Thanks to the Latin-inflected title track, Children of Sanchez became another huge hit for Chuck Mangione. The title song even earned him a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, and serious jazz listeners will spot a problem with that award -- it was for pop, not jazz. That, of course, is an accurate assessment of Mangione's music, since there isn't much improvisation on the album at all. Instead, there's a selection of Spanish and Latin-flavored instrumentals, arranged as if to give the impression that the album is a song cycle. If so, it's a song cycle/concept album that doesn't go anywhere. Nevertheless, there's enough pleasant music here to satisfy fans of his pop stylings. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The first collaboration between Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone, A Fistful of Dollars, surprises for all its originality: for this legendary Western starring Clint Eastwood as “the Stranger” as he stirs up ill-feeling between two rival families in a little Mexican town, the Italian composer distanced himself for Hollywood convention with the soundtrack to this film. Morricone’s style remains imprinted on the collective memory: the principle theme is a folk tune on a whistle, a recorder, acoustic guitar and choirs alongside bell chimes as well as whiplashes and anvil strikes. To top it all off, Morricone had the anachronistic idea of weaving in an electric guitar - the famous Fender Stratocaster, made famous at the time with The Shadows’ Apache. Behind this tour de force, one can nevertheless find some tracks that reflect more the traditional musical aesthetic of a Western, like the stampeding L’Inseguimento (which features the trumpet, an instrument Morricone studied when he was young, the suspenseful Consuelo Baxter, Senza Pieta, Tortura and also the source music Square Dance. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

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A compilation of the '80s hits by singer/songwriter Baby do Brasil (then Baby Consuelo). Included are the lyrical "Menino do Rio," the reggae "Telúrica," the romantic "Um Auê Com Você," and the Os Novos Baianos-type electric/virtuosic renditions of more deeply Brazilian styles in the classic samba "O Que Vier Eu Traço" (Alvaiade/Zé Maria), the Novos Baianos hit "Lá Vem o Brasil Descendo a Ladeira," and her talented choro rendition in the challenging "Brasileirinho."© Alvaro Neder /TiVo

The two Brahms Serenades were the composer's first orchestral works, and they are often presented in program notes and the like as preparatory exercises before the composer undertook the symphony genre. Brahms may indeed have thought of them this way, for he was intimidated by Beethoven's example and did not write his first symphony until he was 43. However, they are also wonderful works on their own terms, and the composer esteemed them highly. They are light works that might be thought of as founding documents of neoclassicism, and giving them too much weight drains the life out of them. Conductor Victor Julien-Laferrière avoids this in his delicate readings with his new Orchestre Consuelo, and he even goes well to the opposite direction, with tamped-down but still graceful performances. Is this "French" Brahms, making him sound a bit like Saint-Saëns? Maybe, and listeners can make up their own minds about it. For an idea, compare the final movement of the Serenade No. 1 in D major, Op. 11, with the performance by Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. Neither conductor digs too far into the galloping rhythm, but Chailly's reading has more urgency. Julien-Laferrière's interpretation is beautifully executed by the players, and this makes one want to hear more from this new group. Mirare's studio sound is a bit boxy. © James Manheim /TiVo

Composer John Adams and lyricist/librettist June Jordan took as inspiration for their musical I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky the Northridge earthquake of 1994; the title is based on a quotation from a survivor that Jordan culled from the Los Angeles Times. The more general inspiration was L.A. itself, however, as Jordan weaved an ensemble drama examining the lives of seven contemporary Los Angelenos: a young black man; his girlfriend, an illegal Hispanic immigrant; a young black minister with a wandering eye; one of his female parishioners; a white rookie cop not quite ready to confront his homosexuality; a white TV news anchorwoman wondering why the cop isn't paying enough attention to her; and a first-generation son of Vietnamese boat people who has become a public defender. Their lives intersect in a period leading up to an earthquake that changes those lives drastically. The show was first produced in 1995; this studio cast recording, made in 1996 and 1997, retains only two members of the original cast, Darius de Haas as David, the minister, and Welly Yang as Rick, the public defender. Otherwise, the cast has undergone some upgrading, at least in terms of name recognition, with Broadway stars Audra McDonald and Marin Mazzie stepping into the roles of Consuelo, the illegal immigrant, and Tiffany, the anchorwoman. The episodic nature of the plot and the differing ethnicities allow Adams to try many different musical styles. After beginning with the title song, which is in the familiar repetitive style of Philip Glass, Adams incorporates elements of rock, pop, blues, and gospel in appropriate ways in the successive tracks, albeit without actually using the styles to create satisfying popular music. He comes closest in the lusty trio number for the three women, "Song About the Bad Boys and the News," and in the duet for David and his potential new girlfriend Leila (Angela Teek), "Three Weeks and Still I'm Outta My Mind," which has something of the flavor of a Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell performance. He is constrained, however, by the demands of the plot, which is trying to pack a lot of social commentary into a single musical. As a show and as a record, the work is ambitious, but somewhat overstuffed.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

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