…author of the immersive Manu Chao biography, Clandestino, roving world music journalist, composer and “nomad pianist” Peter Culshaw released his previous set, Music from the Temple of Light, in 2023.
Surrender to Love is spun from the same threads that were woven through that Temple of Light – mixing an ambient piano as a grounding for the music, with a range of Eastern and Middle Eastern instruments and voices, and a ruling spirit and approach that’s drawn from the Sufi wing of spirituality – a music and practice associated with Islam, but one that perhaps predates it, stretching away into older, even prehistoric means of devotion and surrender.
The authority in these Sufi-inflected pieces is…
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Youkali, for Kurt Weill, was the land of desires, promised but never to be attained – a strong image for an exiled and itinerant composer.
Many classical composers have woven jazz into their works — Gershwin, Stravinsky, and Bernstein come to mind — but this solo piano collection of material by Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin (1937–2020) takes the idea to the extreme. Performed with breathtaking verve by British pianist Ophelia Gordon, Kapustin: Between the Lines collapses whatever boundaries exist between the genres when the material, as notated as it is, exudes the boundless exuberance of jazz. That it’s Gordon’s debut album frankly boggles when the technique showcased throughout is so extraordinary. While jazz pianists from Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson to Bill Evans, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock are referenced in the liner notes, Gordon’s dynamic playing…
Despite his relatively young age, 
Even listeners in the U.S., where this Cuban-born composer is based, may be less familiar with the music of Tania León than with that of other Latin American composers who have gained popularity lately. This set of four live performances by the London Philharmonic offers a good sampling of her style. It includes three new works performed during her residence with the orchestra, on either side of the age of 80, in the early and mid-2020s. León’s work certainly includes Cuban rhythms, but she builds substantial structures out of them, with her wind sections engaging in vigorous dialogue with the percussion section.
Métier describes Ian Pace’s collection of piano works by Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) as a “landmark” recording, and for once the term’s justified. Pace has achieved something remarkable in presenting four CDs of material by the British composer, the pianist’s commanding performances weighing in at almost five hours and complemented by a 52-page booklet featuring in-depth commentaries by Finnissy (a programme note from 2005) and Pace (texts from 2025 based on notes written in 2016). Dominating the collection is Finnissy’s second epic cycle for piano, the four-book Verdi Transcriptions, with the second complete recording of English Country-Tunes (after the composer’s own version) and works inspired by music of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…
Seven beautiful, melancholic motets and a chanson by Renaissance composer 
Founding work of minimalism, 
…CD version include 4 bonus tracks. The A Side of the original ‘Church of Kidane Mehret’ LP was comprised of four field recordings of the Mahlet chant. These pieces are not composed or performed by Emahoy. They are included for historical accuracy.
Composer and pianist Max Richter’s album Sleep Circle is the newly recorded and abridged version of Richter’s 2015 project Sleep. Sleep Circle is informed by the experience of his concert performances of the original album.
It’s been clear since she first emerged that German pianist 
Composer Thomas Newman is the son of Alfred, brother to David, and cousin to Randy. He is famed for scores to The Shawshank Redemption, among other films, but Of Mice and Men, written in collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet and premiered on stage in 2022, is his first ballet score; the album presents “Music from the Original Ballet.” Viewers of the ballet itself may find the album brings pleasing recollections of it.
Cosán Casta means ‘winding path’, an apt title for this collaboration between fiddle player 
Nils Frahm shares a new CD of solo piano music,