Hiroshima, a group whose music falls between R&B, pop, world music, and jazz, has long had its own niche. The band integrates traditional Japanese instruments into their musical blend and has generally been both commercial and creative within its genre. Hiroshima's founding members are keyboardist Dan Kuramoto (who also played shakuhachi), June Okida Kuramoto on koto (a key part of the group's sound), Johnny Mori on taiko drums, and Danny Yamamoto on drums, percussion, and taiko.

Where does one begin to praise this CD? The bitter-sweet lyrics, the brilliant intertwining of piano and guitar, the perfect vocal harmonies, the atmospheric texture, the magic of the melodies? "Bringing Rosa Home" is the sixth and strongest CD so far from the English band Latin Quarter. The richness of ideas of joint band- leaders Steve Skaith and Richard Wright is overwhelming, their musical taste undeniable. The twelve pop-songs on their new CD sound smooth and effortless almost as a matter of course. Like all really first-class things.

In one regard, Queen II does indeed provide more of the same thing as on the band's debut. Certainly, of all the other albums in Queen's catalog it bears the closest resemblance to its immediate predecessor, particularly in its lean, hard attack and in how it has only one song that is well-known to listeners outside of their hardcore cult: in this case, it's "Seven Seas of Rhye," which is itself more elliptical than "Keep Yourself Alive," the big song from the debut…

Anthony Ventura is the only big-band instrumantalist who could rightly rival the orchestras of Paul Mauriat & James Last. The only reason why many of our contemporaries have not heard of Anthony Ventura & his orchestra is because the albums that were released originally, many years ago, in the vinyl version, are no longer burnt into cds by the big record companies today. Since most people nowadays no longer own a record/vinyl player - it's all cds & more in today's days - these wonderful albums are fast disappearing with the mists of Time. Ventura's music selections are marked by style, romance & sophistication and by his harmonious & nostalgic melodies of very familiar tracks that have trickled down to us through the decades. ~ Sherna Bhumgara, Amazon

Angst der Hellen und Friede der Seelen ("Fear of Hell and Peace of the Soul") is a collection of sixteen settings of Psalm 116 in German, "Das ist mir lieb" (Psalms 116), commissioned by the Jena merchant Burckhard Grossmann in 1616 and eventually published in 1623. The composers are Heinrich Schütz, then in alphabetical order Michael Altenburg, Christoph Demantius, Nicolaus Erich, Andreas Finold, Melchior Franck, Abraham Gensreff, Johannes Groh, Johann Krause, Christian Michael, Daniel Michael, Rogier Michael, Tobias Michael, Michael Praetorius, Johann Hermann Schein and Caspar Trost.

French composer Joseph Canteloube (1879-1957) made a life's work of collecting, transcribing, and arranging folksongs. His Chants d'Auvergne has long been very popular. Much of the rest of his songs, though, have been unjustly neglected. Among these, L'arada emerges as a particularly intriguing work. A native of North Carolina, Dr. Coker-Merritt received her Master of Music degree from UNC-Greensboro, and her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Vocal Performance at Florida State University. She began her professional operatic career with Pittsburgh Opera, studying as an apprentice with opera legends Renata Scotto, Régine Crespin and Renée Fleming. She made her professional operatic debut with Baltimore Opera in 2003. Sean Kennard has won top prizes in the Queen Elisabeth Competition (Belgium), the International Music Competition of Viña del Mar (Chile), the Vendome International Piano Competition (Portugal), the Sendai International Music Competition (Japan), the Hilton Head International Piano Competition (USA), the National Chopin Competition, the Iowa Piano Competition, the American Pianists Association, and the International Chopin Competition of the Pacific.

The output of Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) is so vast and various that only scholars and fellow organists can expect to grasp its scale. Most listeners require a discerning ear to pull out some of the many highlights. The Italian organist Alessandro Perin has done so here, without confining himself to Dupré’s ‘greatest hits’, the characteristic pile-ups of chorale harmonies and torrents of semiquavers in toccatas and variations that find their natural home on the instruments of Cavaille-Coll as an apotheosis of the French Gothic organ style.

