'I feel like I'm in a totally new band right now,' says Dr. Dog guitarist/singer Scott McMicken. It's a bold declaration considering he's been co-fronting the beloved indie outfit for a decade-and-a-half, but it cuts straight to the heart of the intense and transformative experience behind the group's brilliant new album, 'Critical Equation.' Produced by Gus Seyffert (Bedouine, Michael Kiwanuka), 'Critical Equation' is the most infections and adventurous collection Dr. Dog has laid to tape yet.

The Heart of Saturday Night, largely dispenses with the romance in favor of poetic depictions of the same setting. The album contains the same mixture of folk, blues, and jazz as its predecessor, with producer Bones Howe occasionally bringing in an orchestra to underscore the loping melodies.

The 1973 album that introduced a young singer-songwriter to the world at large is a far cry from the wonderfully twisted sonic landscape that would define "Swordfishtrombones" a decade later. The Waits of "Closing Time" was a barroom balladeer too, but one who fit neatly into the early-'70s folk-rock, singer-songwriter paradigm ("Closing Time's opener "Ol' '55," in fact, was covered by the Eagles on their first album). The arrangements here are straightforward, piano-based affairs that present the songs with a minimum of fuss.

Given the context of the MTV revivalism of their show, a reunion performance on the MTV music awards, a stellar best-of compilation, a top video on Dial MTV with "That Was Then…This is Now," and a new series based on the original (the New Monkees? Anyone?), one would think that 1986 was the year that the Monkees could do no wrong. For the most part, this was true; but then they dropped Pool It! and it was a bit like watching a prized race horse's legs give midway through a race.

Awarded 'Instrumental Soloist Revelation of the Year' in 2009, by Victoires de la Musique Classique, Romain Leleu is an ambassador for the trumpet all over the world. His personality, generosity and talent enable him to make his instrument better known to a broad public, whether in traditional repertoire, transcriptions or the new commissions to which he gives rise.

Their purpose for their début album is to present the entire scope of their repertoire. André Schuen has been exploring different facets of his voice. “The three personalities we encounter on this recording represent three different generations. In Robert Schumann we meet the enraptured youthful lover.

Das Cuarteto SolTango verkörpert die neue Stimme authentischen Tangos mit orchestralem Klang und kammermusikalischer Verve. Vereint interpretieren die vier Musiker klassischen Tango in unterschiedlichsten Stilen bis hin zum Tango Nuevo von Astor Piazzolla und Osvaldo Pugliese in brillanten Bearbeitungen von Martin Klett. Kurz nach seiner Gründung 2008 wurde das Quartett prompt zum Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival und zum Oberstdorfer Musiksommer eingeladen und unternahm somit seine ersten Schritte auf bedeutende klassische Konzertpodien. Seitdem hat es zahlreiche internationale Festivals bespielt – zuletzt das innovative Grachtenfestival, Amsterdam.

The composer who dared such open rivalry with God himself was also a brilliant conductor. “Architecture is music in space, as it were a frozen music”, Schelling once wrote, and Mahler applied this in his conducting style: music is architecture transposed into the dimension of time – moving, flowing architecture. Instead of merely tracing the outlines of fellow-artists’ musical blueprints with a schoolboyish hand, Mahler built forms based on the drawings of great musical architects. To Mahler, the actual process of constructing a musical form – its deployment along the axis of time – was infinitely more important than the ultimate goal, a perfectly formed crystal.

Named after the German poet Christian Morgenstern, the Franco-German “Morgenstern Trio” has selected a “triad” of Franco-Belgian composers for their new CD, centered around Ravel’s Piano Trio in A Minor (1914). Violinist, pianist and teacher Kolja Lessing, a friend of the trio, drew their attention to the two relatively unknown works by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) and Jacqueline Fontyn (born in 1930).

After perfecting his seedy beatnik image on albums like "Small Charge" and "Nighthawks At The Diner", Waits refined and expanded on it until the 1983 breakthrough of "Swordfishtrombones". "Blue Valentine" is full of low-rent nightlife imagery and arrangements that leave Waits' jazz leanings behind in favor of a more direct, blues-oriented approach. Lyrically, he's at his most straightforward and narrative, with tunes like "$29.00" and "Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis" reading like dimestore detective novels. In a customary nod to tradition, he delivers a marvelously stentorian version of Bernstein's "Somewhere." Blue Valentine songs.

On April 27th, ATO Records will release Okkervil River's In The Rainbow Rain, the group's most immediate - and meaningful - album to date. On it, bandleader Will Sheff makes a startling left turn from the their critically-lauded and inward-looking 2016 album Away, crafting an exuberant declaration of hope. In place of Away's somber strings and acoustic textures, In the Rainbow Rain is full of dazzling color, spattered with starbursts of electric guitar, big blooms of synth, and a chorus of backing vocals. It's a buoyant and playful record, but also open and emotionally vulnerable.

Internationally renowned soloist Lucille Chung performs a programme of virtuosic and beguiling works by Franz Liszt. One of the first female students of the iconic Russian pianist Lazar Berman at the Accademia Pianistica in Imola, Italy, Chung has won numerous awards for her performances of Liszt's music, including the B minor Sonata that features on this programme – although Lucille describes in her introduction to the programme how Berman "… for a time doubted that a diminutive lady with hands spanning a 9th (although I can now stretch a 10th on a good day) would ever succeed in playing Liszt well … Mr Berman came around."