If told about a band that consisted of only keyboards and drums, one wouldn’t be faulted for thinking, “Where’s the rest of the group?” But one listen to Amendola Vs. Blades—the funky California-based duo of Wil Blades on Hammond organ and clavinet and Scott Amendola behind the kit—and all fears will be assuaged. Blades’s cutting solos and deep bass lines make for a thick stew of soulful harmony and daring improvisation. And Amendola’s beats are simply unstoppable, simultaneously pushing the duo to heights unknown and sending the listener into a joyful sonic trance. But, in a move away from their debut album, ‘Greatest Hits,’ the new album from Amendola Vs. Blades is bursting not only with creativity, but with personnel. ‘Everybody Wins’ features only three tracks that are exclusively duo. The rest of the album sees contributions from guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise), saxophonist Skerik (Les Claypool, Garage A Trois), percussionist Cyro Baptista (Herbie Hancock, Sting), and keyboardist Rob Burger (Tin Hat Trio, Laurie Anderson).

In 2019 the music world commemorated the 350th anniversary of the death of MarcAntonio Cesti, the greatest composer of opera comedies and the most gifted melodist of the seventeenth century. Since Cesti lived and worked in Innsbruck for many years, La Dori, his brilliant comedy of disguises and hidden identities, was the perfect choice for posthumous honors »on location.« Ottavio Dantone, who is active from the Milan Scala to the Salzburg Festival with his specialists support in the field of Baroque and Classical opera, conducted his exquisite original sound ensemble, the Accademia Bizantina on the Innsbruck opera stage and set in motion the Dori renaissance. This comedy of loves errors set by the banks of the Euphrates and at the court of Babylon is now available for audio enjoyment on cpo.

This recording of music by John Harbison and James Primosch contrasts their piano music with compositions for voice, with a major work for each by each of these esteemed composers. Harbison, a faculty member at MIT, has enjoyed a long and distinguished career. His more than 300 compositions have been performer around the world by premiere musical organizations and soloists. James Primosch serves on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, and his discography includes more than 25 recordings of his compositions. Noted for her "dazzling, virtuoso singing" Lucy Fitz Gibbon is a dynamic musician whose repertoire spans the Renaissance to the present. She has performed at prestigious venues in the United States, Canada, and England and is on the faculty at Bard College.

This music expresses the personality of a composer with Far Eastern roots in a language without any hint of eclectic sound-painting. Constantly researching, constantly looking for new forms, by concentrating and focusing on what is essential, he has already managed to find a sound very much his own. (Beat Furrer about Sehyung Kims Three Sijo). Sehyung Kim was born in 1987 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Composition classes began at the age of sixteen and went on to study at the Moscow State Conservatory. In 2013-2018 studied at the University of the Arts and Performing Arts in Graz (Austria), composition class by prof. Beat Furrer. From 2019 he is a masters student in composition and musical theatre under prof. Bernhard Lang at the same university in Graz. Three Sijo was composed in 2016/17 and is scored for woodwind instrument and piano / for saxophone, double bass and piano / for daegeum and piano with e-bow.

"I'm Coming Home" is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on September 21, 1973, by Columbia Records and was mainly composed of material written by the songwriting team of its producer, Thom Bell, and Linda Creed. Unlike several of the Mathis albums before it, I'm Coming Home relied primarily on new songs and included only two covers of established chart hits, both of which were by The Stylistics ("I'm Stone in Love with You" and "Stop Look and Listen to Your Heart"). The album made its first appearance on Billboard magazine's Top LP's & Tapes chart in the issue dated November 17, 1973, and remained there for 22 weeks, peaking at #115. It also began an 11-week run on the UK album chart on March 8, 1975, during which time it made it to #18. On July 1, 1975, the British Phonographic Industry awarded the album with Silver certification for sales of 60,000 units.

Django Reinhardt's legacy of great jazz records is so vast that some may feel intimidated by the sheer volume of material. Where to begin? What's the best? Did he ever make "bad" recordings? All of these questions quickly dissipate when the music itself starts to roll. Most of Django's music is delightful, which explains his continued popularity many years after his untimely death. It just so happens that this volume in the Reinhardt chronology is an excellent place to dive in. The year 1937 was a great one for jazz, both in the U.S. and in Europe, where this music was flourishing in a collective atmosphere of ethnic diversity not unlike that which had fueled its birth and development in the social cauldrons of Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas City and New York…

Robben Ford is at that stage in his career when he needs to make a decision. It's been well established for decades that he is one of the truly great guitar players out there. He has mastered the many styles placed in front of him and bitten off and chewed more. Perhaps the best that can be said about this recording is that it is the work of a very competent bandleader and producer who happens to play one hell of a mean guitar. It also features fine performances from organist Larry Goldings and bassist Will Lee, and guest appearances from Susan Tedeschi (whose soulful voice literally saves a cover of Paul Simon's "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor") and Bernie Worrell (on "Riley B. King").

Quincy Jones had jazz fans wondering when he released his killer Gula Matari album in 1970. That set, with gorgeous reading of Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" with a lead vocal by none other than Valerie Simpson, pointed quite solidly into the direction Jones was traveling: unabashedly toward pop, but with his own trademark taste, and sophistication at the forefront of his journey. Its follow-up, Smackwater Jack, marked Jones, along with Phil Ramone and Ray Brown in the producer's chair, and knocked purist jazz fans on their heads with its killer meld of pop tunes, television and film themes, pop vocals, and big-band charts.