First album “Runt” (1970), features the hit pop single “We Gotta Get You A Woman” as well as the nine-minute rock epic “Birthday Carol”. The Band’s Levon Helm and Rick Danko play on “Once Burned”, while “There Are No Words” hints at future experimentation. Disc Two of this special Edsel re-issue features the entirety of the November 1970 miss-pressing of the album, including the otherwise unavailable songs “Say No More” and an uncut "Baby Let's Swing", an early version of “Hope I’m Around”, and several alternate mixes. The bonus track is a live performance.

For Islands, Mike Oldfield gathered a host of musicians to further his run of more mainstream-sounding albums. The album includes vocals by Bonnie Tyler, Kevin Ayers, and Max Bacon, as well as saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft (famous for his work on Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street"), along with the album's producer and former Yes member Geoffrey Downes…

The many achievements of Enrique Granados (1867-1916) – a teacher, pianist, but more significantly a formative figure in the renaissance of Spanish music during the early years of the last century – are the more remarkable for springing from barren soil. As a teenager, Granados had a thorough schooling in piano from Joan Baptista Pujol; then a rather more partial one in harmony and composition from Felipe Pedrell, whose principal concern was a revival of native music comparable to other Nationalist movements across Europe in the late 19th century. Granados saw a broader horizon.

Nicolas Siret (1663–1754) was born in Troyes to a family of professional church organists which would eventually span four generations. He subsequently travelled to Paris and met Couperin sometime between 1685 and 1690. The two became good friends – sufficiently close for Siret to dedicate his first book of harpsichord pieces to him – but Siret made his career in his home town, where he succeeded his father as organist of the cathedral. In 1719 he gained the profitable post of tax collector for all water- and land-based traffic. He also taught harpsichord but nothing of his output in this direction survives beyond the music on this set.

The Berliner Philharmoniker’s New Year’s Eve concert 2018 is conducted by Daniel Barenboim, who looks back on a close artistic partnership with the Berliner Philharmoniker spanning over five decades. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s festive Piano Concerto in D Major, a work of sparkling beauty and nuanced expression opens the concert. The glamourous evening also includes four famous works by Maurice Ravel, which create an impressive synthesis of elegance and originality, with the breathtaking Boléro as the final highlight.

"Madiba" è il titolo del nuovo album della pianista siciliana Sade Mangiaracina, pubblicato dalla prestigiosa etichetta Tǔk Music. Come il disco precedente Sade è alla guida di un trio composto da Marco Bardoscia al contrabbasso e Gianluca Brugnano alla batteria, con Ziad Trabelsi all’oud ospite in tre brani.

Whitesnake will bring together some of their hardest-hitting songs of its multi-platinum career on 'The ROCK Album', a new collection that features revisited, remixed and remastered versions of the group's best rock songs. The album is the first release in the band's 'Red, White and Blues Trilogy,' a series of fresh, new collections organized by musical themes that will include: 'Love Songs' (red), 'The ROCK Album' (white) and 'The BLUES Album' (blue). The collection features the debut of 'Always The Same,' a previously unreleased song that was recorded during the 2019 sessions for 'Flesh & Blood'.

Volume three in the Classics Georgie Auld chronology opens with the last four sides he cut for the Musicraft label on June 14, 1946. The 16-piece big band had Neal Hefti in the trumpet section, Auld, Al Cohn and Serge Chaloff in the reeds, and vocalist Sarah Vaughan featured on "You're Blasé." While Hefti's two original compositions are pleasantly modern sounding, the true gem from this date was Budd Johnson's rock-solid "Canyon Passage." Changes in the postwar entertainment industry resulted in the dissolution and dispersal of many big bands. Auld threw in the towel and waited about two-and-a-half years before resuming his recording career on January 17, 1949. His new band had ten pieces, including trombonist Billy Byers, pianist Jimmy Rowles and drummer Alvin Stoller…