Niklas Liepe – The New Paganini Project (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:44:24 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical
The 24 Caprices for solo Violin by Niccolò Paganini are a challenge for every violinist. They request virtuosity at the highest level and they are full of musical color and variety.
“I often bevailed that the caprices are not as very-well established in the concert life as they should, in my opinion”, says violinist Niklas Liepe. In order to change this, he started the “New Paganini Project”. Together with the German Radio Philharmonic Orchester Saarbrücken/Kaiserslautern under the baton of Gregor Bühl, he recorded the CD “The New Paganini Project” (SONY Classical, German release: 9 March 2018).
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Nikki Yanofsky – Little Secret (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:44 minutes | 841 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © A440 – Nikki Yanofsky
Canadian vocal jazz & pop sensation Nikki Yanofsky is back with her sophomore release „Little Secret“. Executive Produced by legend Quincy Jones, Little Secret combines pop-song structures with sophisticated harmonies, club-ready beats with punchy big-band horns, and earworm hooks with scat-singing solos. It’s all held together by her powerful delivery, as well as a newfound sass.
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Nikki Chooi & Stephen De Pledge – Gershwin, Ravel & Prokofiev Works for Violin & Piano (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:49 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Atoll
Nikki Chooi was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and began his studies at age 9 at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, under the tutelage of Sydney Humphreys. He is a graduate of the Mount Royal Conservatory, received his undergraduate degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, and completed further studies at the Juilliard School with Ida Kavafian and Donald Weilerstein.
As First Prize Winner of the 2013 Michael Hill International Violin Competition, Nikki completed an extensive recital tour with Chamber Music New Zealand, performed as concerto soloist with Giordano Bellincampi and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, and gave a recital as part of Australia’s Musica Viva Series.
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Niki & The Dove – Instinct (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 48:02 minutes | 563 MB | Genre: Synth-pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sub Pop
While their roots are in theatre, they ultimately straddle the pop and dance worlds with a devastating musical hybrid that incorporates electronics and beats spanning from tribal to synth-pop to R&B. Niki & The Dove’s pop and dance sides are both evident from the very first moments of Instinct, their debut album, as the opening track “Tomorrow” unfolds a subtle pulse with pan-Pacific textures underneath Malin’s aching vocal, rising to a series of euphoric peaks as the vocals ramp up the feeling of a tribal ceremony. Time and again, Instinct follows the same blueprint of intent-a blend of tenderness, explosion, hypnosis and elation-but never the same routine.
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Nik Bartsch’s Ronin – Llyrìa (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 55:49 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Those who loved the spidery funk of Ronin’s earliest releases Randori, Live, and Rea may initially be put off by the band’s latest effort. Easily the “jazziest” Ronin disc to date, Llyria retains much of the precision of the band’s previous output, and yet sounds ever so slightly more human than anything they’ve done before. As always in the past, the compositions (known as “Moduls”) are made up of small melodic cells which are repeated and alternated in various patterns. This time out, though, it feels like there’s more improvisation (carefully structured, methodical improvisation, of course) going on. The pieces feel less like beat loops and more like the music of a band. “Modul 55” is practically a typical ECM piano ballad, with occasional humming bass clarinet phrases. The album’s opening track, “Modul 48,” is nearly ambient, with almost no rhythmic forward motion at all. “Modul 47” actually builds to repeated crescendi, the rhythm section constructing one suspenseful arc after another as Bärtsch’s keyboard figures recall soundtracks to ’70s urban thrillers. In the track’s final minutes, it slows down to a half-speed rumble and erupts in almost hip-hop like bass throbs. Ultimately, Llyria may be slightly more organic and emotional than previous Ronin discs, but it’s very much of a piece with Bärtsch’s overall musical vision, and longtime listeners will enjoy it as much as new ones. ~ Phil Freeman
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Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin – Live (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:45:03 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Ronin around the world: a powerful and atmospheric concert recording with music captured in Germany, Austria, Holland, England, and Japan, a double-album which transmits the live impact of Nik Bärtsch’s band and its enveloping modular groove music of interlocking rhythms. It’s also a set that marks the end of an era and the transition into a new one. These are the last recordings of Ronin with Björn Meyer’s elegantly-leaping bass guitar as one of the lead voices, and Bärtsch views the album as partly a tribute to Meyer’s long tenure with the band. New bassist Thomy Jordi, meanwhile, makes an impressive entrance on “Modul 55”, but it’s most often the whole band, as a unified field of force, that commands the listener’s attention.
