Sophisticated Lady

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HDtracks | iTunes  | Native DSD Volume 1 | Native DSD Volume 2 | SoundCloud | Yarlung Records | Review | Sonics: 5 out of 5! Sophisticated Lady Jazz Quartet. Yarlung. This band of young jazz musicians follows in the classy-cool tradition of Shorty Rogers & His Giants, a tasteful swinging late 50s-early 60s outfit led by a principal creator of the West Coast sound. Recorded in Cammilleri Hall in LA, this debut album sounds astoundingly good. Recorded live, it gives one the feeling of having a ringside seat at an intimate jazz club. It opens with a politely swinging rendition of Jerome Kern’s “I’m Old Fashioned” that’s underscored by drummer Andrew James Boyle’s deft brushwork at the intro. Every nuance of JJ Kirkpatrick’s bristling trumpet solo here can be readily felt while Boyle’s switch to sticks on the ride cymbal is like sparklers being set off in the dark. Boyle’s gentle ballad “Gone” is a lyrical highlight while the Ellington-Strayhorn song “Isfahan” Continue Reading →

The Absolute Sound – Yarlung Records Makes A Splash

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Yarlung Records Makes A Splash By Jeff Wilson   |  Aug 13th, 2014 Categories: Jazz, Classical One of the pleasures of experiencing a second golden age of audio is witnessing all the ways record labels keep evolving. Take, for example, Yarlung Records, a California- based company that, when it was launched in 2005, was just one more small label in the increasingly sink-or-swim music industry. Almost ten years later Yarlung remains, in the words of owner Bob Attiyeh (uh-TEA-yuh), “too small to fail,” yet its list of accomplishments points to the success a label can achieve when it combines carefully-chosen performances with superb-sounding recordings. Case in point: In 2010 Yarlung won a Grammy for Antonio Lysy at The Broad: Music from Argentina, a recording that also earned a spot on the list of top forty best-sounding recordings TAS compiled in Issue 234. A big part of Yarlung’s success comes from its Continue Reading →

Mahler Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor – Gerard Schwarz

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CD | Amazon | iTunes | HDtracks | NativeDSD | SoundCloud | Mahler Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor. Gerard Schwarz, cond., The Colburn Orchestra.  YARLUNG 41014 (64:00) By any standard, this is a superlative Mahler Fifth; given that it’s a live performance by a student orchestra, it’s frankly jaw-dropping. Though less well known than Eastman, Juilliard, Curtis or the New England Conservatory, the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles is one of America’s top-flight musical institutions– as may be gathered from the fact that it currently fields an orchestra every bit the equal of any of its venerable eastern rivals.  But then again, with the American Youth Symphony, the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, the USC Thornton Symphony and the UCLA Philharmonia – several of which are more than capable of mopping the floor with the highly touted Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra – Los Angeles has a fair claim to Continue Reading →

Nigel Armstrong :: Voix des Arts, Joseph Newsome

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Amazon iTunes Yarlung Records High Res 24 bit Voix des Arts, Joseph Newsome November 1st, 2014 CD REVIEW: Johann Sebastian Bach, Béla Bartók, & Erich Wolfgang Korngold – VIOLIN SONATAS & CONCERTO (Nigel Armstrong, violin; Yarlung Records 65007) JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 – 1750): Violin Sonata No. 3 in C major, BWV 1005; BÉLA BARTÓK (1881 – 1945): Sonata for Solo Violin, Sz. 117, BB 124; and ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD (1897 – 1957): Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35—Nigel Armstrong, violin; The Colburn Orchestra; Sir Neville Marriner, conductor [Recorded in performance in Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA, on 13 February 2011 (Korngold) and at the Brain and Creativity Institute’s Cammilleri Hall, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 21 – 23 October 2013 (Bach, Bartók); Yarlung Records 65007; 1 CD, 67:29; Available from Amazon, ClassicsOnline, jpc, iTunes, Presto Classical, and major music retailers] Few decisions are more important to the Continue Reading →

The Yarlung Sound

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Yarlung Records celebrated its first seven years with a special CD including repertoire stretching across five hundred years of musical history.  Joshua Cheek wrote this article in appreciation: Small is Beautiful: Yarlung Records and a Pilgrimage to a Perfect Sound Had Bob Attiyeh told me he was founding a record label seven years ago, I would have done everything in my power to discourage him. Launching an audiophile label with a piano recital that ranged from Baroque music through the High Romantic seemed an impossibly risky first step. And yet, seven years later, Yarlung Records has cultivated a distinctive catalogue of hand-crafted releases that consistently win the acclaim of the industry’s most discerning ears while showcasing extraordinary young artists performing an exciting and eclectic mix of repertoire. From that first recording with rising star Australian pianist David Fung, Yarlung Records has continued to deliver fresh and surprising ways of hearing Continue Reading →