Jazz and Blues guitarist Calvin Keys has amassed a tremendously heavy resume, playing with organ greats Charles Earland, Jimmy Smith, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Brother Jack McDuff, to name but a few. Longtime associations with Ray Charles and Ahmad Jamal bolster his impressive career, which includes over a dozen albums under his own leadership. Born in Omaha and once based out of the Mile High City, Calvin has been a mainstay of the Bay Area scene for decades.

Blackfield is the debut album by the art rock band Blackfield, released on the Snapper Music/Helicon labels in February 2004.

Two years back and forth on the London-Tel-Aviv flight path, a mutual artistic curiosity, and a close friendship are the components that gave birth to Aviv and Steven's Blackfield project. The collaborative songs alongside songs written by each separately brought a unique meeting of cultures, which resulted in a sophisticated, melodic and melancholic rock album. Aviv and Steven spent the rest of 2005 writing new material and working on their own projects, but in early 2006 Steven moved to Israel for 6 months to enable Blackfield to work on a new album.

Bertice grasps and captivates each member of the audience in this album which was recorded in 1974, in a jazz club with no footlights to lend formality and distance. She was better known in England where she was based for most of her career, than in her native USA although she earned a Tony Award nomination for her Broadway performance in William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun and appeared in the movie version of Little Shop of Horror. Adept at a whole range of musical styles, from gospel to blues to musical comedy, in addition to her talent, Reading also had a striking appearance and a renowned sense of humour.

At the birth of his solo career Bryan Ferry released two records, 'These Foolish Things' and 'Another Time, Another Place' in 1973 and 1974 respectively - but had never performed them live. The setlist from 'Live at the Royal Albert Hall 1974' is built from these two albums and is a marked departure from the music he was performing with Roxy Music in the years previous. The tracklist consists of fan favourites including 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall', 'The 'In' Crowd', 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes', and 'I Love How You Love Me' and spans his influences from the '30s, '40s and '50s, including the records that shaped him growing up and throughout his formative years.

From performing in sold-out arenas across the globe as one-half of renowned duo 2CELLOS to striking out on his own and making his Sony Classical solo debut, HAUSER continues the momentum of 2019 into the New Year. Classic includes some of the most beloved classical melodies ever written, each a personal, longtime favorite of HAUSER he's carefully curated and rearranged for the cello. Making its debut today is one of these iconic melodies, Puccini's incredibly emotional aria "Nessun Dorma," which has been taken to new heights by HAUSER's cello.

Only few cellists are as inspiring as Raphaela Gromes: her cello playing is virtuosic and vibrant, full of passion and technically brilliant, versatile and charming at the same time. She fascinates her audience as soloist as well as duo-partner or member of a wind-quartet, her performance being fantastically challenging and extraordinarily light-footed.

Originating from Lucerne, Switzerland, Hanter Dro is an up and coming quartet whose vigorous post hardcore sound comes akin to the engaging experimental approach of Touché Amoré and La Dispute, juxtaposing hardcore heaviness with ambiance and atmospherics. Death by Algorithm will be the band's sophomore full length, scheduled to come out January 17th, 2020 through Little Jig Records.

It was as an obedient pupil of his father, the celebrated horn player Franz Strauss, that Richard Strauss began his musical career – entirely in the spirit of the classics and early Romantics, with proven forms and traditional genres. Strauss senior loathed Richard Wagner’s monstrous music dramas as well as the achievements of the “New German School” around Franz Liszt, with its avant-garde tone poems and extra-musical programmes. As Richard grew up, he shared his father’s views unquestioningly – but then found a mentor in Hans von Bülow, who, of all people, had once worked together very closely with Wagner. In 1885, Bülow engaged the 21-year-old Strauss as conductor of the Meiningen Court Orchestra. Its concert master, the radical Wagnerian Alexander Ritter, took the young man under his wing and acquainted him with the blessings of “progressive music” – with the result that Richard Strauss soon began composing symphonic poems himself.

The word ‘legend’ suggests to everyone a distant, wonderful story, which is reinvented every time it is told. There is no longer any present or past; we enter the borderless space of the imaginary and the timeless. In composing Légendes, I wanted to create on the piano the same idea of blurring the gap between past and present, and of freedom of the imagination. The eleven pieces on this album are presented as an inner journey, a listening itinerary that forms a kind of narrative thread without words. Illusions, mirages, distortions, echoes: all these effects on which Légendes plays were achieved through a form of intimacy with the piano.

Bach’s St. John Passion, with its famous opening chorus traversed by shadows and light, is a powerful musical and spiritual reflection. Dramatic, grandiose, complex, resolutely theatrical: there has been no lack of superlatives to describe this supreme masterpiece of western music. Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent present an accomplished reading that reflects their knowledge of the composer, based on extensive research and deepened by countless concerts. Soloists Krešimir Stražanac and Maximilian Schmitt demonstrate the breadth of their talents in the roles of Jesus and the Evangelist.

Essential: A masterpiece of progressive rock music
I find it amazing how many groups there were on the cusp of something as big as the development of an entire genre of music.

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music
AFFINITY was a short-lived band that released one album and one single in 1970 and then spilt up. They were a highly regarded band and looked upon with much promise as the one of the new wave of jazz-rock fusion artists.

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music
AFFINITY’s self-titled album from 1970 is one of the best English progressive albums ever.

Excellent addition to any prog-rock music collection
Galadriel biography
The band’s sole legacy, a self-titled album released in 1971, is quite similar to myriads of obscure early 70’s rock bands with vague progressive leanings: blues based with elements of soft or folk-rock (JETHRO TULL-style for the flute), a bit of jazz and some hard rock.