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Nik Bartsch’s Ronin – Awase (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:05:21 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
“Awase”, a term from martial arts, means “moving together” in the sense of matching energies, a fitting metaphor for the dynamic precision, tessellated grooves and balletic minimalism of Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin. Six years have passed since the last release from the Swiss group. In the interim, trimmed from quintet to quartet size and with new bassist Thomy Jordi fully integrated, Ronin has become a subtly different band. Bärtsch speaks of a new-found freedom and flexibility in the approach to the material, with “greater transparency, more interaction, more joy in every performance”. The freedom here extends to revisiting early Bärtsch modules alongside new compositions including, for the first time on a Ronin record, a piece by reedman Sha. Awase was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the south of France in October 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
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Nik Bärtsch – Entendre (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:18 minutes | 821 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Baring your soul can sometimes allow you to take stock. The pandemic also plays an obvious introspective role for artists cut off from their audience and the stage. With Entendre, recorded in Lugano in September 2020, Nik Bärtsch sets aside his various outfits (Ronin, Mobile) to find himself alone at the piano. Paradoxically, the Swiss musician finds great freedom in aesthetic restrictions, while seizing the opportunities to take his music to new horizons. That project developed in parallel with his group activities. For Bärtsch, key moments included celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the ECM label at Lincoln Center in New York in 2019, and his collaboration with artist and videographer Sophie Clements. Then there was his 2017 solo piano tour, which took him to Tehran, Alexandria, Cairo, Calcutta and Delhi, which sparked his reflection on the relationship between performance and ritual music in different cultures. Those elements and experiences fed into the preparatory work for Entendre…
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Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham – Nigunim, Hebrew Melodies (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:08 minutes | 618 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Canary Classics
Jewish folk music has always played an integral part in Gil and Orli Shahams’ lives. This release includes masterpieces by Ernest Bloch, Joseph Achron, and Leo Zeitlin, and as their idiomatic writing for the violin suggests, they all started their musical lives as child prodigy violinists. Also included is music from the wonderful Schindler’s List score by John Williams.
The centrepiece of this release comes from the work sharing the album’s title Nigunim, commissioned by Gil and Orli from Israeli composer Avner Dorman. Dorman’s composition shares the universal appeal of the wordless melodies on which it was named. ‘He has created a masterpiece and in my experience everybody who hears the piece falls in love with it they’re electrified by it,’ Gil explains. Indeed, when he recently toured the work, San Diego Today affirmed that ‘it was hard to miss [its] visceral excitement and structural elegance,’ the Boston Globe admiring the ‘uncommonly intriguing sounds’.
Nightwish – Vehicle Of Spirit: The Wembley Show (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:01:33 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Power Metal, Symphonic Metal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nuclear Blast
Symphonic metal. Ask any metal fan (or indeed fan of rock) to think of this genre, and then name a band that exemplifies it and you’ll be hard-pushed to find someone who doesn’t mention Nightwish. The Finnish group have been melding the aggression of metal to the glorious, sweeping majesty of the symphony for twenty years now and, despite some vocal changes over the past decade, have remained steadfast at the cutting-edge of the genre.
The band entertaining around twelve-thousand fans at Wembley Arena, London, and what’s immediately apparent is that the band’s been captured on an inspired night. Both the crowd and the band are energized, buoyant and thriving, with an electric atmosphere as thick and heavy as the band’s brand of symphonic metal. Opening bombastically with “Shudder Before The Beautiful”, Nightwish stake their claim for Wembley emphatically, and the show continues on exploding in a kaleidoscope of colour. “While Your Lips Are Still Red” proves a heart-wrenching, yet welcome inclusion to the night, whilst “The Poet & The Pendulum” fills the room with resplendent wonder, proving Jansen’s prowess in making a song her own. Donockley‘s contributions are plentiful and oh-so welcome amongst the band’s meaty metal material – the inclusion of pipes to play some of the key melodies to fan-favourite “Nemo” work so well it’s a wonder that it was never considered originally.
