This project is an inspired idea. Guitarist Charlie Byrd, who will always be best-known for his bossa nova recordings, also always loved Django Reinhardt's music. He heads du Hot Club de Concord, a group similar to the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, except that instead of being comprised of three guitars, one violin, and a bass, this ensemble has two guitars (with Frank Vignola playing rhythm behind Byrd), violinist Johnny Frigo, bassist Michael Moore, and Hendrik Meurkens on harmonica. The blend between harmonica and violin is particularly effective, and the repertoire ranges from swing tunes (including Byrd's "Swing '59") to some light Brazilian music, ballads, and standards. Byrd, Frigo, and Meurkens take plenty of fine solos, making this a highly recommended set.

The exploration of Sir Donald Tovey’s music on Toccata Classics continues apace with two highly contrasted works: the bright, Classically oriented Variations on a Theme by Gluck, Op. 28, for flute and string quartet written in 1913 and the Piano Quintet from thirteen years earlier – an expansive, Brahmsian work of symphonic scale: it is almost an hour in length.

With ‘Lysning’ – in English a clearing or forest glade – the violin and Hardanger fiddle virtuoso and composer Nils Økland has created a landmark recording that counts as his masterpiece thus far. It is also the synthesis and culmination of a long career working between different forms – folk music, art music from the baroque to free improvisation, jazz, rock, whatever – where Økland, who is now 56, has continued to pursue the same questing approach irrespective of the restrictive rules and boundaries used to separate different historical or generic styles. Listening to ‘Lysning’, everything suddenly becomes clear: Nils Økland plays Nils Økland music. Like a very select few contemporary masters – one thinks perhaps of Jordi Savall, Bjørk, Jan Garbarek – he has become his own genre.

The first recording of Johann Carl Bischoff's Six Sonatas for Cello performed by Claudio Ronco and Emanuela Vozza on period instruments. Johann Carl Bischoff (1747-1800) was a a German composer and a virtuoso cellist. He became a member of the court orchestra of the Duke of Anhalt-Dessau in the 1770s. In 1793, Bischoff invented a cello-like instrument, which he named the Harmonicello. The instrument had five bowed gut strings and ten sympathetic metal ones.

LEVERKUSEN 2010, the fifth and latest release in the continuing series of classic live recordings by Allan Holdsworth, is due November 5 from Manifesto Records.

Manifesto Records is proud to announce the CD/DVD release of Frankfurt ’86, the third in a continuing series of classic Allan Holdsworth live performances. In this performance at the 1986 Deutsches Jazz Festival in Frankfurt, Germany, Allan Holdsworth is accompanied by Gary Husband on drums, Jimmy Johnson on bass and Kei Akagi on keyboards. Gary Husband also contributed some very personal liner notes to the package. The performance of Frankfurt ’86 was beautifully recorded and filmed and was originally broadcast on German Television. The sound quality of the audio and picture quality of the video are both amazing and were digitally re-mastered from the original tapes.

A well-sequenced set of nine ballads done by various incarnations of Miles Davis groups for Columbia Records between 1956 and 1984, this compilation is a wonderful listen but pieces like "Flamenco Sketches" and "I Loves You, Porgy," for instance, really need to be heard in their original settings to be truly appreciated…

Delivered five years after their eponymous "black" album in 1991, Load captures Metallica settling into an uneasy period of maturation. Under the guidance of producer Bob Rock, Metallica have streamlined their sound, cutting away most of the twisting, unpredictable time signatures and the mind-numbingly fast riffs…

This is the seventh part in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas in Georg Philipp Telemann’s collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg in 1726 – the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to appear in print. The cantatas are designated for voice, an obligato instrument (recorder, violin, transverse flute or oboe) and basso continuo, and generally take the form of two da capo arias with an intervening recitative. Although intended for worship, both public and private, Telemann’s cantatas are a masterly blend of tunefulness with skilled counterpoint and vocal and instrumental virtuosity.