Writing the liner notes to this album necessarily compels me to begin with a preamble which fully complieswith the music and renditions it contains: listening to a discographical work is an active act of creation, the moment when we choose to shift our point of observation towards an imaginative reality that, once experienced, appears more authentic and faithful than everyday's ordinariness.

SOMM Recordings is excited to explore the fascinating and largely unknown repertoire of Ibero-American art songs. A shared passion for showcasing hidden jewels of Latin American song inspired the collaboration of Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano Rolong and Portuguese pianist João Araújo, who began their partnership while studying at the Royal College of Music. Julieth received the 2018 RCM President’s Award presented by RCM President, HM King Charles III. She won the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Audience Prize in the 2023 Cardiff Singer of the World competition and was recently named one of Opera Wire’s Top Ten Rising Stars. João was awarded best collaborative pianist prizes at the Concours Musical International de Montréal in Canada and the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at Wigmore Hall, and he has been nominated for the Gerald Moore Award.

Kiss from the Balcony is what happens when three musicians become enamored with one another’s musical abilities and shared curiosities. After meeting at a bar gig in Oakland, CA in 2016, and sporadically collaborating on various songs and albums, Madeline Kenney, Ben Sloan, and Stephen Patota toured together after the release of Kenney’s 2023 record A New Reality Mind.

Ferenc Nemeth returns with UnStandard Too, a bold follow-up to his groundbreaking album UnStandard.
A powerful statement on individuality in a world that increasingly values conformity, this album champions artistic freedom and the courage to break away from the norm. Featuring Nemeth on drums, percussion, and vocals, alongside bassist Massimo Biolcati and alternating saxophonists Dayna Stephens and Marcus Strickland, the trio pushes musical boundaries with modern interplay, original compositions, and the use of a vocal harmonizer. Drawing from classical, Hungarian folk, and jazz traditions, UnStandard Too is not just an album - it's a movement that celebrates embracing uniqueness and redefining freedom in music and life.

In the early years of the twentieth century a first wave of composers in the Caucasus laid down the basis of their national schools by grafting the outlines of western classical music onto local folk traditions. By mid-century a second generation took up the challenge more thoroughly, their compositions confidently handling the large forms of the concert hall, though still drawing on regional idioms. The Soviet orthodoxy of the day expected its composers to abide by the rules, but the three composers heard here – two Azeris and a Georgian, all young men when they wrote the violin concertos on this album – brought something fresh and individual to the task, marrying east and west, form and freedom, tradition and originality.

Though he was admired by figures as illustrious as Rossini and Verdi, violinist-composer Giuseppe Austri has been largely forgotten, unlike his great contemporaries Paganini, Sivori and Bazzini. These premiere recordings show how inventive and virtuosic his works for violin and piano are, suggesting that he must have been a performer of transcendent technical and expressive abilities. Austri was in the mould of the great itinerant virtuosi of his time and, though his compositions can display Paganini-like writing, he matches incendiary passages with graceful cantabile and intimate delicacy.

Jason Isbell - award-winning artist is back with his fifth album 'Something More Than Free', featuring Isbell's Southern-inspired vignettes of working class men, women and traditions that permeate these 11 new songs. The pure honesty and authenticity of Isbell's poetic lyrics and soulful vocals have connected deeply with so many, and they shine as brightly as ever on the new album. It is Isbell's most sonically diverse album to date.

Though quintessentially American in spirit, the musical snapshots in this album are as diverse as the men and women who composed them. Drawing from influences as disparate as the blues, jazz, Broadway, gospel, folksong and the wild west, these ‘American vignettes’ merge popular idioms into a new canon of the repertoire for cello and piano. The distinctive voices of six US composers, from the late twentieth and early 21st centuries, here come together to weave a virtuosic and colourful tapestry of Americana.

Cut From The Original Analog Master Tapes By Kevin Gray. All Analog Process (AAA). High Quality Vinyl Release. Original Gatefold Design. The 1967 Impulse Records legendary Funk/Soul Instrumental masterpiece album Chicken Fat. If you haven’t heard Chicken Fat yet, get ready because the LP won’t leave your turntable until your jaw stops hitting the floor.

Long out of print and finally reissued 1965 release “Soul Dressing" Cut from the Original Analog Master tapes by Kevin Gray. All Analog Process (AAA). Pressed At Memphis Record Pressing (MRP). High Quality Vinyl Release.

Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, Ca. September 3rd, 1965.

Glassworks is a chamber music work of six movements by Philip Glass. Following his larger-scale concert and stage works, it was Glass's successful attempt to create a more pop-oriented "Walkman-suitable" work, with considerably shorter and more accessible pieces written for the recording studio. Glassworks was intended to introduce my music to a more general audience than had been familiar with it up to then. -Philip Glass

“This album is us appreciating how amazing this thing we have is. The realization of how lucky we are that we get to be part of something like this for 25 years, and to have built a community that cares for each other in the way it does. It’s not about any of us individually. When we all work together to make something happen, something bigger happens.” - Jono, Paavo and Tony – Above & Beyond. If much of the mindset and mantra behind Above & Beyond over the last quarter of a century has been born from the idea of connection, then their fifth artist album ‘Bigger Than All Of Us’ is best summed up in one word: reconnection.

Colin Hay became a household name as the front-man for 80s pop sensation Men at Work, and his musical legacy has extended for over 40 years. Man At Work Volume 2 is the sequel to his 2002 best seller Man At Work and offers fans an impeccable set of favorites from across Hay's rich catalog, including Men at Work classics, solo album highlights, and new material.

The much-anticipated follow-up to LA-based singer-songwriter Natalie Bergman’s critically acclaimed 2021 solo debut album ‘Mercy’. Since then, Bergman (previously of successful brother-sister duo Wild Belle) has released the high-streaming EP ‘Keep Those Teardrops From Falling’, along with a collaboration with Beck. Her new album 'My Home is Not in This World' channels psychedelic soul and alt-'60s pop, and is brimming with unforgettable melodies that only an artist as uniquely talented as Bergman could conjure.