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Albion: An Anthology (Navigator 29)

XXX­_Live_Nude_Girls!!!, Mere Recordings (Mere002)

The Celtic Viol, Alia Vox (AVSA 9865)

Double TrioDiatribe Recordings DIACD006Double Trio is the product of Ian Wilson’s year-long residency in the Glencullen electoral area south of Dublin.

VariousHiccupRTÉ lyric fm CD123Hiccup makes a timely appearance as newspaper headlines sound alarm bells about the financial difficulties facing RTÉ.

Twelve Études for GuitarGamelan Media (GAM0004)Reviewing a live performance by Benjamin Dwyer of his Twelve Études for Guitar in the The Journal of Music last year, Rob Casey applauded the diverse technical challenges and genre-spanning rea

Batu. Barcode III.

Cool Steel ArmyPsychoNavigation Records PSY 028A new album from Roger Doyle, and with it another change of label for the perpetually nomadic composer.

RTÉ Lyric FM CD121The third volume in RTÉ’s Composers of Ireland series turns the spotlight on Seóirse Bodley with three works drawn from separate performances at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, in June 2001 (A small white cloud...

Various artistsThe NMC SongbookNMC D150For a label that was set up with the decidedly recherché aim of celebrating contemporary British music (an aspiration whose reach was happily extended to encompass living Irish composers) and whose nam

Un Bel Di…RTÉ lyric fm CD118This tribute to the County Mayo-born soprano Margaret Burke Sheridan has been released to mark the fiftieth anniversary of her death, although its appearance chimes poignantly with the death in September of the o

On the attractions of the cinematic canon

Shakespeare’s vainglorious corpulent knight Falstaff has proved an irresistible lure to composers over the centuries. Salieri, Mozart, Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams and, most memorably, Verdi, have all set the...

A Pale Yellow SkyRTÉ lyric fm CD115It is difficult to call to mind another concert harpist of the calibre of County Down’s Clíona Doris who has the imagination to think differently about an instrument perhaps best known by audiences...

Bax, Bernstein and BeethovenRTÉ lyric fm CD116Only one of the traditional ‘Three Bs’ features on the debut offering from the ensemble avalon, but so persuasive is this coupling of Beethoven with Arnold Bax and Leonard Bernstein that...

The great works of the classical canon abide because they have something to say about the here and now. We need to stop devaluing them, writes Michael Quinn.

Odd SetDiatribe Recordings DIACD002For pointers, geographical as well as musical, to the where, what, why and how of Yurodny, take yourself to its MySpace page and scroll down to see who has signed up as a friend of the ever-changing Dublin

TundraLimb from Limb Records LFL 001Ian Wilson is surely one of the busiest of Irish composers at the moment – and one of the most diverse and wide-ranging.

The Connemara SuiteCloonisle Records TARACD 4021In the last issue of JMI, Bill Whelan spoke candidly about the vertiginous experience of finding himself at the centre of Riverdance, the interval-filling distraction turned international phen

SolasFounded in 1997, The Mornington Singers move elegantly into their second decade with an accomplished collection of a cappella performances.Based in Dublin, the 36-strong mixed voice choir was begun by graduates of Trinity College who w

Apostle of IrelandDivine Art DDA25065Celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, Canty, Scotland’s only professional group dedicated to the performance of medieval music, turns its attention towards Ireland and specifically to Irish plai

Neither Speak Nor Remain SilentDie Stadt DS89COriginally issued between November 2005 and June 2007, Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent is a musical riddle masquerading as an extended narrative teased out across three self-contained EPs, each

D’Amore serves up one of the most curious listening experiences gleaned from a classical recording in many a long day.

Icon of an Age: The AnthologyZampano ProductionsJohn McCormack gave his farewell performance (a handful of subsequent morale-boosting wartime concerts notwithstanding) to a packed Royal Albert Hall in London 70 years ago this coming Novembe

BulbNMC, NMC D147Of all the great forms of chamber music, JMI contributor Bob Gilmore observes in his astute booklet note for this new offering from the Fidelio Trio, the piano trio, for any number of reasons, seems to have had the hardest

A.M.E.N.Daisy Discs, DLDC 026 Nóirín Ní Riain has long been known as a singer of songs of a spiritual dimension, her repertoire stemming from sources as diverse as the ancient vocal traditions of Ireland and India and the no less venerable.

