This is my first recording project that I have decided to take up in the Summer of 2015. I had enough original music to create an album and great musicians that were available to record it, so I asked "Why not?". A lot of these compositions were written over the course of the two years when I first decided to take up composing. I am so proud on how these tracks have turned out! There are some great moments that have been recorded and I hope that you will enjoy listening as much as we had enjoyed playing it!

This is Ivan Fischer’s second Mahler symphony for Channel Classics with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, his first being the Sixth recorded in February 2005. His opening to this Resurrection symphony, its hero’s Funeral Rites, is disciplined with touches of brusqueness in the brass. But as this is supposed to ask ‘Why did you live?’ I’m very aware of Fischer’s empathy for the visionary aspects of the movement, as if to answer ‘To experience all that’s lovely’.

At the end of the Thirty Years War, the support of the Viennese Imperial Court allowed the emergence of an extraordinarily talented generation of musicians speaking with virtuosity, humour and depth. Schmelzer, Biber and Kerll were at the forefront. For Carnival festivities where music has pride of place they regale us with earthy works that mimic the sounds of nature and everyday life. They also had to meet the taste of Emperor Leopold I, who particularly appreciated imitative counterpoint, and for whom they composed these sonatas which have the power to elevate the soul and spirit.

Having released two albums in a nine month period between October 1981 and July 1982, “Three of a Perfect Pair” is the final part of the recorded trilogy begun with “Discipline” and “Beat”. Originally released in April 1984, from the pointillist minimalism of the title track through to the urgent rush of ‘Sleepless’ and the album’s closer ‘Larks’ Tongues in Aspic III’ - the only reference to the 1970s incarnations of the band – Crimson’s distinctive mixture of rock, electronica, funk and pure pop songs, ensured the group’s status as one of the most interesting and innovative bands of the decade.

Trumpeter Nate Wooley is among the most exploratory and esoteric players/composers in creative improvisation along with fellow trumpeter/cornetists Rob Mazurek and Peter Evans. Wooley's catalog ranges from the wildly free The Nows (Clean Feed Records, 2011), a quartet that included Ken Vandermark and Paul Lyton, to the Bojan Vuleti composed chamber work, Atemwende (Ignoring Gravity Music, 2013) with the Mivos String Quartet). But Wooley's real eclecticism has shone in his works as a leader—particularly in recent years—with the minimalist solo experimentation of The Almond (Pogus Productions, 2011) and the nineteen-person ensemble on Seven Storey Mountain V (Pleasure Of Text Records, 2016). Somewhere in between, both stylistically and in terms of head-count, is Argonautica.

""Rather than make a traditional covers record, I thought it would be much more fun to create a new type of project in which artists communicated with each other and swapped a song for a song, i.e. you do one of mine and I'll do one of yours, hence the title - Scratch My Back - And I'll Scratch Yours." Peter Gabriel

This release sees Murray Perahia returning to Brahms after a significant series of excellent Bach recordings for Sony Classical. His 1991 Sony recording of the Sonata No.3 has an assortment of Intermezzos and Rhapsodies as a filler, but this new disc sees Perahia taking the later opus numbers head-on, working up to them chronologically via the Handel Variations and Rhapsodies Op.79 which, as Katrin Eich says in her booklet notes, each represent an ‘end point’ at certain stages in Brahms’ compositional output.

Deluxe two disc (CD + NTSC/Region 0 DVD-A) edition. Beat is the 11th release in the acclaimed King Crimson 40th anniversary series. The classic album has been mixed for 5.1 Surround Sound from the original studio masters by Steven Wilson and is fully approved by Crimson founder Robert Fripp. The CD features a completely new stereo album mix by Robert Fripp and Steven Wilson plus a studio version of the otherwise unreleased track "Absent Lovers". The DVD-A features a 5.1 DTS Mix and High Resolution Stereo mixes.