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Nightwish – Once (Remastered) (2004/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:00:15 minutes | 1,39 GB | Genre: Rock, Metal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nuclear Blast
Nostalgia is a powerful tool. It’s been 16 years since the release of the album, but I easily remember what those days surrounding the release of the record were like. The excitement, the ambition, the comradeship, the triumphant tour to come, it was all there, about to carry the band to another level, musically and journey wise. “Once” instantly became Nightwish’s watershed album.
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Nightwish – HUMAN. :II: NATURE. (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:21:38 minutes | 917 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nuclear Blast
Imagine the cave where music was born. In the introduction to their 9th studio album “HUMAN. II: NATURE.”, NIGHTWISH take us all the way back to this ancient place and time when bashing rocks became rhythm and voice turned into harmonies. In the course of the millennia, this amazing cultural achievement evolved via Bach and Beethoven into blues, rock and heavy metal – a mental journey that the Finns trace in their upcoming full-length’s first song, ‘Music’.
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Nightwish – Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Deluxe Version) (2015/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:37:51 minutes | 1,80 GB | Genre: Metal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nuclear Blast
“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” is the eighth album by Finnish symphonic power metal band Nightwish. The album’s themes primarily inspired by the work of naturalist Charles Darwin. This is the band’s first featuring singer Floor Jansen and the first with Uilleann pipes player, Troy Donockley as a full-time member. It was also the first without drummer Jukka Nevalainen, who took a break from the band due to severe insomnia. Drumming was by Kai Hahto of Wintersun and Swallow the Sun. The album includes only five Nightwish members, despite its being their first album release as a sextet.
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Nightwish – Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:18:50 minutes | 955 MB | Genre: Symphonic Metal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nuclear Blast
Endless Forms Most Beautiful is the upcoming eighth album by Finnish symphonic power metal band Nightwish. It is due to be released on March 27, 2015 in the EU and Argentina, on March 30 in the UK and on March 31 in the USA. It is the band’s first album with new singer Floor Jansen, as well as the first to feature Troy Donockley, who played uillean pipes and various other instruments on Dark Passion Play and Imaginaerum, as a permanent member.
It is also their first album without drummer Jukka Nevalainen, who had to take a temporary break from the band due to suffering of strong insomnia, leading him to step away from both the album and its subsequent tour. All the drum parts on the album were consequently played by Kai Hahto from Wintersun and Swallow the Sun. Due to this, the album features only five Nightwish members, despite being their first album released with the band being a sextet.
The first single from the album, titled “Élan”, was leaked on February 9, four days before its planned release date of February 13, 2015.
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Nightwish – Decades (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:21:39 minutes | 1,62 GB | Genre: Symphonic Metal, Power Metal, Female Fronted Metal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nuclear Blast
Nightwish has always stood for virtuoso perfection. They are able to evoke fantastic dream worlds, fade out time and space, and touch you deep inside with their symphonic majestic compositions. Two decades and three frontwomenin, Nightwish’s latest and most visceral ‘best of’ has a lot of ground to cover, so dedicating the first 24 minutes to The Greatest Show On Earth does seem like a self-indulgent use of precious minutes. Yet it does illustrate how far the greatest symphonic band on Middle-Earth have come. Working in a reverse chronological order, this epic fest of grandiose, orchestra-laden thrills and spills highlights the superlative power of Nightwish, from the drum-machine smasher Wish I Had An Angel and the heroic Ghost Love Score to the gothic masterpiece The Poet And The Pendulum. It’s a shame that their anaemic eponymous demo closes the compilation when a tour de force like the omitted The Phantom Of The Opera would provide the ideal final punch, but otherwise Decades is a pitch-perfect portfolio of world-class symphonic metal.
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