Chinese Celebration

Various artists

Owners of the Arc Music releases on which many of these 19 recordings by 12 different performers or ensembles have previously appeared might take a pass. Newcomers, however, will marvel at how much Oriental folk music has in common, thematically as well as formally, with its Occidental counterparts. The piercingly nasal female vocals that occasionally pop up take some getting used to. But the erhu, the guzheng, the yangqin, the pipa, the Chinese dulcimer, and the drums will focus the attention of folk-fest habitués the world over.

Chinese Butterfly

The Chick Corea + Steve Gadd Band

Some mismatched titles aside (“Serenity,” for instance, is more of a wake-up call than “Wake-Up Call,” which is more serene than “Serenity”), this two-disc set containing over 1½ hours of effusive fusion played at an exhilarating level of virtuosity never falters. How far have Corea and Gadd come in their decades of playing? Corea’s 46-year-old “Return to Forever” now lasts five minutes longer than before but makes you wish more than ever that it won’t draw to a close.

Come to Me

Wendell Kimbrough

“All songs are registered with CCLI,” read the liner notes, “and you are welcome to sing them in your church!” Kimbrough isn’t kidding. Getting communities of believers to sing these reverently colloquialized psalms (and a few other Scripture-based texts) is the whole reason he has written and recorded them in the first place. If the melodies stay within light-pop parameters, the overridingly minor keys, simple instrumentation, and pensive tempos keep the emphasis on the lyrics—lyrics that, to Kimbrough’s credit, include an imprecation or two.

Dreams

Pretty Yende

Assuming that this South African soprano goes on to enjoy the long and rich career to which she has seemed destined ever since she began landing choice opera roles, this conservatively tailored album (the follow-up to her belatedly released 2016 debut, A Journey) will probably be regarded more as her way of having avoided the sophomore slump than as her way of making a major statement. Still, there are major moments. Donizetti and Bellini, whose operas supply 11 of the 13 selections, obviously become her.

ENCORE

Judging from their photos, the members of the 40-voice Oasis Chorale (Mennonite) and the 36-voice Acclamation Chorale (non- or interdenominational) are either relatively or downright youthful. And, as anyone who has ever been young can attest, where there’s youth there’s fire. Both ensembles have new albums, each of which fans or at least tends the flame of the North American sacred a cappella choral tradition.

The Acclamation Chorale’s I’m Gonna Sing features Negro spirituals in arrangements by the late Moses Hogan. More impressive than the attention to rhythmic detail that propels the majority of the performances is the attention to dynamic detail that imparts an aural nimbus to “Abide with Me” and “Amen.” The Oasis Chorale’s Eternal Mercies presents a more eclectic program, ranging from the incandescent (“Alleluia Incantation,” “Even When He Is Silent”) to the incandescently exotic (the Xhosa-language “Ndikhokhele Bawo”). A telling coincidence: Both albums contain Hogan’s vigorous arrangement of “I Can Tell the World.” —A.O.