Katie Melua – In Winter (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 35:27 minutes | 373 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd.
In Winter is truly unique collection of songs centered around the theme of winter, performed by multi-award-winning recording artist Katie Melua and featuring the astounding voices of Gori Women’s Choir. Ranging from original works inspired by Melua’s childhood in Georgia, to new interpretations of traditional carols, the album features arrangements of world-renowned choral arranger Bob Chilcott. In Winter opens up with the traditional Ukrainian Carol introduced to the West as Carol of the Bells, and closes with a show-stopping rendition of O Holy Night.
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Katie Melua – Album No. 8 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 37:15 minutes | 382 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd
Katie Melua is set to release her brand new studio album ‘Album No. 8’ on 16th October 2020. This is a record that represents the culmination of a prolonged period of musical rediscovery by one of Britain’s most successful musical artists, having received over 56 platinum awards. Standard CD housed in digisleeve with 12 page booklet – non plastic parts.
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Katie Melua – Acoustic Album No. 8 (Acoustic) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:41 minutes | 737 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd
(Signed) To mark the year anniversary of her critically acclaimed ‘Album No. 8’, Katie Melua returns with the announcement of an acoustically reworked version of the 2020 album, ‘Acoustic Album No. 8’ set for release on 26th November. Whilst the original represented the culmination of a prolonged period of musical rediscovery by one of Britain’s most successful musical artists, these stripped-back performances present Melua’s singular voice & powerful lyricism at their most pure.
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Katie Mahan – Appassionata (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:09:20 minutes | 2,65 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Steinway and Sons
Pianist Katie Mahan is ideally suited to the Steinway & Sons label roster, for her percussive, highly expressive style perfectly fits the instruments the label’s releases are designed to showcase. It is curious that the program of Appassionata is reverse chronological, forcing Mahan in her annotations to go through some contorted prose, but set that aside, and the effect is novel. The giant variation set in the Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, conventionally comes at the end of Beethoven sonata programs, but here, with a lyrical, rather mystical performance from Mahan, it is introductory to the Piano Sonata No. 23 in F sharp minor, Op. 57 (“Appassionata”). The curtain raiser is the set of six Bagatelles, Op. 126, Beethoven’s final works for piano, which are given a detailed, deliberate performance that outshines the overly speedy takes that seem to have become the norm. The “Appassionata” is the best of all: Mahan gives it a sweeping yet inward performance that will make listeners remember why they began to love Beethoven in the first place. A superb exemplification of Steinway’s ideals of old-school pianism.
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Katie Gately – Loom (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 41:31 minutes | 495 MB | Genre: Electronic
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Houndstooth
Following remix work for Björk and Zola Jesus, productions for serpentwithfeet, and her debut album on Tri-Angle, American experimental musician and producer Katie Gately moves to Houndstooth for her sophomore album Loom, dedicated to her mother, who passed away in 2018. “My mother’s voice is in this record, her picture’s in the sleeve notes. This record is for her” says Katie.
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Katia Labèque & Triple Sun – Moondog (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 40:57 minutes | 703 MB | Genre: Electronic
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Manhattan in the Sixties. Every day, at the corner of 54th and Sixth, stood an imposing blind man with a druidic beard, dressed and helmeted like a Viking. Every day, he played music with home-made percussion instruments and declaimed poems. A simple eccentric or picturesque figure? No. Louis Thomas Hardin, called ‘Moondog’, was one of the true geniuses of his time. And even one of the geniuses of all time, prolific and visionary, capable of linking Bach, jazz and Amerindian rhythms, writing mini-symphonies, madrigals, piano pieces, highbrow makeshifts… His art? A rare treasure accessible to all, as unique as it is universal. His life? A solitary odyssey strewn with encounters – from Philip Glass to Charlie Parker (to whom he dedicated Bird’s Lament, his best-known song), and from Leonard Bernstein to Stephan Eicher. This extraordinary career ended in Germany, at the heart of this Europe where he always felt like a child in exile. As time went on, Moondog’s admirers would include Igor Stravinsky, Arturo Toscanini, Paul Simon, Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, John Zorn, Sophie Calle, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker, Philippe Starck, Antony Hegarty, Riad Sattouf et al.
