Jonathan Kent's spectacular production of Purcell's huge semi-opera is joyous, imaginative and witty Glyndebourne, with its intimate auditorium, provides the perfect setting for a drama which is partly spoken and partly sung. Based on an adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the story is lavished with a brilliance that justifies this production's acclaim. Paul Brown's inventive designs, Kim Brandstrup's exquisite choreography, an excellent cast of actors and singers and outstanding playing by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under William Christie combine to make a seamless theatrical experience, here recorded in High Definition and true surround sound.

US band Syzygy was formed in 2003, but with a past history going back to the 1990's and a band then called Witsend. They released their first album as Syzygy in 2003, and six years later their so far most recent studio album "Realms of Eternity" appeared. Towards the end of 2012 their so far most recent release appeared, a massive box set consisting of two DVDs and one CD, featuring concert footage and extensive interviews with the band. And as with their previous creations, self-released through the band's own label. A certain fondness for sophisticated 70's hard rock in general is required, as well as a taste for progressive rock from the same decade. A band that should appeal broadly, with a possible key audience those who have Deep Purple, Genesis and ELP side by side in their music collection…

Compilers Ady Croasdell & Dean Rudland’s third CD collection spotlighting the sort of R&B and club soul the original 60s mods could have been danced to – if only they’d had the chance.

The Lost Sessions Vol. 2 is the second (obviously) Rolling Stones outtakes on Empress Valley. Similar to the first volume the material here is not collated in any strict fashion but rather takes bits and pieces from various sessions. The subtitle of this release is The Auction Reel since this is the tape that was auctioned at Sotheby’s several years ago. The tracks here are all in excellent quality and present some interesting insights…

This is an interesting realease. This is the re-issue of Emperor's first EP and an early Demo from the band. The first four songs are from the Emperor EP and the rest is from the wrath of the tyrant demo…

Of course, if you’re going to be cool it helps to surround yourself with the coolest of the cool, and Henderson has done just that: his smokin’ quintet also features saxophonist Donald Harrison, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Essiet Essiet, and drummer Mike Clark. Together, the band conjures smoldering funk, lush ballads, broad-shouldered swing, and bristling bop — in all, a prismatic display of the many facets of cool.

ARTEMIS is a jazz supergroup featuring pianist and musical director Renee Rosnes, clarinetist Anat Cohen, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Allison Miller, and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant who will release their debut album on Blue Note Records in 2020. Each renowned for her outstanding solo work, the band members form an unparalleled international line-up hailing from the US, Canada, France, Chile, Israel, and Japan. The musicians first assembled for a European festival tour in summer 2017, and eventually named themselves after the Greek goddess Artemis who was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, the twin sister of Apollo, the patron and protector of young girls, and the goddess of hunting, wild nature, and chastity. ARTEMIS has been featured in Vanity Fair and on NPR’s Jazz Night In America, who broadcast the band’s tremendous 2018 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival.

An anthology of Seefeel’s 94-96 work made for Warp and Rephlex, including their out-of-print studio albums Succour and (Ch-Vox), two non-album EPs, Starethrough and Fracture/Tied, and 22 bonus tracks from the Seefeel archives, many previously unreleased tracks.
Succour was released quickly after the success of their 1993 debut Quique - regarded as a prophetic example of shoegaze’s eventual transformation into post-rock - a newly minted contract with Warp would prove symbolic of where the group would steer the project next. The few "rock" elements of its full-length predecessor had evaporated, and vast spaces of dub and ambient would come to inform 1995’s Succour. Skeletal rhythmic elements amalgamating into their brooding, elemental and completely singular sound…

According to Bryan Lee’s own words, all the arrangements of the songs included in the album came to his mind while he was sleeping. The night before a show at Spitsbergen church in Norway, our man dreamed how those songs should sound, which he thought was an inspiration Lord gave him during the dream. The next day he played them as he had dreamed and it was a so spectacular success, that Bryan and his band recorded them while they were staying in Norway. Seven years later, producer Steve Hamilton mixed them in his studio and published the album we have now on hands. Bryan Lee lost his sight at the age of eight and when he was fifteen he moved to Chicago where he spent twenty years developing a successful career as a singer and guitar player, performing with the great bluesmen of that time.

Paavo Järvi inaugurates his new contract as conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich with a programme devoted to Messiaen. Alpha Classics will accompany this extremely promising combination: ‘I’ve always admired French music very much. (…) I think Messiaen is the most original voice, someone absolutely unique. You need only listen for three seconds to a work by Messiaen to be sure that it is by him. His style is so clear, so unmistakable. In his two early works Les Offrandes oubliées and Le Tombeau resplendissant, religion and mysticism play an important role. If you listen carefully, you will notice how a harmony is continually transformed, so that you can never predict what sound will come next. But Messiaen’s harmonic language is not experimental: it produces an inevitable meaning, and you get the feeling that the chord sequence can be that way and no other.Music is a language of its own; music begins where words leave off.’

This live recording of Ariadne auf Naxos in October 2014 took place not only at the site of the opera premiere of the version of the opera that we are best familiar with these days, but it also testifies Christian Thielemann’s first conducting engagement of a scenic performance of a Strauss opera at the opera house on the Ring. The cast includes Soile Isokoski as Ariadne, Johan Botha - in one of his latest performances before his untimely death - as Bachus, Daniela Fally as Zerbinetta, Sophie Koch as the composer, Jochen Schmeckenbecher as the music teacher and Peter Matic as the dancing master. Many attendees of the premiere of Strauss’ first version of Ariadne - which was intended to succeed Moliere’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme and for this reason was six hours long - felt that they had just been part of a first-rate funeral.