Having become the fastest artist in history to reach one billion streams in 2015, this year is shaping up to be even bigger for Kyrre G rvell Dahl, aka KYGO, as he reveals the details behind his debut studio album, Cloud Nine….Having topped seven million record sales globally since the release of 'Firestone' back in 2014, Kygo has amassed a who's who list of collaborators to join him for what is one of the most anticipated albums of 2016, and with Labrinth the next name out of the bag, expectations will grow once more as to who is next to join Kygo on Cloud Nine. 'Firestone', featuring Australian singer Conrad Sewell hit the top 10 in Australia and has been certified 2xPLATINUM. Follow up 'Stole The Show' was certified Gold.

The Tunisian singer and oud-player Dhafer Youssef once said quite spontaneously “There is no prototype for beauty”. This disarmingly unconditional statement is in fact sufficient to sum up the motivation and sound of his new album Diwan Of Beauty & Odd. Anyone who has ever had the opportunity to savour the Tunisian’s passionate, yet peacefully dreamy soundscapes will on this album instantly recognise his temperament and instinctive feel for transcending musical boundaries. As Youssef’s voice soars to increasingly lofty heights, all earthly things are left behind.

The Berlin-based composer Nils Frahm's Spaces is a live album patchworked together from various recordings, containing songs both old and new, some shortened, some lengthened, some radically different in approach. It's a mesmerizing and beautiful work.

Since 2015, Krzysztof Urbanski has been principal guest conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, one of the leading German orchestras. They are currently preparing together the inauguration in January 2017 of Hamburg's new concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie, a major musical event in Germany with which Alpha Classics will be associated. Krzysztof Urbanski is also music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

Whilst the names James Kent, Charles Avison or Samuel Webbe may not be familiar to today’s listeners, 200 years ago these composers and their works were prized for their singability, their musical evocations of the text, and their beautiful sonorities. Rarely recorded, and some works never before recorded, The Old Colony Collection contains a diverse array of compositions that were sung on both sides of the Atlantic and includes anthems and ‘glees’ as well as selections from Handel’s oratorios, and arrangements of works by Mozart. The selection of works chosen for this recording features some of the finest examples from this fabulous and extensive anthology.

The distinctive style of Edmund Rubbra’s music is unmistakable – his love of counterpoint, his sense of tonality, and his clever working of melody make him stand out from many of his contemporaries. His writing, whilst harmonically challenging and vocally taxing, is also intensely personal and highly charged with emotion - at times mystical, at others seriously dramatic.

The surprising Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam had made Obaro Ejimiwe better known as Ghostpoet a true revelation of 2011. Two years later, Some Say I So I Say Light hammered it home a bit more. With Shedding Skin released at the start of 2015, the Londoner knighted by Gilles Peterson offered some kind of new start by working with new musicians. The disc was then somewhat of an oddity, looking more towards rock than electro. His singing also evolved more towards spoken word.

An exciting new collaboration between some of the UK’s most eminent musical ensembles sees Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral Choir, one of the world's oldest and best-known cathedral choirs, joins forces with soloists from The Sixteen and Oxford Baroque on this new recording of Francesco Durante’s Requiem Mass in C minor.

After the pioneering festival Cosmojazz, which he is the creator, André Manoukian launches the brand new label Mad Chaman and unveils the first album of Foehn Trio. On Magnesia, the three musicians based in Lyon present a sunny, airy jazz, where the breeze blown by playful melodies leads to peaks where only the music and the tranquility of the pastures remain.

Christmas is a time for being together with family or friends. It’s a time for reaching out to those in need and it can be a time to remember those who are no longer with us. At the heart of those moments, music is there to help us make sense of it all.

2005 Van Cliburn Piano Competition top-prize winner Davide Cabassi made his orchestral debut at the age of thirteen with the RAI Radio Symphony Orchestra in Milan.

A homage to the memory of victims of the slave trade.
This new multicultural project from Jordi Savall and his musicians on The Routes of Slavery (1444-1888) marks a world first in the history of music and of the three continents involved in the trade in African slaves and their exploitation in the New World, which are brought together through the early music of the colonial period, the musical traditions of Mali and the oral traditions of the descendants of slaves in Madagascar, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.

It was in these terms that Ferruccio Busoni greeted the publication in 1908 of the 14 Bagatelles, in which Béla Bartók conveyed the violent aesthetic impact of his discovery of authentic Hungarian peasant music. Over the next 20 years, up to the magisterial Sonata of 1926, he indefatigably refined an innovative pianistic language: pungent, dissonant, percussive, with multiple new playing techniques, that was to influence the entire 20th century. A master of every style, from Haydn to Boulez by way of Chopin and Chabrier, Alain Planès stands revealed here as a Bartókian of the front rank.

This Grammy-winning release marks Vladimir Ashkenazy's first of three cycles of the complete Beethoven piano concertos and captures the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Georg Solti at the peak of their careers. Ashkenazy recorded these concertos in May 1971 and May 1972: in 1971 the third and fifth concertos were recorded; a year later the cycle was completed with the first, second and fourth concertos.

Ticciati has previously recorded Symphonie Fantastique, Les nuits d'été & La mort de Cléopâtre and L'enfance du Christ; the latter was named Gramophone's 'Top Choice' recording of this repertoire.