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Katia Beaugeais – Breath by Breath (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 46:30 minutes | 415 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ABC Classic
Katia Beaugeais is an award-winning French-Australian saxophonist and composer living in Sydney. She is a Vandoren Paris and Selmer Sax Artist. Since winning the prestigious 2010 ISCM/IAMIC International Society for Contemporary Music Young Composer Award, Beaugeais’s music ranging from solo saxophone to full orchestra has been performed in America, Canada, Croatia, Slovakia, Austria, Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Peru, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
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Katia & Marielle Labèque – Minimalist Dream House (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:09:15 minutes | 2,48 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
To be musically avant-garde in the 1950s meant to be difficult. Not by the end of the 1960s. That decade saw a group of American beatniks overthrow the musical givens of postwar Europe. In a series of disobediently straightforward compositions La Monte Young, Terry Jennings, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass declared that music could be clear, honest, pretty and experimental. Turning their backs on the conventional centres of musical power, the earliest minimalist works got their first public audience in La Monte Young’s 1960-61 Chamber Street Series in Yoko Ono’s New York loft. Through the 1960s in art galleries and alternative spaces, the minimalists slowly demystified, democratised and Americanised European modernism. They rejected the angst (what Philip Glass would call “crazy creepy music”). They rejected the invisible games. They rejected the theatricality. “I don’t know any secrets of structure that you can’t hear,” wrote Steve Reich in his 1968 minimalist manifesto, Music as a Gradual Process. Minimalism claimed that there was enough interest in the sounding process itself and enough new territory to be explored in rhythmic patterning to sustain a work. If one removed the Baroque complications – the harmonic story-telling and thematic cleverness – that were obscuring the natural beauties of rhythm and sound, what would be revealed and discovered could provide classical music with a new lease of life. They were right. Minimalism was the last great musical revolution of the 20th century. And it became the most influential and successful ism of them all. In the spirit of the loft concerts we also present new works by David Chalmin, Raphael Seguinier and Nicola Tescari.
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Katia & Marielle Labèque – Minimalist Dream House (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:24:54 minutes | 3,76 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © KML Recordings
From American pioneers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass all the way to Brian Eno, Sonic Youth, and Aphex Twin, the world’s reigning piano duo, along with guest artists, will present a bird’s eye survey of Minimalism from a keyboard perspective in three 40-minute sets. Come and go as you will. Just don’t miss it.
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Katia, Marielle Labèque – Love Stories (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:02 minutes | 726 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet inspired many composers from Benda to Prokofiev through Berlioz, Gounod or Tchaikowsky and it is always a challenge for a musician to approach such a subject so full of history. With Star-Cross’d Lovers, French composer David Chalmin gives a new look at Shakespeare’s drama : a contemporary ballet choreographed by Yaman Okur, written for two pianos, electric guitar, electronics and drums. The musical dramaturgy is based on tension and resolution, violence and harmony, brutality and poetry, which correspond to the two antagonist themes of hatred and love. These contrasts enable a vast range of choreographic possibilities boosted by the energy exchanges between the seven breakdancers and the four musicians. The piece is tinged with minimalism, rock and electronics but also includes references to art music or ethnic music. It finds its unity in a cleverly combination of tradition and experimentalism. The clashes between the two rival gangs take place in a dark, oppressive and threatening musical world where tension and danger are constant. It could describe a sordid urban environment, perhaps that of a soulless suburb of a big city. The tragic end of the work is prefigured in the first prologue by an evolving melodic theme played by the pianos in the lower register that could be a modern version of a Wagnerian leitmotiv of curse or fate. Electronic roars and buzzes, howlings of electric guitar, aggressive hammerings of pianos, cold polyrhythmic combining motoric style, obssesive rave music but also African and Latino influences, contribute to this dystopian vision of the drama. The musical universe of the two famous lovers, which often tintinnabulates in the high register of the pianos, is instead full of delicacy and sweetness. David Chalmin gives his music a special charm drawing his inspiration from Ravelian limpidness, Schubertian lyricism and Chopinian poetry but also from styles close to jazz and pop music. David Chalmin’s 30-minute score was composed for Katia and Marielle Labèque. It was premiered at the Philharmonie de Paris in May 2015. Since then, it has been performed in Luzern, Dortmund, Montpellier Festival, Bordeaux, Paris (Théâtre du Châtelet), Napoli Festival, etc.
