On her debut American release (she'd done a record in Germany that she now disowns), Rosanne Cash may not have shaken the money tree or the Billboard charts, but she and husband/producer/collaborator Rodney Crowell began to change the face of contemporary country music forever. Recorded in L.A. and not Nash Vegas, Right or Wrong still utilized talent synonymous with Music City, but the sound that took country and merged it with the rock and pop styles of the day was a winning formula.

The River and The Thread, her first album of original songs since 2006, Rosanne Cash and husband/ co-writer/ producer/ guitarist John Leventhal traveled the American south in search of creative inspiration that would reflect what she calls 'the resonance, beauty and longing of the region.' From Arkansas boyhood home of her iconic father Johnny to William Faulkner's house in Mississippi to the small towns and Crescent City of the Delta, Cash says she started to 'feel a deeper layer of the South than I had ever experienced.' Stories were culled, lyrics penned, songs written. As with all Rosanne Cash albums, there's a subtle balance of traditional country overtones with acoustic folk and Americana leanings, Leventhal's shimmering guitar fills and a Cash's voice, plaintive and seductive. In many ways, The River and The Thread is a logical step from her 2009 album The List, a collection of country classics handpicked by her father that connected family roots to the distinctive, decidedly modern singer and songwriter Cash had become.

The eleven songs form an album that is both original and cohesive, and explores Geoffroy’s many states of mind. Inspired by travel and nature, as well as the desire for transformation, the artist is in full quest- mode for liberty and independence. More electro than his 2015 "Soaked in Gold" EP, "Coastline" still features organic instrumentation, unique to Geoffroy’s aesthetic. He’s produced a solid mix of percussions, guitars, analog keyboards and synths, and woodwind instruments on several songs.

Modern jazz fans have a right to feel possessive about the singer José James. In the last decade, he’s been one of the suavest vocal improvisers on the scene. His 2015 album devoted to songs made popular by Billie Holiday, Yesterday I Had the Blues, sounded to me like the most soulful tribute to come out during Lady Day’s centennial. Steeped as he is in jazz, James has also shown a restlessness with strict genre categorization. He’s described his love of funk, R&B and hip-hop in interviews. And when Blue Note announced his new album, the label’s press release bore a striking quote from the artist: “I could make jazz albums the rest of my life, but I want to reach people, man. I like Jamie xx as much as I like Miles Davis, you know?”

Over the course of her commercially available solo albums to date, Leslie Feist has expertly balanced the weighty with the whimsical; the heavyhearted with the straight-up joyful. On 2004's Let It Die she offset the mournful shades of its title-track with the sublime Mushaboom, while 2007's breakout LP The Reminder boasted a brace of affecting, minor key numbers alongside the wonder of 1234 (briefly ubiquitous after featuring in an iPod nano commercial).

Having drawn attention with his original compositions, arrangements and covers, pianist Maxence Cyrin is back with Novö Piano II in which, with emotion and mischievousness, he takes a new look at the pop-rock repertoire of the ’80s and ’90s, from The Cure to Björk, by way of Soundgarden and Goldfrapp. Basically, what makes for the quality of a cover? The interpretation, transcription, arrangement? Not only. A cover is, of course, a way for a musician to embody the emotion felt when listening to a given artist, as well as a means for translating the attachment that links him to his past. The quality of Maxence Cyrin’s covers, whether focusing on pop or techno hits, stems from this form of distant and amorous relation he has with ‘certain rarities, certain favorite titles and not just hits’ that have punctuated his existence, such as Dominique A’s ‘Le courage des oiseaux’, The Cure’s ‘If Only Tonight We Could Sleep’, Björk’s ‘Hyperballad’ or trip-hop’s cult title Rob D’s ‘Clubbed to Death’.

More than almost any other Lieder singer today, [Goerne] combines expressive diction with an unblemished legato. – The Daily Telegraph, Classical CD of the Week

The fifth exquisite Schubert Lieder recording for harmonia mundi from German baritone Matthias Goerne, a protégé of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. ‘Matthias Goerne is fast becoming the Fischer-Dieskau auf his generation, the standard-setting singer of the central lieder repertoire.’ (International Record Review). ‘In such repertoire Goerne’s mellow, darkly rounded timbre, expressive diction and care for a true, “bound” line are well nigh ideal.’ (Gramophone). ‘Even the lesser Schubert Lieder become gems from Goerne’s velvet baritone.’ (The Times).

Sounds of North and South American jazz merge in the music of Manu Guerrero. Following a prestigious career accompanying an eclectic array of world class musicians and famous French stars (Celine Dion, Michel Sardou, J.J Goldman…), the Franco-Peruvian pianist finally unveils his own compositions. Manu takes us on a journey through the Andes and France, accompanied by world-class artists, with the rhythmic and refined sounds of a jazz punctuated by South American accents emerging from North American roots in a prelude to recordings that will be available to the public on January 19, 2018.

Brad Paisley is one of contemporary country music’s most gifted practitioners. Over the years he has built a formidable catalog and reputation. Hits Alive is not a live album of hits, but rather a two-pronged collection that includes a set of studio versions of his hits and then a set of live concert recordings from his 2010 H20 Tour.

„Nocturnes“ is the 4th album of Maxence Cyrin. Having realized two albums where he reinterpreted pop, rock and electro anthems as a solo pianist (‘Modern Rhapsodies’, ‘Novö Piano’), then ‘The Fantasist’, an imaginary movie soundtrack, ‘Nocturnes’ is its first album of compositions for solo piano, putting back with current tastes a musical form adopted by several classic composers (Fauré, Field) and popularized by Chopin.

London-based alt-rock band Bear’s Den made one of their first ventures onto our record players in 2013 with their highly acclaimed EP Agape. It’s also been two years since their debut album Islands was released, and both fans and critics alike have awaited new material longingly. We’ve been fortunate enough to get our hands on a preview copy of the band’s new album, Red Earth & Pouring Rain, and thought we’d give some insight as to what to expect when it’s released on the 22nd of July.

“Long Walk” – the twenty-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach undertook one such walk in 1705, when he hiked the 250 miles from Arnstadt to Lübeck to hear Dietrich Buxtehude, who was famous for his organ playing. The visit had been planned to last only a few weeks but turned into a three-month period of study, during which Buxtehude became Bach’s teacher.

The second of DG’s series of seven Mozart operas conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and initiated by Rolando Villazón. This Così fan tutte enchanted the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus audience when recorded in concert in 2012, with Nézet-Séguin inspiring his stellar cast to feats of vocal derring-do.

In his latest album Daniel Hope shines a new light on Hollywood scores as he takes a widescreen musical journey, seeking out the echoes of exiled European composers, such as Miklos Rózsa, John Waxman, Hanns Eisler, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The center piece is the famous Violin concerto by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.