Reviews

Suave, Like Nobody’s Business

We redress a great wrong in finally reviewing RAUL MALO's 2007 Christmas masterpiece, Marshmallow World + Other Holiday Favorites. This Yuletide essential is so suave it even offers 'Silver Bells' as a tango. Believe it.

Spotlight Album

Kind Of, Sort Of…No, Really Good. Exceptional, Even.

Joanne Shaw Taylor’s artistic growth continues unabated since her dramatic debut in 2008 with White Sugar. Her third solo long player, Almost Always Never, is another triumph,. one of the best blues albums of 2012.

Reviews

A Bracing Christmas Wind

In Horns For the Holidays, the superb Dallas Wind Symphony not only celebrates the Christmas music tradition but also exemplifies the best of the wind ensemble genre, with its unique sonorities and long tradition of both originality and sense of playfulness and humor on the…

Reviews

Joy To The World

A wonderful and heartwarming thing happened when the Jay Ungar & Molly Mason Family Band showed up at the University of Mary Washington to play a program of evocative, sometimes poignant, sometimes haunting seasonal tunes, new and old. It's all there on A Fiddler's Holiday,…

Reviews

Lovely and Unusual

This cozy, gentle, and varied collection of Christmas music from Hereford Cathedral is broken into three sections: Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. The music ranges from the 14th-century Resonemus laudibus, to a work by John Tavener (his glorious—and only—brief masterpiece, The Lamb), with stops in…

Spotlight Album

A Christmas Story For All Seasons, And For The Ages

From its opening hosanna, 'I See the Light of the World' to its closing exaltation, 'Morning In Bethlehem,' DONNA ULISSE's song cycle All The Way to Bethlehem is not merely close to perfect, it's a work of art. An instant seasonal classic is our Album…

Reviews

Christmas Picks 2012

TheBluegrassSpecial.com/Deep Roots Christmas Picks for 2012 include new seasonal outpourings from DONNA ULISSE, EDIE ADAMS, DALLAS WIND SYMPHONY, HEY ROSETTA, THE JAY UNGAR & MOLLY MASON FAMILY BAND, DEATH MIGHT BE YOUR SANTA CLAUS (various blues artists, most from the '20s and '30s), CHRISTMAS THE…

Reviews

At The Summit

Recorded live at the historic Bell Theater in Pineville, Kentucky, CHRISTMAS THE MOUNTAIN WAY is a bluegrass celebration of the Yuletide's true meaning, with a first-rate lineup of traditional bluegrass artists in peak form. Mark this CD/DVD combo as essential.

Reviews

Informal, Intimate and Memorable: Edie Adams Celebrates the Season

Pieced together from audio clips Edie Adams paid a transcription service to record so she could tweak her performances on The Ernie Kovacs Show, The Edie Adams Christmas Album is informal, intimate and memorable--a raft of charming performances of Yuletide favorites by a woefully underrated…

Spotlight Album

A Proper Homecoming

Memphis bluesman DARREN JAY returns to the U.S. this month after being deployed to Kuwait with the U.S. Naval Reserves. He's coming back Stateside to rave reviews for his first album with his band The Delta Souls,DRINK MY WINE, a collection of tough, bare-knuckled electric…