If American Josh Groban can make a killing singing Italian opera so convincingly, why not this operatically trained French singer – who has actually been a huge success in Europe while steadily building a name for herself stateside. While Groban is pop-minded, however, Emma Shapplin – like newcomer Laura Turner – seems content to emote powerfully over beds of nature-enhanced ambience and soulful grooves, finding a classical crossover niche with new age crossover potential. With the help of producer Graeme Revell (a noted film scorer and orchestrator for Evanescence), who provides these soaring textures with the London Symphony Orchestra, she blends dramatic solo arias – all original compositions – with passages where she interacts with the Symphony's great choir.

Domenico Cimarosa was the most famous and popular Italian composer of the second half of the eighteenth century. In the course of a brilliantly successful career he composed more than 65 operas, as well as a significant body of instrumental music and works for the church. His operas were performed all over Europe, both in Italian and in translation. A number of Cimarosa’s operas continued to enjoy occasional stagings during the nineteenth century, and his most famous work, Il matrimonio segreto, is one of only a handful of operas of the period never to have left the repertory. Cimarosa’s overtures are remarkable for their melodic invention, assured handling of the orchestra and sheer vitality.

Billie Holiday. The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band…

With 2012's "Aeons Black" standing as one of the defining death metal albums of the twenty-first century it has been a long wait for the follow up. In 2021, Sweden's Aeon finally return with its successor, "God Ends Here", and in doing so only up the ante with a record that is bigger, harder and stronger in every way. "I wasn't feeling any pressure after such a gap, we don't do shit half assed and I feel like this is our strongest album yet," states guitarist Zeb Nilsson. A darker, even more epic collection, it is everything an Aeon fan could want with a few surprises in store, pushing the genre in new directions and once again asserting that they are one of the most important bands in extreme metal.

Gaahls WYRD, the eponymous brainchild of one of black metal’s most iconic and enigmatic figures, has returned with a hypnotic new EP! ‘The Humming Mountain’ follows the band’s critically-acclaimed debut album, ‘GastiR – Ghosts Invited,’ and sees the latest evolution of the esoteric dark metal project’s sound. The five song offering creeps in like a whispering demon, slowly entrancing the listener with its deep, dark gaze before it sinks its teeth in and drags you into the all-consuming abyss.

Shame is an OMD song first issued on the group's seventh studio album The Pacific Age in 1986, and later re-recorded and issued as their twentieth single in 1987. The song was written by OMD, including the Weir brothers, and the original album track was produced by Stephen Hague, while Rhett Davies was recruited for the re-recorded single version. This was the first time since messages that OMD had completely re-recorded an already issued track for single release.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are one of the earliest, most commercially successful, and enduring synth pop groups. Inspired most by the advancements of Kraftwerk and striving at one point "to be ABBA and Stockhausen," they've continually drawn from early electronic music as they've alternately disregarded, mutated, or embraced the conventions of the three-minute pop song…

Those who consider themselves Oscar Peterson completists should be aware of The London House Sessions, a generous five-LP set that focuses exclusively on the Peterson Trio's 1961 engagement at Chicago's London House. However, completists are the only ones who would want to invest in this collection; others would be better off with individual LPs of the pianist's London House performances. One such LP is the Verve Master Edition of The Sound of the Trio, which was recorded in July 1961 and contains performances of "Tricotism," "On Green Dolphin Street," and "III Wind. Although not among Peterson's essential recordings – you won't find a lot of surprises here – the material is consistently enjoyable. Peterson, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Ed Thigpen, clearly enjoy a strong rapport, and the trio never fails to swing.

Tchaikovsky stayed in Aachen for six weeks in 1887, during which time he orchestrated his Mozartiana. He also left behind 16 bars of music from his diary, and the Aachener Walzer is André Parfenov’s completion of this otherwise unknown mini-waltz. Further works by Parfenov include a Violin Concerto on the subject of war, peace and human symbiosis, and a reflection on the life of a remarkable avant-garde painter in his Malevich Suite. Completing the framework for this recording is Tchaikovsky’s orchestral suite Mozartiana, which spotlights Mozart’s little-known smaller pieces to charming effect.

Composer, conductor and organist Gabriel Pierné wrote in a wide variety of genres, from operas to pieces for solo piano. His orchestral music for the stage shows the utmost refinement and clarity as well as wit and charm in the finest French tradition. His colourful and evocative score for Ramuntcho is rich in Basque flavour with zortzico dance rhythms and village dances, all beautifully textured. Set in the 18th century, the ballet Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied reveals the full range of his inventive scoring, which remains chamber music-like in its finesse.

This recital offers a kaleidoscopic array of styles unified by South America’s national instrument, the guitar. Titans of Latin American music such as Piazzolla and Barrios Mangoré are represented, but so too are distinctive composers less well known outside of their own countries. Genres such as milonga, Venezuelan waltz and choro are featured, in music suffused with lyric melancholy and vivacious, biting rhythms. ‘His musicianship is unimpeachable, his fleet technique is world-class’ wrote American Record Guide of Graham Anthony Devine (8.554195).