In the Stillness of TimeCapstone Records CPS-8789A much overdue portrait of Jane O’Leary on disc takes an over-the-shoulder look at work composed during the last decade for a range of chamber-sized combinations, all of which the composer vo

The Ninth SetDie Stadt DS103The Ninth Set is Roger Doyle’s third volume of Passades, a series begun six years ago and which first saw the light of day as a free third anniversary covermount CD in the November 2003 issue of JMI.Subsequently

RTÉ Concert Orchestra/David Brophy; The Smith Quartet; Craig Ogden; Gerard McChrystal; Sinéad Farrell; Roger MoffattRTÉ Lyric FM CD113This first full recording of Ciarán Farrell’s offers ample evidence of a productive first...

Ghost StoriesSignum Classics SIGCD088The past, or more accurately, perhaps, the act of passing – into time, into immortality, into anonymity, but always, inescapably, into death – lies at the heart of this visceral new offering from The Smi

Beethoven Sonatas – ‘Spring’, Op 24; ‘Kreutzer’, Op 47. Rondo in G, WOO41. Kreisler, Rondino on a Theme of BeethovenRTÉ Lyric FM CD111To say that Catherine Leonard and Hugh Tinney make the mighty Kreutzer Sonata sound easy...

VeerRiverrun Records RVRCD77The Callino QuartetWith a playing time of just one hour, this concentrated clutch of three string quartets and a suite of ‘elegiac pieces’ offers itself up as a clenched fist of a programme that the listener must

Elastic Harmonic NMC D133 Joanna MacGregor, Tatiana Koleva, Crash Ensemble, ensemble Intégrales, Darragh Morgan, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra/Gavin Maloney The direction at the beginning of the score for Glamour Sleeper, the track that

Schumann: Works for Piano, Volume 1Claves 50-2601/02 (2 CDs)Pianist Finghin Collins turns 30 this year, but this marvellously inventive and imaginatively realised first volume of a projected Schumann series, on the Swiss-based Claves label,

Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 5, ‘Emperor’Satirino SR063Camerata Ireland’s lightly shaped, fleetly delivered Beethoven concerto series reaches its mid-way point with performances of the First and the Fifth, the noble Emperor, that..

Musica Jubilans: Sounds of GlenstalGlenstal Abbey SDGCD 646The beautiful, low-lying Normanesque Glenstal Abbey in Murroe, a short distance from Limerick city, is much else apart from the Irish headquarters of the Benedictines.

Una HuntFallen Leaves from an Irish AlbumRTÉ Lyric FM CD109Una Hunt has long been a champion of forgotten Irish music in the concert hall and on disc.

Gerard McChrystal & Craig OgdenPluckblowMeridian CDE84546Here is a disc full of unexpected atmospheres, the straightlaced classical discipline of its formal duo relationship shot through with the decidedly more relaxed attitudes found i

FRANCIS HEERYGarry Kasparov vs. Deep BlueThe likably strange American comedian Emo Philips once observed that a computer had beaten him in a game of chess. ‘But,’ the comic added, ‘it was no match for me when it came to kick-boxing.’...

Piano Music from Northern Ireland, Lorelt LNT122 Reaching 30 this year and a onetime BBC Young Musician of the Year finalist and piano section-winner of RTÉ’s Young Musician of the Future Competition, David Quigley has matured into a fine a

Baby Grand, BVHaast 1505 Search for listings of Roger Doyle’s Baby Grand on internet retail sites and you’ll find it variously filed under ‘jazz’, ‘modern classical’, ‘new age’, ‘pop/rock’, ‘musique...

Michael Quinn, Co. Down, writes:I read Bob Gilmore’s response in the September-October JMI to my review of the Sonorities Festival (‘(Hard)core Values’, July-August) with interest.

The Sonorities Festival 2006.

Michael Quinn, Co.