Rec­om­mended record­ings, new and old:

Jacob Garchik, The Heav­ens: The Athe­ist Gospel Trom­bone Album — hate to be a tease, but you’re going to have to wait until July 31 to get your hands on this won­der­ful record­ing, but do get your hands on it. This is a solo disc from Garchik where he over­dubs on trom­bone, sousa­phone, bari­tone and alto horn and slide trum­pet, play­ing all orig­i­nal pieces. In the brief notes he writes of his deep love for gospel music, and the set of nine tracks — mak­ing a loosely con­nected suite — has a sound deep in the sanc­ti­fied music of Africa-American churches. But as the sub­ti­tle might indi­cate, there’s less liturgy here and a lot more Lester Bowie. This sounds to me like a per­sonal and very strong response to Bowie’s Brass Fan­tasy, respect­ful but not imi­ta­tive. Like Bowie, the music goes back to the pre-jazz brass band tra­di­tion and brings out the sweet, sweat­ing stew of funk and soul and blues from that. The sound is rich and mel­low, and Garchik’s abil­ity to artic­u­late on each horn adds a rhyth­mic kick that obvi­ates the drums of a string bass. It’s fun, truly soul­ful, quite beau­ti­ful, really touches the heart and the feet. The essence of tasty and sat­is­fy­ing music and one of the best discs of 2012.

Look for the release at his site, iTunes, Band­camp and CD Baby, and in the mean­time down­load his free album, At Play. And mark your cal­en­dars for the July 25 CD release show at Shapeshifter Lab. Garchik will be joined by Josh Rose­man, Cur­tis Has­sel­bring, Matt Mus­sel­man, Alan Fer­ber and Cur­tis Fowlkes, plus brass and drums rhythm, and it’s gonna be ‘bone heaven.

Pub­lic Image Ltd, This is Pil — Fresh, renewed and same as they ever where. The promo video only gives the slight­est hint of how great this record is.

Ravel, Daph­nis et Chloé, Bernard Haitink, Lon­don Phil­har­monic Orches­tra, John Alldis Choir — Haitink is a musi­cian for whom I needed to develop the proper matu­rity to appre­ci­ate. That’s no knock on him, but on me. Sane, sober, with intel­lec­tual and musi­cal con­trol over large scale struc­ture and pace, he’s at his best in music that is inher­ently full of orches­tral color. Where his Beethoven might be solid but not earth-shattering, his Shostakovitch, Mahler, Bruck­ner, Stravin­sky and Debussy are usu­ally excel­lent, the con­duc­tor seem­ing to step aside and allow the music to unfold, when of course he is actu­ally guid­ing that direc­tion and clar­i­fy­ing the tex­tures. This con­cert record­ing from 1979 is an exam­ple of him at his finest, and one of the finest archives of Ravel’s mas­ter­work (it has almost entirely sup­planted my pre­vi­ous favorites from Boulez and Dutoit). The cir­cum­stances make it ideal, per­haps, with the excite­ment and pas­sion of the live set­ting enhanc­ing the clear and pleas­ingly upfront engi­neer­ing. True to his strengths, there is a great feel­ing of pace here, every­thing flows, nei­ther drag­ging or rush­ing. Haitink doesn’t indulge any­thing but the composer’s wishes, which means that a struc­ture that under other conductor’s batons can seem illog­i­cal and arbi­trary hear sounds air­tight. This is bal­let music, and this is the first pure record­ing of the piece I’ve heard that gives it the rhyth­mic clar­ity and spring that one can imag­ine dancers mov­ing to. Intense moments are pow­er­ful with­out be brit­tle, and the exha­la­tion of the “Lever du jour” is both mag­i­cal and earthy. A first choice for this piece.

Here’s some older footage of Wolf­gang Sawal­lisch and Philly to whet your appetite:

Haydn: Com­plete Sym­phonies — Because it’s been feel­ing like sum­mer lately, and sum­mer­time is Haydn time. Essen­tial works in West­ern clas­si­cal music, never a dull moment across 100+(!!!!) sym­phonies. The two sets from Antal Dorati and Adam Fis­cher are each absolutely mas­ter­ful, get them both if you can, flip a coin or go by price if you can’t.

Byron Janis, Chopin Col­lec­tion — bril­liant and mes­mer­iz­ing play­ing from this great pianist. He rav­ishes you with dis­ci­pline and entices you with what he withholds.