Voice and piano. One of the most intimate situations. Executed to perfection back in 1975 by Irene Kral and Alan Broadbent on “Where Is Love?”, still one of my alltime favorite albums. Janis Mann, the Brooklyn-born, California-based singer, has some of Irene’s features. Her instrument can be equally warm and cool at the same time,…
We’re finally back and ready to go after a devastating loss at the very beginning of the new year. And once again, music has proven to be a healing force. Thanks to Ralph Tee, a new chapter in the Luxury Soul series has been opened, with 35 new quality indie soul cuts on a luxurious…
Gina turns 11 today. Now more than ever, we’re happy to have her in our lives. She’s still enjoying her daily routines, playing ball, chasing mice in the neighborhood, going for walks several times a day (more walks than usual during these strange times), checking out if everything’s OK in the garden, and listening to…
Dionne Warwick turns 80 today. Just a few years ago, she was performing at Berlin’s Admiralspalast where she moved half the audience to tears. And she has just added a few European tour dates for the latter part of 2021 when hopefully, concerts are back again as part of our daily lives. Meanwhile, Dionne is…
He has just released our album of the year with “Be The Change“. And this upcoming Monday, Jarrod Lawson will perform a solo set at Classic Pianos in Portland, Oregon, where he worked as a piano tuner before he released his first album and went on his musical journey. He will perform songs from his…
Let’s hope that we will have an exciting festival season next year. More than anything else, going out to a club or spending time on a festival to see some live music are the things we miss the most. In a press statement of the unveiling of next year’s festival poster, the Montreux Jazz Festival…
Singer, songwriter, producer, engineer, and former Kiss FM breakfast show producer Nathan Thomas has come up with a refreshingly modern R&B meets neo-soul meets hip-hop beats meets jazz collection of tunes with “Still Water”, opening with the way too short, but pretty sexy “Resilience”, with an urgency in his vocal style that is quiet impressive….
Do you remember the first time you’ve listened to Dave Brubeck‘s groundbreaking “Take Five”? I was eighteen when I bought the “Time Out” LP in Cologne, on a cold February day in 1985. And while I can’t exactly remember where and when I first heard the tune (probably on the radio), what I remember is…
The theme of Saudade is not only reserved for Portuguese or Brazilian folk poetry, but it is also present throughout the latest ECM release of Swiss-Albanian singer Elina Duni who sings in Albanian, Italian, English, and French on her second release for the Munich-based label (after “Partir” in 2018). She wanted the album to be…
The legendary multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, producer, and composer Bert Kaempfert, writer of such classics such as “Strangers In The Night” or “Spanish Eyes”, is celebrated by Universal Music with “Today & Yesterday – The Bert Kaempfert Anthology”, a double-CD and double-vinyl collection of his original material plus cover versions of his signature songs by artists such…