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Katia & Marielle Labèque – Les enfants terribles (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:03:07 minutes | 564 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
The new recording captures the pianists’ special artistic relationship with Philip Glass – a follow-up to the Double Piano Concerto the composer dedicated to the sisters in 2015 Presenting the opera Les Enfants terribles arranged for piano duet, dedicated to Katia & Marielle Labèque, and Etudes No. 17 & 20
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Katia & Marielle Labèque – Invocations (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:04 minutes | 838 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Jamais sans ma sœur, pourraient dire en chœur les sœurs Labèque qui, depuis quelque quarante ans, brillent au firmament de la formation piano-quatre-mains et deux-pianos. Revoici donc l’insubmersible duo Katia et Marielle dans deux des plus considérables monuments de la littérature : le Sacre du printemps dans la version pour piano à quatre mains concoctée par le compositeur lui-même en 1913 (mais restituée pour deux pianos par les Labèque, car la version à quatre mains, d’usage pratique pour les répétitions de ballet, est quasiment inutilisable en termes concertants), et les Six épigraphes antiques de Debussy, publiés en 1915. Deux ouvrages donc quasiment contemporains, mais dont les différences d’orientation sautent aux oreilles, et ce d’autant plus que Debussy connaissait le Sacre et en comprenait la portée. Disons que le Sacre ouvre le siècle de l’un, les Epigraphes referment la vie de l’autre… La vision des sœurs prend à son compte cet état de lieux et confère d’autant de violence et d’âpreté au Sacre qu’elle déroule tendresse et érotisme secret aux Epigraphes. Une version incontournable, par deux musiciennes qui ont eu maintes fois le temps de transcender ces œuvres.
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Katia & Marielle Labèque – El Chan (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:20 minutes | 784 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
New album dedicated entirely to American composer Bryce Dessner, founder and guitarist of the rock band The National, including his Concerto for two pianos with Orchestre de Paris conducted by Matthias Pintscher The album also includes the work El Chan for two pianos, and Haven for two guitars and two pianos. The album is dedicated to the film director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarittú (The Revenant, Babel…), who created the album cover artwork.⠀
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Katia & Marielle Labèque – Amoria (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:33 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Katia and Marielle Labque’s attachment to their homeland is no secret. They decide to pay tribute to their roots interpreting a repertoire gathering works by Basque composers, dating from the Renaissance to the present day.
The album Amoria (“love” in Euskara) dives at the heart of Basque culture with composers who managed to blend popular folklore to academic music. Alongside the ensemble Hegiak, the countertenor Carlos Mena or the Escolana Easo Araoz Gazte choir, the two pianists reassess five centuries of music with Euskara, the Basque tongue, as a watermark — and culminating with a jubilant Bolro.
“There are talks about my heart’s stiffness. This isn’t true. Though I am Basque and Basque people seldom confide, and in few people only. You would not believe with what regrets I left Saint-Jean-de Luz. I really felt this nostalgic impression only when I saw the ocean disappear first, then the Pyreneans. My country truly is one of the finest, the most beautiful I’d say! The sea is bordered by acacia trees! And soft green hills from the top of which fall the small balls of oaks trimmed la Basque. And on the top of it all, the Pyreneans, magically mauve. Besides, there is the light. It is not the relentless sky of the other southern country. Here, its shine is delicate. It makes the folks agile, elegant and their joy isn’t vulgar. Dances are light, voluptuous without excess. Although very practiced, religion itself intertwines with a hint of skepticism.” Maurice Ravel
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Kathy Barr – Follow Me (1957/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 36:45 minutes | 580 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla
Kathy Barr…Born Marilyn Sultana Aboulafia in New York of Turkish ancestry, this flaming redhead was recorded by RCA on the recommendation of Mario Lanza, who had heard her sing. She was a soprano who made several records of popular music, and appeared in radio, television and nightclubs.
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