“It is a live recording, and while this shows (audience interaction and extraneous noises are neither edited out nor intrusive to one’s enjoyment), it adds to the electricity and excitement at what was clearly a much anticipated event. The huge audience shout and reaction at the end seems absolutely heartfelt… I loved it and commend it to all. Pentatone’s presentation is appropriately sumptuous. “

We are proud to share with you that our release of “Mason Bates – The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs” with The Santa Fe Opera is MusicWeb International‘s Recording of the month! Read a glimpse of the review below:

“If the music for Jobs is restless and agitated, that provided for his wife Laurene Powell Jobs is the opposite: slower, reflective, often ethereal. The mezzo Sasha Cooke provides the most beatific singing as well as the most rounded characterisation of any of the roles in this work. The part of Steve Wozniak is paired with saxophones. The tenor Garrett Sorenson invests the part with both humour and gravitas, crucial for a character who attempts to provide Jobs with some sort of moral compass. The same could also be said of the scene-stealing bass Wu Wei whose role as Kōbun (Jobs’s late spiritual advisor) is accompanied by the exotic sounds of Chinese gongs and Tibetan bowls. Again this could seem like a lazy cliché but Bates’s assured, magnetic writing is anything but.”

Read the full review by Richard Hanlon on Music Web International

photo by: Ken Howard