Saxophonist Yuri Honing comes after the successful album Desire, again with a jazz album that breathes peace, serenity, tension and mysticism. The inspiration comes from Honing's love for classical music, history and art. The central theme and motive for this album is Europe and heroism. In those times when people do not always realize the value of Europe and of 70 years of peace, Honing tells a binding story. During his research into the history of Europe, he chose Germany as a symbol of Europe. Because of their many good writers, philosophers, composers and painters. And because of its resilience and the leadership role they now take in Europe. He attributes to more proudness of among Europeans of the cultural DNA of our their continent.

It's only September but Gwen Stefani's celebrating Christmas early! On Monday (Sept. 18), Stefani announced she had something big planned for the holidays. Now she finally confirmed her first Christmas album, released Oct. 6, called You Make It Feel Like Christmas. The album is a collaboration with her country star boyfriend Blake Shelton and features classics like "Jingle Bells," "Santa Baby" and "Silent Night," as well as some original holiday songs.

The Canadian-Belgian artist Lara Fabian will release her highly-anticipated new studio album, ‘Camouflage’, on 6th October 2017. After more than 20 million albums sold worldwide, and following her latest platinum-certified French album in late 2015, she returns to the international scene with her 13th studio album, which was made in Stockholm, LA and Brussels and consists of twelve new songs, all in English, written and composed by Fabian together with Moh Denebi and Sharon Vaughn. The record unites Fabian’s signature vocals with an electronic production combined with classic orchestration to create a sound that is both modern and timeless.

Some of Gary Peacock’s finest music has been made in piano trios. Early in his musical life, Peacock established a fresh role for the bass as an independent melodic voice, a concept carried forward in the history-making groups he’s played with – from Paul Bley’s Bill Evans’s trios to Keith Jarrett’s. As a bandleader he has also been influential: Tangents is the second release from the great bassist’s trio with Marc Copland and Joey Baron and draws on years of shared playing in diverse contexts. All three band members contribute compositions, Peacock’s including “December Greenwings”, revisiting a piece Gary introduced on his ECM recording December Poems.

Tomas Luis de Victoria and Josquin Desprez were not contemporaries, they lived and worked in different countries, and perhaps shared little in terms of abstract compositional style.

French Touch brings together a delightful trove of sentimental pop favorites; all reimagined in Carla Bruni's intimate and moving acoustic style and chosen for their personal significance in her own words, songs that inspire the French term for love at first sight a coup de foudre. Coup de foudre more or less also describes what happened when Bruni met Grammy award winning producer, composer, and musician David Foster after an L.A. performance in 2014. Foster volunteered to produce Carla's next record on the spot, and the two began a transatlantic sharing of songs, which was then shaped during twin recording sessions in Paris and L.A.

Chris Hillman, a founding member of the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas, and the Desert Rose Band, is widely acknowledged as a seminal figure in the creation of country rock and an architect of American popular music. On September 22, 2017, Hillman will release Bidin’ My Time, his first studio album in over a decade. Tom Petty produced the album at his studio in Southern California, and Hillman’s longtime collaborator and co-founder of the Desert Rose Band Herb Pedersen served as Executive Producer.

The Darkness are back and ready to blow up your speakers again. The band has titled their fifth full-length album Pinewood Smile and they’ve provided fans with some new music to check out in the form or a track called “All the Pretty Girls.” With a high pitched distortion followed by Justin Hawkins‘ wail and the addition of drums and guitars, the track sets off through an upbeat and catchy journey. There’s a few muscular licks in there, with Hawkins occasionally showing off his falsetto and throwing in a few barks for good measure. Check out the song in the player above.

Melanie De Biasio marks her return with third album, Lilies - from the unsettled glide of Your Freedom Is The End Of Me, De Biasio mining a deep blues over spectral, knowing piano, to the restless rumble of Gold Junkies, which relocates the infernal bustle of Nina Simone's Sinnerman to the 21st Century, to the bereft, bewitched Brother, and the haunted, after-midnight spook of And My Heart Goes On - you'll be struck by how alive, how teeming with ideas and energy this music is.

Érik Satie is a Janusian, paradoxical figure. On the one hand, his music is a dazzling look at a bygone era, nostalgic for an oft fantasized time, with its almost childlike sincerity and curiosity. On the other, it offers a piercing glance, radically turned towards the future, disrupting conformity with its clear, stripped-down lines.

Through a chance meeting on a flight from Berlin to New York, actor Bill Murray and cellist Jan Vogler became fast friends, curious about each others’ artistic worlds and interests. The result of their collaboration is New Worlds, an unexpected and enchanting exploration of the intersection of music and literature. Both the recording and live events feature songs paired with literary readings brought to life with classical music.

The Z.E.N. Trio – pianist Zhang Zuo, violinist Esther Yoo and cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan – met on the BBC New Generation Artists’ scheme in 2015 and have since performed concerts together for BBC radio as well as across the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

The Age of Enlightenment has never ceased to fascinate. The philosophical ideas and esthetics it sparked are an unending source for inspiration and artistic research.

The musical identities of many composers are inseparable from the instrument they play. Think of Chopin and the piano. This is particularly true of the baroque composers, and modern day players of these instruments experience a camaraderie that defies time and place. We think of them as family. Some of them still require super human physical or intellectual efforts to understand their works or make them sound. Others, such as Marin Marais, my companion of over four decades, speak to us simply and immediately, his voice crystal clear.

Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass set a standard and defined the Canadian sound for big band music for decades. Rob McConnell assembled the original Boss Brass from Toronto’s finest studio musicians. The instrumentation of the The Boss Brass was originally sixteen pieces, consisting of trumpets, trombones, french horns and a rhythm section, but no saxophones (woodwinds). McConnell introduced a sax section in 1970, and expanded the trumpet section to include a fifth trumpet player in 1976, bringing the total to 22 members. Recorded: Instrumental tracks recorded in June, 1978 at (Nimbus 9) Sound Stage Studios, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Vocal tracks recorded in August, 1978 at MPS Studio, Villingen. Mixed Dec. 4-8, 78.