Aldo Clementi (25 May, 1925 - 3 March, 2011) was the last survivor of the great generation of Italian postwar musical avant-gardists. He was also its quietest and most self-effacing member, both personally and musically. After a hesitant start, he developed a technique that allowed him to produce works as calmly consistent in sound and technique as a Renaissance motet, and some would say just as beautiful.
Mario Biondi is an Italian singer. Born in Catania, son of a popular song singer, still young sings in various small choruses. Years after he follows Califano, di capri, Bongusto, Fiorello and others in their tours. After a long series of participations with Italian and international artists and a small production of disco music, during 2006 he hits the success with the Schema Records album "Handful of Soul". His deep and warm voice recalls the great interpreters soul and rhythm and blues music.
Great painters paint, but great artists create…. Rembrandt did it with shadows and light, Van Gogh with texture, Picasso with shape. Edward Hopper took the seemingly ordinary and transformed it into the extraordinary. Tom Doughty is also a great artist, one whose canvas is music. “He is one of the most original new artists I have heard in a long time. With his unique approach to guitar and his vocal interpretations of traditional and his original tunes, he has managed to create music that is all his own." So says Woody Mann, himself an acknowledged master of the instrument.
The luminously lovely indie folk-tronic duo CocoRosie consists of the Casady sisters, vocalist/guitarist/harpist Sierra and vocalist/percussionist Bianca. Both sisters had an early love of music that they pursued as they grew up, albeit in different ways: Sierra began operatic vocal training while she was in high school, while Bianca sang and wrote songs but kept them to herself. That is, until she reconnected with Sierra, who joined Bianca at her Paris apartment, and they started playing and recording songs together.
During 2009, Johnny Powell began the creation of a large collection of alternative folk material for his new solo project using the harp, acoustic guitar, vocals and electronics as the major instruments (www.johnnypowell.com). The songs also involve a variety of strange and unexpected recorded clips and the use of unusual, yet meaningful objects (e.g. curtain rails, toy cars, high heels, graveyard noises etc.) all designed to have symbolic links to the lyrics, and add intentional atmosphere to the music.
Pascal Dusapin (29th May, 1955) is a French composer born in Nancy. He studied fine art, science and aesthetics at the Sorbonne in Paris. One of France's best-known living composers, his works have been performed worldwide. At the suggestion of Franco Donatoni he attended the seminars of Iannis Xenakis from 1974 until 1978. Both composers had a deep influence on his early works but he soon developed his own style based on the use microtonality and the superposition of several atonal lines, creating a kind of "atonal heterophony".
Dan Clews does the Kent county proud with a classic but contemporary roots infused folk sound that strolls through elements of Americana, country and even Swedish indie. A fast rising star enjoying great radio support and shared stages with some of the biggest names in music, Dan’s upcoming album is hotly anticipated
The Philharmonia is an orchestra based in London. Since 1995 it has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. In Britain it is also the Resident Orchestra at De Montfort Hall, Leicester and the Bedford Corn Exchange. The orchestra was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, and although it did give the occasional live concert, it was mainly intended to be a recording orchestra for EMI, where Legge was an executive.
Few young musicians have enough juice to attract both pianist Chick Corea and guitarist Pat Metheny to their debut release. Drummer Antonio Sanchez shows how with extraordinary artistry combined with exceptional technique on Migration (2007). Saxophonists Chris Potter and David Sanchez can unquestionably blow bop and, along with bassist Scott Colley, they supply the necessary musicianship and creativity that nails this session. Sanchez has been Metheny's drummer of choice for several years and Colley is likewise not new to this rarefied air having extensive ties to guitarist Jim Hall.
Alarm Will Sound is a U.S. twenty-member contemporary-music chamber orchestra. Members of the ensemble began playing together while studying at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and have diverse experience in composition, improvisation, jazz, popular styles, early music, and various traditional musics from around the world. Alarm Will Sound's repertoire ranges from European to American works, from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced.