Doug MacLeod & Exactly Like This Nominated for Blues Blast Music Awards
The 2015 Blues Blast Music Award Nominations have been announced and 2013 Blues Blast Music Artist of the Year Doug MacLeod returns to the BBMA lineup with another nomination for Male Blues Artist as well as a nomination for his new Reference Recordings release, Exactly Like This! The Blues Blast Music Awards In early May, a group of 30 top Blues music industry professionals including music critics, radio DJs, journalists, festival promoters, music venue managers…
Kansas City Symphony’s Saint-Saëns “Organ” is “One of the Best”
Audiophile critic Rad Bennett (Stereo Review, The Absolute Sound, Sound and Vision, Sound Stage! and more) weighs in on the new Kansas City Symphony Saint-Saëns recording, saying “There can be no doubt that this is one of the best recorded versions around…”. Bennett lists his top five recordings of Symphony No. 3, which now includes Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony and ranks it #1 in terms of sound, adding that what makes this…
“Glorious” and “Stupendous” Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 from Kansas City
Classical Music Sentinel composer Jean-Yves Duperron offers advice for how to challenge the top Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 recordings and says Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony have it “down and then some.” “I’ve never heard such a well-rounded account of this impressive symphonic work. Under Michael Stern’s direction, the slow movement glows with expressive touches and the final movement blows everyone else out of the water. The impressive Casavant pipe organ which has…
Joel Fan Performs at The Kennedy Center
This Wednesday (6/17/15), Joel Fan performs From China with Love–Connecting Cultures through Music at The Kennedy Center! The program showcases both Chinese and Western favorites including Qiganag Chen’s Instants d’un opéra de Pékin which Joel recorded on his World Keys CD. Watch the performance LIVE online at 6pm (ET)! See all RR Joel Fan Recordings Latest Joel Fan Release: Dances for Piano and Orchestra JOEL FAN Northwest Sinfonietta Christophe Chagnard, Music Director RR-134HDCD Pierné, Castro,…
Doug MacLeod — Too Many Misses
Start your weekend with this video from the Blues Music Awards courtesy of Blues Radio International: Doug MacLeod: Too Many Misses Buy Exactly Like This on CD and VINYL Today!
Nadia Shpachenko at Bargemusic this weekend!
On Friday, June 12th at 8 pm at Bargemusic, Brooklyn, pianist Nadia Shpachenko will perform “Music for a New B’ak’tun,” a program of new works, all New York Premieres, for solo piano (with toy piano and electronics) by American composers James Matheson, Adam Schoenberg, Tom Flaherty, and Peter Yates. The compositions are presented on her new album “Woman at the New Piano” released on Fresh! from Reference Recordings (FR-711). Bargemusic Here and Now Series June…
MusicWeb International Double Review for Kansas City Saint-Saëns
MusicWeb International offers a double-review for our new recording of Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 “Organ” by Jan Kraybill and the Kansas City Symphony: “The recording captures the ravishing timbres of the instruments very well indeed; there’s real personality to the playing of both soloists…Always tasteful, Jan Kraybill certainly adds majesty to the mix as the finale hoves into view…while the bass drum and cymbals are superbly rendered…The closing pages are grand and glorious, the noble…
Now Available from FRESH — Marc Regnier: Tempo do Brasil
We are pleased to announce a new FRESH From Reference Recordings release: Tempo do Brasil Solo & Chamber Works for Guitar Marc Regnier Tacy Edwards, flute Marco Sartor, guitar Volodymyr Vynnytsky, piano Natalia Khoma, cello Showcasing the Versatility and Beauty of the Guitar! Buy TODAY Grammy® nominated classical guitarist Marc Regnier has won the attention and respect of critics, producers, and musicians for over three decades as a performer, recording artist and educator. This unique…
Kansas City Symphony: Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 “Organ” Now Available!
We are pleased to announce a new release from The Kansas City Symphony & Michael Stern: Saint-Saëns Smphony No. 3 “Organ” The Kansas City Symphony Michael Stern Jan Kraybill, organist Noah Geller, violin Mark Gibbs, cello Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 “Organ” Introduction and Rondo capriccioso in A Minor for Violin and Orchestra, op. 28 La muse et le poète for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, op. 132 A Superb New Orchestral Release Buy Today Composed at…
Bruckner featured in Australian Hi-Fi
Australian Hi-Fi magazine features a John Sunier review for Manfred Honeck and Pittsburgh Symphony’s Bruckner Symphony No. 4 recording: “Honeck’s score section is the 1878/80 version, to my mind the most solid of the myriad choices available…There have been many fine recordings of this work, but Honeck and the superb Pitssburghians have given us a performance in phenomenal—underline that—surround sound that launches this rendition to the absolute top of the pile. The extraordinary caressing of…
Kansas City Symphony’s “Gutsy” Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony
Pictures on Silence blogger Don Clark has a new review for next week’s (6/12/15) Kansas City Symphony Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 “Organ” recording: “In addition to being uniformly excellent, the Kansas City Symphony can also be called ‘gutsy’. …This disc from Reference Recordings is a blend of the familiar and rare: an all Saint-Saëns disc featuring the less known “La Muse et le Poete”, op 132 for Violin, Cello and Orchestra combined with the popular…
Blues Blast Magazine Calls Exactly Like “This Superior Traditional Blues”
Blues critic Rainey Wetnight says if you better be dancing to Doug MacLeod’s Exactly Like This: “[Doug MacLeod] wants listeners to know that great acoustic blues sounds Exactly Like This – crisp, original, and engaging. … Nearly three decades have refined him into a renowned blues master. Performing alongside him on this album are drummer Jimi Bott, bassist Denny Croy, and pianist Michael Thompson. They all prove that music in this genre doesn’t have to…
Classical Candor Listens to new Kansas City Symphony Saint-Saëns Recording
Classical Candor‘s John J. Puccio requires a new recording of a work like the Saint-Saëns “Organ Symphony” “to offer either a performance of superior quality or sound that knocks your socks off. Preferably both.” Does the new Kansas City Symphony CD meet the requirements? “Under Stern, the symphony’s opening movement is appropriately restless, its familiar theme reworked several times over in various guises and tempos. It leads smoothly into the Poco adagio, which sounds just…
Photos from THE Show Newport
Thanks to the folks at Stereophile for a wonderful feature on our THE Show booth: No less a personage than recording engineer Keith O. Johnson (right) joined Ric and Jan Mancuso at the busy Reference Recordings booth in THE Show’s huge, T-Shaped marketplace. Vinyl lovers, too, were having a ball. … See the full writeup on Stereophile.com More photos via Facebook: Some fun shots from this past weekend at The Show Newport. And yes, that…
Kansas Public Radio Previews New Kansas City Symphony CD
Want to hear a preview of The Kansas City Symphony’s new Saint Saëns: Symphony No. 3 “Organ” recording? Tune into Kansas Public Radio this morning around 10am Central (US) time! Click to listen We are proud to present conductor Michael Stern’s interpretations of these great works, captured in brilliant HDCD sound by GRAMMY® award winners Keith O. Johnson (engineer) and David Frost (producer). The Symphony has released four previous titles with Reference Recordings to great…