The Blues Foundation Announced its 44th Annual Blues Music Awards in Memphis on May 11, 2023, and Reference Recordings is thrilled to share that Doug MacLeod was announced as the winner of the 2023 Acoustic Artist Award! Congratulations to Doug MacLeod! Doug MacLeod Recordings on Reference
The May 2023 issue of Gramophone Magazine features a must-see four-page feature on the Grand Teton Music Festival and the orchestra’s recording of the Beethoven Piano Concertos with Garrick Ohlsson and Sir Donald Runnicles. See the piece, titled “Climbing Everest in the Rockies” by Thomas May on Page 23! “To perform all five Beethoven piano concertos as a cycle is to ascend one of the repertoire’s proverbial Everest-like peaks. … a winning combination of factors…
Join Reference Recordings in celebrating the 150th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s birthday (April 1873)! We’re celebrating by recognizing three recordings and offering two of them at 20% off through April 9: Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 Peter Jermihov, Conductor Gloriæ Dei Cantores Richard K. Pugsley, Director Named “The Best Recording” of Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 in BBC Music Magazine‘s April 2023 issue, this gorgeous production was recorded, edited and mastered by our own engineering…
Reference Recordings is excited to have come across a limited collection of some of our earliest recordings on LP — including our first-ever recording, created in 1976 before Prof. Keith O. Johnson began working with RR! Explore the recordings below, and make sure to look through the images as each one includes the LP Jacket with information about the backstory of the recordings. We regret we cannot ship to the EU or UK at this time.…
The Bach Aria Soloists’ Le Dolce Sirene gets a great review from Laurence Vittes in the March 2023 issue of Gramophone Magazine: “The Kansas City-based Bach Aria Soloists make their recording debut on Reference Recordings with a lovely album of Monteverdi, Bach, Handel and Mendelssohn, complemented by Cecilia McDowall and concluding with their own improvisation on La folia. Recorded with the label’s trademark sweet and clear perfection, ‘Le dolce sirene’ achieves that audiophile miracle, sounding even…
Audiophile Audition‘s Fritz Balwit has a wonderful overview and review for the Bach Aria Soloists’ Le Dolce Sirene recording: “The most striking feature of this opening track is the keening sound of the violin paired with a minimal cello basso continuo. This was my first exposure to the exceptional skills of the violinist and director of the ensemble, Elizabeth Suh Lane… substantial works that will appeal to fans of modern vocal recitals. They don’t lack…
Downbeat Magazine‘s January 2023 issue has a list of their 2022 Albums of the Year, and Doug MacLeod’s A Soul To Claim has made the list! “Doug MacLeod’s A Soul To Claim, like many of his 21 previous albums, makes it clear that he’s an archetype of the top-level blues storyteller: wry, sharp-witted, virile, inclined to poke fun at sentiment.… MacLeod bestows his music with a human intimacy that’s a function of his affable personality…
The Blues Foundation announced its 2023 Blues Music Awards Nominees and Reference Recordings is excited to share that Doug MacLeod has been nominated for his 22nd Blues Music Award with a 2023 nomination for Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year! Doug MacLeod Recordings on Reference
The January 2023 issue of Gramophone Magazine features a review of Nadia Shpachenko’s recording of Invasion: Music and Art for Ukraine: “Lewis Spratlan’s Invasion is a raucous, volatile tone poem for a sextet of piano, saxophone, horn, trombone, percussion and – I assume to provide some local Ukrainian colour – mandolin, written at speed in March this year.… Invasion is the music of indignation and outrage, its combative nature (it does have a more contemplative central section) mirrored…
Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 and James MacMillan Larghetto for Orchestra is a MusicWeb International 2022 Recording of the Year Double-Nominee! “Indisputably the finest – and possibly the most important – recording to emerge in 2022 was this release of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony by Manfred Honeck. In an age where recordings of the old war-horses are not universally welcomed, the general thought being that everything that has been said about the…
Congratulations to Fiona Boyes! On November 23, 2022, Fiona will be inducted into the Blues Music Victoria Hall of Fame! She also has the distinction of being the first woman inducted into the Hall of Fame. “Fiona Boyes will be the first woman even to be inducted into the Blues Music Victoria Hall of Fame on Wednesday November 23. Extraordinarily talented blues guitarist and vocalist Fiona Boyes will this month be inducted into the Blues…
In June 2022, a group of music critics, journalists, festival promoters, music venue managers, musicians and other Blues music industry professionals nominated the best in Blues music in twenty-two categories for the 15th Annual Blues Blast Music Awards. We are thrilled to share that Doug MacLeod has been nominated for the Acoustic Guitar Award, and Jim Gaines (A Soul to Claim) has been nominated for the Producer Award! Voting begins Tuesday, July 12th at BluesBlastMagazine.com!…
Esteemed music critic and writer Richard Freed passed away on New Year’s Day, a few days after his 93rd birthday. Reference Recordings is incredibly fortunate that he provided superb music notes for 17 of our albums in the last thirty years. For decades, Mr. Freed corresponded frequently with our founder Tam Henderson. We will miss him, and the classical music world has lost a great soul. —Marcia Martin Richard Freed (1928 – 2022) Richard Freed, distinguished…
NativeDSD.com released their 2021 albums of the year, and the Orchestral winner is Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s recording of Brahms: Symphony No. 4 and Macmillan: Larghetto for Orchestra! “Athletic! I see that word applied to many of Honeck’s recordings – strong, emphatic performances! Sometimes he has been accused of being a bit over the top, but I find this Brahms Fourth to be excellent in every way. If I had to choose…