Pianist Bill Carrothers gets personal in Family Life. Entering the stream of Americana flowing straight down the middle of jazz, Carrothers produces his Kinderszenen (1838) after German composer Robert Schumann, or, at the very least, his Woodland Sketches (1896) after American composer Edward MacDowell. Family Life is is a carefully constructed set of musical miniatures capturing a national essence, that indefinable thing that made Aaron Copland Aaron Copland, George Gershwin George Gershwin, Duke Ellington Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk Thelonious Monk.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the label debuts of two exciting young Slovenian soloists flautist Boris Bizjak and violinist Lana Trotovek and 2015 Wigmore Hall String Quartet Competition winners, the Piatti Quartet. They come together for revelatory performances of six pieces for flute, violin and string quartet elements by Frank Anton Hoffmeister, all receiving their first recordings. Now overshadowed by his illustrious contemporaries, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven (music by all whom, including the Diabelli Variations, he published), Hoffmeister was himself a prolific composer in every form. Although the flute is often placed centre-stage in these six works, all demonstrate Hoffmeisters eloquently proportioned, life-enhancing and integrated feeling for chamber music. The two most substantial works here are a taut, dramatically urgent Quartet for flute, violin, viola and cello in C minor, and an E-flat major Quintet for flute, violin, two violas and cello of Mozartian mien and mood. With echoes of Gluck, Mozart and Haydn, two Trios for flute, violin and cello (in B-flat major and D major) and a Duetto in G major for flute and violin offer superbly expressive examples of Hoffmeisters music at its most effusive and engagingly virtuosic.

Tom Jones became one of the most popular vocalists to emerge from the British Invasion. Since the mid-'60s, Jones has sung nearly every form of popular music – pop, rock, show tunes, country, dance, and techno, he's sung it all. His actual style – a full-throated, robust baritone that had little regard for nuance and subtlety – never changed, he just sang over different backing tracks. On-stage, Jones played up his sexual appeal; it didn't matter whether he was in an unbuttoned shirt or a tuxedo, he always radiated a raw sexuality that earned him a large following of devoted female fans who frequently threw underwear on-stage. Jones' following never diminished over the decades; he was able to exploit trends, earning new fans while retaining his core following.

Morta Skuld's 2020 studio release of brutal, hook-laden US Death Metal devastation that marks 30 years of the band's existence. Among the earlier breed of acts to arise from the iconic US Death Metal scene, Morta Skuld formed in Milwaukee in 1990 and released three albums on Peaceville in the early-mid 1990's, commencing with 1993’s now cult classic Dying Remains. In 2017, the band - led by founder and guitarist/vocalist David Gregor - returned to Peaceville for their first studio album in 20 years, the brutal opus Wounds Deeper Than Time, further cementing Morta Skuld’s legacy among the pantheon of American genre greats. Suffer For Nothing, the band’s sixth studio opus to date, twists the carnage up to whole new levels with a fresh serving of pulverising Death Metal excellence. With flawless execution and crushing production from Belle City Sound, the quartet brutalise the senses with razor-sharp riffing and insane solos.

Legendary death metal band Six Feet Under return with their explosive seventeenth full-length, Nightmares Of The Decomposed. Comprised of twelve tracks, it is a defining statement, making it very clear that more than twenty-five years into their career they remain at the forefront of the genre. Dynamic, heavy as hell, catchy, and uncompromising, it is everything that the band's longtime faithful have come to expect from the deadly unit, and is clearly the product of a lot of hard work. Nightmares Of The Decomposed was tracked at various studios including Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, and produced, engineered and mixed by Chris Carroll. Mastering was handled by Chaz Najjar at Badlands Recording in Denver, Colorado. Cover artwork was created by Luke Hunter.

Formed By Erez Yohanan in June of 2004 in Israel, Amaseffer is a band who's opening trio of albums is a concept piece focusing on the exodus biblical story. After recruiting the rest of the members of the band including guitarist Yuval Kramker and another guitarist by the name of Hanan Avramovich, the band started a search for a lead singer which lead them to Vanden Plas frontman Andy Kuntz. However, after a long period unavoidable delays both parties decided to split and three piece Amaseffer was forced to begin their search once more. During a long period of recording and uncompromised auditions the band was finally mentioned a singer which would be able to work on the album, and that was Mats Leven who had formally worked with acts such as Yngwie Malmsteen. To make comparisons to other bands the first and easiest band to compare them to is fellow Israelis Orphaned Land…

I was impressed with this Roger Hodgson song. "If Everyone Was Listening" at my first rehearsal with Supertramp in July 1973. It subsequently appeared on our album Crime Of The Century. Bob Mintzer included the Jim Scott composition "Gather The Spirit" on his album Quality Time and Andy Scott (no relation to Jim) arranged it for Bob to play with a string orchestra at the 2015 Hong Kong Summer Jazz Festival. Andy recently distilled his orchestral arrangement to four string players, saxophone and Hammond organ. "Lord Stackhouse" was originally written for me by Andy Scott and was featured on his Sax Assault album Sax Of Gold in 2007. The ballad is a challenge, mainly due to its complex chords. The poignant tune "Del Soldato In Trincea" was written by Paulo Fresu for Ermanno Olmi's 2014 film Torneranno i Prati (Greenery Will Bloom Again), a tribute to the suffering of Italian soldiers in the First World War. I was introduced to it by Raimondo Meli Lupi, who featured it on his album 1000 Papaveri Rossi.