Piano: Judith Cohen

Clarinet: Eugene Zoro

Description: Aaron Copland: Piano Sonata. Like many admirers of Copland I've often come away with the feeling that he wasn't all on when he penned his only Piano Sonata. I know it's a challenging work and a nightmare for its interpreters. Many worthy pianists have thrown themselves at it and this music just doesn't seem to fit. Maybe it's the hall? Maybe the piano? Maybe the Sonata is just a bad piece? This new disc with Judith Cohen, piano puts a light on the matter. At last! The music is splendid. It's quirky and obscure but this much we already knew. What I think most of us wondered, was anyone other than Copland himself going to nail this mutt. Cohen's put that issue to sleep and the monster has woken. I would count this disc as a must for any fan of American music. Leonard Bernstein: Sonata for Clarinet and Piano with Judith Cohen, piano and Eugene Zoro, clarinet is buzzing with beat. I love the interplay between Cohen and Zoro. If you like West Side Story this early work of Bernstein won't disappoint. Brian Pearson: Sonata No.1 for Piano solo is an eclectic work and probably, just for its technical audacity, worth the twelve minutes duration to complete its two movements. The Nocturnes are haunting and spare and Cohen proves herself a worthy interpreter.

Dallas News

Piano: Judith Cohen

Description: Judith Cohen is a pianistic dynamo on this recording. Neither Ginastera or Bartok ever heard their music rendered so well.

Hilton Brye

Performed by: VARIOUS

Description: There are 3 composers and 3 performers. Great 20th and 21st century music.

Composer: Confused Music

Performed by: Confused Music

Description: Confused Music was founded in Ovodda, a small town on the island of Sardinia in Italy 2005, by brothers Joey and Vito Zeeno. In 2007 the brothers stole across the pond in search of fresh faces, new places landing first in Montreal. After spending six gelid months there, they strove south then west at winter's end to Montana. Eventually spending six weeks in the woods clubbing trees with the residents of a commune near Glacier National Park. It was there amidst bear, mountain and stream they befriended Nigel Knowles, a futurist musician and day-trader millionaire. Nigel was known for his keen ear and fleet of vintage synthesizers he kept at his home in LA. When he told the brothers he owned an original Moog 5, an ARP 2600, a Fairlight series IIx, and an Elka string ensemble we had to ask, "What's an Elka string ensemble." "A toy with a serious 60 cycle hum," he said (whatever that means). The rest is a legend of incredible, incredulous and vascular musical musing. Of synthesized chaos floated upon a clouded terrestrial pool of vapidity. Of taming the noise and mayhem of the LA street into rhythmic soup with a well-heeded musicality. Of penning a music with order and thematic audacity. With a craft so utterly abaft in our age, it makes the high-minded weep. No superfluous garnishes. Rock solid development. Melding technology with motive. Can with string. Pole with one's soul. A music of bears on the prowl, wolves at night howl, feckless hunters urinating on trees. The dulcet song of birds. The squeal of rutting elk. The stanch of gunfire. The mewl of sirens. The air of despair about the south LA beat. Concinnity Recordings is proud to introduce the polyphonous squilla from these musical mongrels. Thus we give to the world a less Confused Music.

Joy, Mn.1 and Mn.4 (are available for listening)

Composer: BR. Pearson

Performed by: Heavy Tin

Description: New Bop ultra cool fusion jazz.
"Pearson and Reel push this record over the top."

BR. Pearson, piano
Izzie Reel, bass

Composer: B.R. Pearson

Piano: B.R. Pearson

Description: Where space and time are concerned, one could say that painting and music divide space/time. Paintings perpetually occupy space and music, while it's in motion, perpetually occupies time. One is made of particles of matter, the other a wave. One must be seen the other heard. It's impossible to hear a painting and it is, with the naked eye, impossible to see music; yet beyond these matters of matter both keep many of the same objectives. They chronicle emotions, events, movement, stagnation, imagination, technique, color, beauty, realism, and abstraction. They obfuscate, resonate, irritate, ameliorate, imitate; give humanity cause to congregate. They're revered and despised with our ears and our eyes. They feed us, bleed us, and in some ways cheat us or complete us. It is the aim of this work to complete them (the paintings). To bring time into their space. To animate them. To elaborate their story. To see them with our ears. To give their essence another sense to explore them.

B.R. Pearson

Pearson's phases and tuneful imagery give these paintings new colour. This is candy for the ears.

Kimon Daltas
Classical Music

Composer: B.R. Pearson

Piano: B.R. Pearson

Description: Polydia Musica is an ensemble record with a pleasant mix of jazz and classical. It's very accessible yet it has it's own voice. Pearson displays his virtuosity in inspiring and lyrical ways.

Andy Hamilton for International Piano

Lovers Loop, Bop Loop and Angelic Loop (are available for listening)

Piano: Judith Cohen

Violin: Mikhail Schmidt

Cello: David Tonkonogui

Description: Five Melodies for violin and piano, Visions Fugitives and Sonata for Cello and piano are some of Prokofiev's finest works and all on one disc. Performed by three of Seattle's finest musicians. Soothing and inspirational.

Composer: BR Pearson

Performed by: Heavy Tin

Description: "Mostly-acoustic piano trio just right for the 21st century with a great new release titled “reFUSED” the group called Heavy Tin is like The Bad Plus and Bud Powell all rolled into one." Quote from Russ Davis; Moja Radio
Piano: BR Pearson
Bass: Izzie Reel
Drums: Viktor Lorak

Composer: B.R. Pearson

Piano: B.R. Pearson

Description: "Style Chronicles" is a five movement work and in this Pearson puts forth an original retrospective of piano evolution and the techniques incorporated in both composition and performance from the classical to the present. "Blue Work" is a concoction of blues flavored pieces put through a classical makeover. These dressed up tunes are elegant enough to please the classical listener but keep enough soul so one never loses its root in the blues. "Somber Bliss", the albums namesake, was composed to commemorate the brave men and women, many just teenagers, who've given their lives in the wars. The work takes us to heaven and hell, but in the end leaves one with a feeling of hope. That at the end of all this conflict and death of the innocent humanity might in the end get it right and pick up a pen instead of a rifle, open their eyes instead of their fire.

Sonata, Brahmsian and The Circle of Fates (are available for listening)