Ever since the Star Wars franchise began in 1977, its music has been synonymous with legendary film composer John Williams. Now that the 86-year-old composer has announced that next year's Episode IX will be the last time he'll be scoring a Star Wars film, we can't help feeling melancholic.

Hugo Manuel is better known by his musical alias Chad Valley. A product of Oxford's prolific creative community, Chad Valley has amassed a catalogue that spans four studio releases, numerous collaborations and dozens of remixes. His 2010 debut - a self-titled exploration in swirling synths and sunburnt melodies - laid the groundwork for 2011's Equatorial Ultravox, which gave his downtempo productions a decidedly more pop-leaning twist.

Saxophonist, composer and bandleader Tia Fuller artistic capacity has blossomed tremendously, resulting in her fourth Mack Avenue Records release - the aptly titled 'Diamond Cut', her first album as leader since 2012's 'Angelic Warrior'.

Do you remember …
… the song at evening and the voice that lulled you to sleep when you were little? A lullaby brings a quiet close to the day, to hours which can be so new and exciting for a child! And if you sing a lullaby to a child yourself, it is a different, but just as emotional and intimate an experience. Both these experiences have inspired us in creating a song recital out of original instrumental works and arrangements. This programme reflects the most important human emotions. It could stand for one day in the life of a child or for the whole course of a life.

"Scarborough Variations" is the title of a work available for some time now in various versions and recordings. With this album it can now finally be heard on its own. "Scarborough Variations" is also the title of the whole disc. As with "Aeolian Green", these are recordings which radiate their magical effects from the very first note. (From the liner notes by Michael Wollny)

Austrian pianist David Helbock has been called “a consistent trail-blazer” and “a gifted story-teller at the piano” (quote from 3sat Kulturzeit). In his ACT debut album “Into the Mystic” (2016), he left his personal and individual imprint on well-known compositions from Beethoven to Thelonious Monk and John Williams, setting them in a context of mythology, legends and the spiritual.

Lunatic Soul is Mariusz Duda, the talented creator, singer and multi-instrumentalist behind some of the finest and most captivating progressive music coming from Europe, including his output on UK label Kscope and with Poland’s shooting stars Riverside. Duda is now releasing his sixth studio album, the companion to 2017’s Fractured and the pinnacle of the first decade of Lunatic Soul.

It only took Shawn Mendes three years to realize his pop dreams. After catching a wave of fame on Vine, he steered it into solo stardom with two chart-topping albums, a world tour, and a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. Then, the Toronto-area native got right to work on his third album, an adventurous voyage of texture and tempo, with songwriting support from pop heavyweights like Ed Sheeran, Julia Michaels, and John Mayer. Lyrically, he’s still the same Shawn—brooding, broken, heart on his sleeve—but age and experience have emboldened him; heartbreak is no longer a curb on his powers, but his creative fuel.

Blood, Sweat & Tears is the second album by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in 1968. It was a huge commercial success, rising to the top of the U.S. charts for seven weeks and yielding three successive Top 5 singles. It received a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1970 and has been certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA with sales of more than four million units in the U.S. The album was selected for the 2006 book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".

Long known for her seductively haunting voice, folk singer/songwriter, Meiko, pays momage to childhood classics on 'Playing Favorites', her first covers album.

Out of around 350 works which are attributed to Tartini today, a group of sonatas, along with their isolated themes, sketches and hastily-jotted-down ideas stands out by virtue of the very long period of editing which they underwent (from the 1750s up to the composer's death twenty years later); their deliberate collation into a single manuscript by the author (never published in spite of its gobsmacking richness); but also by virtue of their unique instrumentation, with a solo violin, but no bass at all, either written or suggested.

Distinguised for the clarity and the delicacy of his playing, his sound palette and his capabilities allow him to play Beethoven, Liszt, as Mozart, Schumann, Debussy, Ravol, Bartók … His musical tastes are also Rameau, Albeniz, or even Chabrier.

Fabrice Martinez had not yet revealed everything in «Rebirth», previous album from his quartet Chut ! released in Mai 2016 by the label ONJ Records. The group from this flamboyant trumpet player is coming back in spring 2018 with album «Rebirth Reverse». «Rebirth» and «Reverse» share the same harmonic DNA but the musical color is very different. This double album features two antagonistic versions of each track. Whereas the very electro «Rebirth», built in 2016 in the Ferber studio, got remastered to fit vinyl constraints and analogic warmth, «Reverse», the new fully acoustic opus, took advantage of live recording within the comfortable volume of a chapel.

Bassist Thomas Bramerie has about a hundred records as sideman, but this is his first personal album on show, full of a busy career. For Side Stories, he surrounds himself with two talented young musicians: the pianist Carl-Henri Morisset, who studied at the Paris Conservatory, with Pierre de Bethmann and Hervé Sellin, and recorded My Chet my song with Ricardo Del Fra; and then the drummer Elie Martin-Charrière who, after passing by the Conservatory of Beaunes and Chalon, became the pupil of Dré Pallemaerts at the Conservatoire de Paris.

A septet of LSO musicians relive the Russian folk tale of a soldier who trades his fiddle for unparalleled gain in Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. A theatrical work ‘to be read, played and danced,’ British stage & television actor Malcolm Sinclair narrates, leading listeners through the soldier’s regretful decision.