“Horne is the great star focus…She is predictably brilliant in the coloratura passages, with her commanding presence not getting in the way of a sense of fun…The production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle is brightly attractive, and the direction is at the service of the performance. Levine conducts with characteristic energy.” Penguin Guide

Though born from the desire to rekindle enthusiasm for the grand, orchestral sound of mid-20th century blues, Love Light Orchestra is much more than a nostalgia act. Formed in 2016 as a nod to the sound and visual flair prevalent early in careers of beloved Memphis stalwarts B.B. King and Bobby Bland, the Love Light Orchestra is as much a manifestation of the current moment as it is a throwback to a bygone era of nightclubs packed to the brim with party goers eager to take in an evening of down-home musicality with a touch of class.

Songs Of Love From The American Songbook is a 2022 album by Lorna Windsor & Gian Francesco Amoroso and released on Da Vinci Classics label.

The music of contemporary composer Sophia Jani is characterized by it's great independence from structures and conventions as well as by it's musical poetry within a minimalist approach. Her debut album "Music as a Mirror" presents works for woodwind quintet, string quartet and piano. In the largely male environment with this album Sophia Jani aims to take a different perspective and position as a unique female voice. Sophia Jani's music lives from influences of various artists of all times and nations: from Bach and Schubert to the European and American avant-garde of the 20th and 21st century, to avant-pop artists like Bjo"rk and Ryuichi Sakamoto, or electronic music producers such as Tim Hecker, Laurel Halo or Skee Mask. In this way, she creates music that spans a dramaturgical arc while suspending any sense of time - calm, powerful, elegant, dance-like. Thus she finds a poetic minimalism that takes it's listeners by the hand and imaginatively and cleverly opens a new horizon.

Schutz’s Weinachtshistorie is a magnificent Christmas counterpart to the Passion, and one can perhaps understand that during his lifetime the composer would only permit musicians of a certain standard to perform it in its entirety. The present recording is in most respects excellent. The choir are on very good form, bright, perfectly tuned (listen to Intermedium II, “The Multitude”, for example, or the vigorous characterization of the Magi in Intermedium IV), the instrumental contributions are discreet but vigorous when necessary, and the soloists all good. Paul Agnew is, I feel, a little matter of fact at the beginning, but seems to warm up as the work progresses (always a dangerous thing to say since, for all one knows, the work may have been recorded entirely in reverse order, but that is the impression given).

Raised in a fundamentalist Christian home that only allowed classical and worship music listening, Sarah Shook went full-on with their rebellion—naming their first band Sarah Shook and the Devil. That evolved into the Disarmers by 2013, and much has been made of the North Carolinian's bad-ass country-punk bona fides since then. But the band's third album—while full of bad-ass songs—shows surprising facets.

This release collects two of Toots & the Maytals' finest releases of the mid-'70s: Funky Kingston, generally viewed as their finest album, and its follow-up, In the Dark. This is some of the finest music of the rocksteady era, and with improved sound over the individual album releases, a great place to start for Toots & the Maytals or the rocksteady movement in general.

Mad funk from the great Galt MacDermot – a wonderful selection of obscure tunes from some of his best funky soundtracks! Galt's work on Hair has been sampled heavily by a variety of hip hop producers over the years – but even better is his work for less famous soundtracks, a good variety of which are sampled here in a wonderfully-done set that focuses on the truly funky tracks that Galt wrote for these films – and which gets past the sometimes-off tracks that can occasionally get in the way of his lesser soundtracks. The package is a total jam throughout – filled with tunes that have weird rhythms, moody keyboards, and the kind of offbeat approach to funk that's always made his work so great. There's only a few tracks from previously reissued soundtracks like Woman Is Sweeter and Cotton Comes To Harlem – plus lots lots more from weirder films that include American Express, Nucleus, Fortune & Men's Eyes, Moon Over The Alley, and Rhinoceros! In true Galt MacDermot funky fashion, there's lots of great drum work on the set from Bernard Purdie – and titles include "Golden Apples", "Coffin Ed", "Dead End", "Fragments II", "Tango", "Ed & Digger", "Duffer", "Bedroom", "Queenie's Theme", "Fortune & Men's Eyes", "Rhinoceros Theme", and "Never Die Desire Not".

