Author Archive for Reference Recordings – Page 14
Joel Fan Live on KUAF
Joel Fan talks with KUAF radio about exploring world music and performs Dia Succari’s La Nuit du Destin live! Joel Fan Recordings
Don’t be without Pittsburgh Symphony’s Rosenkavalier Suite
Order Now “The Pittsburgh Symphony is one of America’s more Germanic orchestras and is well suited to Strauss. The brass are terrific, and the strings play with a powerful Teutonic sound. Reference Recordings is known as an audiophile label, and it earns that distinction here, particularly in Elektra, whose extreme demands it meets especially well. Even opera purists should enjoy this program. Honeck’s booklet notes include detailed time indiciations of what is going on in…
Dick Hyman NEA Jazz Master Interview
April 3rd, Dick Hyman was featured in a concert honoring him as a 2017 NEA Jazz Master. Along with the concert, each of the artists was featured in an ArtWorks Podcast. Listen to the interview with Dick Hyman via YouTube: The 2017 NEA Jazzmasters include (in order of above photo from L-R): Dave Holland – Bassist, Cellist, Composer, Bandleader Dick Hyman – Keyboardist, Composer, Arranger Dee Dee Bridgewater – Vocalist, Producer, Broadcaster Dr. Lonnie Smith…
Manfred Honeck’s Strauss Opera Suites Recording is Groundbreaking!
Order Now “This is a groundbreaking recording—and a wonderful one!…Manfred Honeck himself catalysed the effort, in collaboration with Czech composer Tomás Ille. … Strauss pushes the borders of harmony in Elektra and employs a complex orchestra of 110, larger than most of his tone poems. … Honeck has marginally rescored it down to the merely mammoth forces customarily used in Strauss’s tone poems. Most importantly, he has woven the punchy, mercurial, polyphonic score into a…
Textura Raves for Schoenberg’s Orchestral Music
Order Now Textura Magazine offers high praise for composer Adam Schoenberg and the Kansas City Symphony’s recording of his orchestral music: “There’s something distinctly American about Adam Schoenberg’s music, and it’s not just because one of the pieces on this recording bears the title American Symphony. Largely tonal, melodically rich, and rhythmically robust… If any composer looms large as a point of reference, it’s Aaron Copland, though there are moments when one might be reminded…
Help Fund A New DWS Recording!
Be a part of the team that creates the first all John Mackey CD, by supporting the Dallas Winds’ new “Asphalt Cocktail” Kickstarter! Rewards start at just $10 (which gets you an advanced digital download)! John Mackey’s music runs the gamut of human emotion, from the sublime to the ridiculous. One minute he offers the sound of ripping metal, then suddenly gives you a melody that’s achingly beautiful. Click to back the project Asphalt Cocktail:…
Adam Schoenberg is a Rising Star
Order Now “Currently teaching at Occidental College in Los Angeles, [Adam Schoenberg]’s a rising star, his tonal, tuneful, colourfully scored music performed by orchestras across the US. … [Finding Rothko] successfully mirrors Rothko’s art — atmospheric, meditative and imposing, with shimmering colours that effectively play against each other in unexpected ways.… Schoenberg’s five-movement American Symphony (2011) begins and ends with buoyant optimism, powered by quasi- minimalist ostinatos. Two solemn, slow movements, built on sustained Coplandesque…
ClassicalEar on Adam Schoenberg’s Orchestral Music: Superb
Order Now “Schoenberg’s painterly soundscapes fall very easily on the ear… Best in my view are the Picture Studies, especially the Stravinskyan ferocity of ‘Kandinsky’ and ‘Miró’, which is bouncy and percussive, with telling use of an E-flat clarinet. The closing piece, ‘Pigeons in Flight’ after a photograph by Francis Blake recalls, like certain other works on the disc, the gently pulsing, harmonically pleasing delirium of Reich, though Schoenberg’s style more approximates the composing manners…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Across The Board for Saint-Saëns LP!
Order Now The Audio Beat critic, Tim Aucermann, gives our Kansas City Symphony Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3, “Organ” Reference Mastercuts LP a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating in Music and Sound: “Reference Recordings (RR) has catered to vinyl-playing audiophiles since the mid-1970s, and label CEO Tam Henderson has a solid grasp of what his finicky audience wants: recordings of acoustic music performed in actual concert spaces captured in holographic sound with a genuine sense of presence. And realistic…
BBC Magazine Features José Serebrier’s Janáček!
Order Now BBC Magazine and BBC Radio 3’s “Building A Library” series features Leoš Janáček’s Taras Bulba and lists our recording with the Czech State Philharmonic, Brno and José Serebrier as a Top Four recording! “José Serebrier’s Taras Bulba on a two-disc collection of Janáček’s orchestral music for the audiophile Reference Recordings label is by a clear distance the finest-sounding available, stunning in the breadth and depth of its spatial perspectives. … Serebrier’s is a…
Professin’ The Blues Now On Vinyl!
Order Now Professin’ The Blues Now Available on 180 gram Vinyl as a 45RPM Double-LP! RM 25-17 Professin’ The Blues proclaims Fiona Boyes passion for the Blues as she celebrates the unique contribution of recording and mastering engineer ‘Professor’ Keith O. Johnson, Reference Recording’s Technical Director and audio legend. In her self-penned and illustrated liner notes Fiona makes the declaration, “’Professor’ Keith’s amazing approach to capturing sounds, mostly with his own hand built equipment, is…
Adam Schoenberg Gets ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ From Audiophile Audition
Order Now Audiophile Audition gives ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for “American music by [Adam] Schoenberg wonderfully recorded and performed” by the Kansas City Symphony! “[Adam] Schoenberg has had a productive relationship with the Kansas City Symphony and conductor Michael Stern, so the disc contains some early works by Schoenberg and a work commissioned by the KCS. Schoenberg’s works are increasingly being played by American Symphony Orchestras. He has a unique voice, and audiences seem to be connecting to…
Dick Hyman Honored As A Jazz Master
April 3, 2017, longtime RR artist Dick Hyman will be featured during a concert in honor of the 2017 NEA Jazz Masters, held in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, will take place as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Jazz Appreciation Month in April. The concert will be streamed live on the NEA, Kennedy Center, and NPR Music websites as well as SiriusXM Channel 67. The 2017…
University of Texas Recording Sessions This Weekend!
The Reference Recordings team is headed to Austin for a double-recording session with the University of Texas Wind Ensemble and Percussion Ensemble. See the repertoire below and watch two video previews of Adam Schoenberg’s Symphony No. 2! Recording Session Repertoire Album 1 featuring the University of Texas Wind Ensemble and director Jerry F. Junkin John Corigliano, trans. Craig Davis – Concerto for Clarinet Adam Schoenberg – Symphony No. 2 Jennifer Jolley (newly commissioned piece) Stephen…
Audiophile Corner Poll
This week during our recording sessions with the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, we will begin the newly launched “Audiophile Corner” on our new website. But we want to know what you’re most interested in – so help us by voting in our new poll: **UPDATE** – Our poll has now closed, thank you everyone who voted!