Spitball Army

Fred Child has posted his favorite classical CDs of the past year at the NPR website, but don’t expect a scroll filled with the latest, greatest recordings of Mozart, Beethoven or Bach.  All right, there is a disc of Mozart and Beethoven violin concertos, but the majority of Child’s selections fill a niche where the boundaries between classically-trained virtuosity, international rhythms, jazz and pop music blur.

Generous audio clips are available for sampling of each of the ten discs chosen, which will come in handy if, like me, you are curious what a classical trombone concerto might sound like.  I left the page wanting to hear more of two of Child’s picks: gambist Jordi Savall’s Invocation a la Nuit and Marc-Andre Hamelin’s In a State of Jazz.  Amazon Wish List, here I come!