2014 two CD collection of solo material by the former vocalist from Australian Crawl. From paying their dues on the pub circuit to their ultimate rise to the top of the charts, Australian Crawl became one of the most beloved bands Down Under. When the band split in 1986, James Reyne pursued an equally successful solo career that has continued on for nearly 30 years. This anthology features solo hits, album tracks and more.

Here where the sea shines … is the first official collection of Lucio Dalla, published after his death, exactly on November 28, 2012. The collection features four CDs and not only the great hits of the singer-songwriter but also the most famous duets are present : Mina, Gianni Morandi, Francesco Guccini, Ron, Ornella Vanoni, Francesco De Gregori, Marta sui Tubi, Tiromancino and many others. You can also listen to some historical pieces in a foreign language such as Attenti al lupo and Domenica d'agosto in Spanish and Piazza Grande in English. Two unpublished works, Mon Amour and Don't know what it is, published by the artist only in Germany. Finally, you can listen to some little-known versions such as that of the first audition of Nuvolari, Cara and Millemiglia.

GREATEST EVER JUKEBOX LEGENDS takes you back in time to the Fifties and Sixties!
Stack up these four discs and let the 80 tracks transport you to a different time, via the sixties beat boom (represented here by Herman’s Hermits, The Searchers and The Hollies), Atlantic soul (Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave and The Drifters) and the roots of rock’n’roll in the fifties (Joe Brown, Lonnie Donegan and Rickie Valance).
GREATEST EVER JUKEBOX LEGENDS is a snapshot of a moment in musical history.

On two highly praised discs, Susanna Mälkki and her players in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra have released recordings of Béla Bartók’s three scores for the stage – The Miraculous Mandarin, The Wooden Prince and Bluebeard’s Castle, all written before 1918. The team now takes on two of his late orchestral masterpieces. Composed in 1936 for the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is one of the purest examples of Bartók’s mature style, with its synthesis of folk music, classicism and modernism. One immediately striking feature is the unusual instrumentation: two string orchestras seated on opposite sides of the stage, with percussion and keyboard instruments in the middle and towards the back.

Passport is the creation of saxophonist Klaus Doldinger, who has stated that Passport is not so much a set group but a label and a name for his many projects. Doldinger, who had started out playing Dixieland back in the 1950s, by the following decade was a modern tenor saxophonist who also worked in the studios. His mind has always remained quite open and in 1970 he formed Passport to explore the combination of advanced jazz improvising with rockish rhythms. Passport matches Doldinger's reeds (tenor, soprano, flute, and occasional keyboards) with an electric rhythm section. The group's first recording (1971's Passport) also included Olaf Kübler on second tenor and flute, organist Jimmy Jackson, electric bassist Lother Meid, and drummer Udo Lindenberg.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers spent much of 1986 on the road as Bob Dylan's backing band. Dylan's presence proved to be a huge influence on the Heartbreakers, turning them away from the well-intentioned but slick pretensions of Southern Accents and toward a loose, charmingly ramshackle roots rock that harked back to their roots yet exhibited the professional eclecticism they developed during the mid-'80s…

"Chapters" is a double album compilation by Swedish progressive rock band Anekdoten, released in May 2009. The first disc contains the band's favourite tracks from their 3 latest albums, "From Within", "Gravity" and "A Time of Day". It also features the newly recorded track "When I Turn", a track originally written for the From Within album. The second disc focuses on the band's earlier years, including the very first Anekdoten track "Sad Rain", which previously only was available as bonus track on the Japanese version of "Vemod", and demo versions of songs from "Nucleus" and "A Time of Day".