Gregory Porter was born on November 4, 1971 in Sacramento, USA, and already sang in the gospel choir with his mother as a child. He grew up in the town of Bakersfield and has seven siblings. He developed a deep love for jazz and blues at an early age, his first role models being the musicians Nat King Cole, Leon Thomas and Nina Simone. He received a Grammy Award for his songs "Liquid Spirit" and "Take Met o the Alley". During his studies Gregory Porter almost started a promising football career, which he couldn't start because of a shoulder injury - in retrospect definitely a blessing in disguise.

Thirty-one years after their inception, with uncounted global tours under their belt and fourteen albums deep in their career, AMORPHIS still proves to be the musical fountain of youth, an extraordinary band constantly reinventing itself without abandoning its mystical roots. With “Halo”, they deliver an astonishing album that deserves to be played everywhere, transcending the realms of metal and rock by its sheer profoundness and musicality.

Title means We Fight to Win. What few outside Denmark might be aware of is, that the series of Savage Rose albums from this period - all of which has danish titles and texts - are among the MOST POWERFUL PROTEST SONG ALBUMS EVER MADE BY ANYONE, both in content and execution…

Nico's iconic post-velvets return to rock! As one critic memorably put it, when Nico spoke it was like coffin-lids creaking. When she sang it was like listening to ravens taking off 13 at a time. Nico was like nothing rock music had ever seen or heard before or since. Features originals along with stoic takes on Bowie and The Velvet Underground.

Flutist Yulia Musayelyan’s“Unsaid” tastefully combines global folk traditions with her own ingenuity to leave an irrevocable mark on modern jazz. Where some things cannot be expressed with words, instrumental music speaks. This is the realm of "Unsaid", new album from Yulia Musayelyan Quartet, to be released Jule 19th, 2020, on Next Level, an imprint of Outside In Music.

Franz Schubert’s masterpiece, his song cycle Winterreise, was written shortly before his death in 1828, at the age of only 31. On his winter journey, the singer wanders as a lost soul in harsh terrain, wracked by conflicting emotions, but consoled by his memories of kinder times. Benjamin Appl commented: "Every time I perform it, Winterreise feels like a new and different journey, depending on my own mood, the atmosphere in the hall, and of course the shared creativity with the all-important pianist. For singers, Schubert’s wanderer is a lifetime companion, yet a daunting one as we confront all the great recordings and performances that are already out there. The challenge for every singer is not to be inhibited, but to find fresh ways of understanding and transmitting both words and music to their own generation". Somehow, in Winterreise, Schubert has made space for that potential. As Benjamin Britten said: “Every time I come back to it, I am amazed not only by the extraordinary mastery of it, but by the renewal of the magic. Each time, the mystery remains”.Winterreise is Benjamin Appl’s first release for Alpha Classics as part of a multi-album deal. In this recording he is joined by long-time collaborator and pianist James Baillieu.

Billy Strings has been hailed as the future of bluegrass, transcending tradition and genre with his high velocity, flat-picking guitar technique, and intense, confessional songwriting. He won a grammy for Best Bluegrass Album for his 2019 release Home. The Michigan-born, Nashville-based artist returns with Renewal, his latest album on Rounder Records.

Masters of sinister whimsy NWW are at their mind-spanking best in this session, recorded at The Great Monster Dada, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo 2019.

Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig continue their award-winning Bruckner cycle. This time the Symphonies are coupled with the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The album is set to be released 11 February 2022.“As a Bruckner interpreter, Nelsons is direct, clear-sighted and spacious, the performance guided with a sure hand and a sense of inevitability but also meticulous in observing tempo and dynamic markings…The warmth and sonority of the playing at the start is enthralling and the performance unfolds with character and excitement.” – Gramophone

Steppenwolf entered the studio for their recording debut with a lot of confidence – based on a heavy rehearsal schedule before they ever got signed – and it shows on this album, a surprisingly strong debut album from a tight hard rock outfit who was obviously searching for a hook to hang their sound on. The playing is about as loud and powerful as anything being put out by a major record label in 1968, though John Kay's songwriting needed some development before their in-house repertory would catch up with their sound and musicianship. On this album, the best material came from outside the ranks of the active bandmembers: "Born to Be Wild" by ex-member Mars Bonfire, which became not only a chart-topping high-energy anthem for the counterculture (a status solidified by its use in Dennis Hopper's movie Easy Rider the following year), but coined the phrase heavy metal, thus giving a genre-specific name to the brand of music that the band played (and which was already manifesting itself in the work of bands like Vanilla Fudge and the just-emerging Led Zeppelin)…

How to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the ensemble La Pietà? The answer came naturally to Angèle Dubeau: through music! For the occasion, she proposes an album entirely conceived, performed and composed by women. The result is an album filled with the joy of exchanging through the medium of creation with the women composers gathered here. This album witnesses Angèle Dubeau's virtuosity and confirms her immense talent for creating programs that are off the beaten path, while being as innovative as they are accessible.

Two very groovy records - back to back on a single CD! Gypsy 66 is one of Gabor Szabo's best records - a hip small combo session, featuring backup by Gary McFarland, Sadao Watanabe, Richard Davis, and Willie Rodriguez - an odd kind of lineup, but one that goes well with the offbeat grooves of the set! The overall sound has lots of touches of the McFarland Latinized rhythms of the time - but also stretches out with some of those great snakey guitar solos from Szabo - not nearly as extended or trippy here on other albums of the time, but in a really great way that makes for some tight, hip, mod little tracks!…

Kevin Ayers is one of Rock's most important innovators, helping to launch Soft Machine, as their original bassist/vocalist, and later working with noted progressive musicians like Mike Oldfield and Steve Hillage. This 2 CD set of BBC radio sessions, compiled with the help of Kevin Ayers, tracks Kevin's discography from 1970 (when his band included his former Soft Machine friends) through to 1976. Featured here are several previously unissued recordings, including the earliest surviving example of Kevin's post-Soft Machine output. Among the musicians featured with Ayers on this compilation include Robert Wyatt, Mike Oldfield, Mike Ratledge, Andy Summers, Hugh Hopper, Lol Coxhill, David Bedford, Elton Dean, Archie Leggett, Ollie Halsall & Zoot Money.

“An ode to silence” is how harpsichordist Jean Rondeau has described Bach’s Goldberg Variations. “I feel they were written for silence, in the sense that they take the place of silence,” he says. “All Bach is there in the Goldberg Variations … all music is there … and I will no doubt spend my life working on them.” To prepare his interpretation he consulted an original printed edition of the work, containing Bach’s own markings and corrections. “Through delving into this precious musicological source, I was able to make what I felt to be the most authentic choices.” Rondeau performs the set of variations in its complete form, with the indicated repeats and with judicious insertion of moments of silence.

The Youngbloods could not be considered a major '60s band, but they were capable of offering some mighty pleasurable folk-rock in the late '60s, and produced a few great tunes along the way. One of the better groups to emerge from the East Coast in the mid-'60s, they would temper their blues and jug band influences with gentle California psychedelia, particularly after they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area…