
April 17, 2024 by yagiz

Peter Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, op. 11 I String Quartet No. 3 in E flat minor, op. 30 by New Philharmonic Quartet (CD)

Tchaikovsky’s three quartets were written during one fiveyear period, a time of rapid growth and maturing of his talent and creativity. Just as he pointed in one of his newspaper reviews to the love and attention which Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had lavished on this “modest form of music, which, in the narrow confines of four bowed instruments, provides for the richest development of musical ideas,” Tchaikovsky’s own approach to chamber music was similarly serious and profound. His quartets combine the exquisite, refined sonorities of an ensemble with truly symphonic development and an amazingly warm and accessible musical language.
April 17, 2024 by yagiz

Rimsky​-​Korsakov: Sheherazade – Symphonic Suite Op​.​35 I The Golden Cockerel – Suite from the Opera by St. Petersburg Radio and TV Symph. Orch./Acad. Symph. Orch. of the St. Petersburg Philh. (CD)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is renowned as a teller of musical tales. More than half of his 15 operas are based on fairy-tales: The Snow Maiden, Kaschey the Immortal, The Legend of Tsar Saltan and The Golden Cockerel to name but a few. Another of his most popular works is surely his symphonic suite Sheherazade, based on the tales of The Thousand and One Nights.
April 17, 2024 by yagiz

Doce De Coco by ELIANA GRACIELA (CD)

The new album by ELIANA GRACIELA is a musical journey through Brazil, from the late 30ies to the splendor years of Bossa Nova, the late 50ies and 60ies, with a big band consisting of some of the most promising talents of Latin music.
April 17, 2024 by yagiz

Latin Summer by VARIOUS ARTISTS (CD)

Enter: Clásicos Latinos, a Berlin based label conceived as a platform for music from the Latin Americas with a focus on Cuba and Mexico, countries to which founder Memo Rhein has strong connections, especially in Raul Gutierrez with whom he has been friends from the old Munich days.
April 17, 2024 by yagiz

Con Sentimiento by NOSLEN NOEL (CD)

„Con Sentimiento“ is the debut of NOSLEN NOEL, one of the most promising young talents in Cuban music and disciple of great Cuban lute virtuosos like NISITO, JORGE FELIX, BARBARITO TORRES and MARIO FRANCISCO.
April 17, 2024 by yagiz