The Continuing Story of Radar Love is a 12-song hits collection from Dutch rock band Golden Earring, containing both the chug-a-long rock staple "Radar Love" and the full eight-minute version of "Twilight Zone." These two songs are the most renowned on this compilation and both cracked the Top 20, with "Radar Love" hitting number 13 in 1974 and "Twilight Zone" peaking at number ten nine years later. The other ten songs on the album consist of long, heavy guitar-filled runs that surround obscure lyrics, sometimes sounding like modern psychedelia. Some of the songs, like "The Vanilla Queen" and "Mad Love's Comin'" harbor a distinguishable progressive edge, thanks to woven keyboard and guitar interplay.

Covering all of his crucial eighties material, Spark to a Flame: The Very Best of Chris de Burgh offers up most of this songwriter's best work, while also including a few of his better pieces from early in his career. The decade took apt notice of de Burgh, giving him two Top 40 hits on Billboard with "Don't Pay the Ferryman" in 1983 and the hugely successful "Lady in Red" in 1987, which are both included on this set. Three of his most delightful narratives from the '70s show up here as well, with "Spanish Train," "A Spaceman Came Travelling," and "Patricia the Stripper," all from the highly regarded Spanish Train and Other Stories album.

Violin virtuoso Gil Shaham's first-ever collaboration with conductor Pierre Boulez is historic music-making of the highest artistic caliber. In the 27-year-old Shaham, Grammy winning maestro Boulez has found a soloist equally able to deliver the goods on the large and musically free Concerto, as well as the gypsy dance inspired Rhapsodies. Both conductor and soloist received a stellar reception when they performed these works live in concert last December.

Best Of Dance Hits is a collection that features some of Hubert Kah's biggest hits, including "So Many People," "Machine Gun," "Limousine," "Carousel," "Midnight Sun," and "It's Me, Cathy (Follow My Heart)." Hubert Kah is a German synthpop band, led by Hubert Kemmler. Kemmler's career began as a member of a trio named Hubert Kah, consisting of Hubert Kemmler (vocals, keyboards), Markus Lohr (guitars, keyboards) and Klaus Hirschburger (bass) at the time of the New German wave 1982 commercial success with the singles "Rosemarie", "Sternenhimmel" ("Starry Sky") and "Einmal Nur Mit Erika… (Dieser Welt Entfliehn)" ("Just Once With Erika … To Escape This World"), and with the albums Meine Hohepunkte ("My High Points") and Ich Komme ("I'm Coming"). During this time, Kemmler caused quite a stir by his TV appearances, wearing a nightdress or straitjacket.

John Lee Hooker never abandoned his raw, gut bucket Mississippi-Delta-comes-to-the-city approach to the blues throughout his fifty-year career, and if he got a tad bit slicker towards the end of that career, it was only a tad and only by degree. There are innumerable Hooker collections on the market, and this two-disc set wouldn't be anything particularly special except that it actually charts through his entire history, beginning with the ageless "Boogie Chillen," which was recorded in 1948 and topped the R&B charts for Modern Records in 1949, through "Tupelo," which was recorded in 1993 and released on the Pointblank LP Chill Out in 1995.

Jimmy Somerville's third solo album, 1999's "Manage The Damage" was his first as an independent artist after splitting with London Records in 1995 after twelve years of recording with them both as a solo artist and with bands Bronski Beat and Communards. This is the first ever expanded edition of this album and, developed in conjunction with Jimmy's management, with its 43 tracks over three discs, celebrates both the album and all of its associated singles. All the B-sides and a wealth of dance floor remixes are included herein.

Chopin and Debussy were two seekers of the absolute who, in their art distilled to the quintessence, succeeded in erasing all traces of their workmanship and their supreme compositional technique. The connections between them are as numerous as they are subtle, never obvious, yet so very profound. The achievement of Javier Perianes here is to have teased out the artistic thread linking two geniuses who soar high above their respective centuries.

Bassoonist Eric Van der Veer Varner enjoyed a rich and varied musical career. Varner was the principal bassoonist with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra from 2004 through 2015, appearing as a soloist with them on numerous occasions, his playing with them described as being “of ineffable liquid beauty.” Previously, Varner held positions with the Ann Arbor Symphony, Michigan Opera Theater and Sarasota Opera Orchestra. He performed in numerous summer festivals, including the Bellingham Festival of Music, the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival and the Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp.

The Litter's debut album was disappointing in the sense that there are only a couple of songs that were not covers. However, they were one of the few garage bands to invest enough energy and imagination into their interpretations to make a cover-heavy LP worth hearing. "Action Woman" is here, and they go about tackling, and sometimes dismantling, numbers like the Small Faces' "Whatcha Gonna Do About It" and the Who's "A Legal Matter" (both of which were barely known in the U.S. at this point, incidentally). "I'm a Man," though based on the Yardbirds' version, gets into some pretty incredible feedback/distortion swirls in the closing rave-up section. Distortions has been reissued a few times, but the 1999 CD on Arf! Arf! is the one to get, as it includes two outtakes ("Hey Joe" and the 25-second, hardly worth noting "Harpsichord Sonata #1") and seven songs, mostly previously unreleased, recorded live at Chicago's Electric Theatre in August 1968. This was the music that the band played while filming a scene in Haskell Wexler's film Medium Cool (although none of the music was used in the movie), and it's in a heavier, bluesier hard rock direction than their 1967 recordings, but still retains some of the punky spirit of the Distortions era

When 33-year-old bandleader Curtis Liggins was killed in automobile accident outside Plattsmouth, Nebraska, in June 1972, he left behind a lone 45 as proof of his potent stage show. Issued on Louie Brown’s Kaycee-Soul in 1969, "Funky Monkey Right On" b/w "What It Is?" disappeared into the Kansas City underground, only to reappear 40 years later in our sprawling Eccentric Soul: Omnibus box set. Turned up in that process was an acetate of cover songs featured in the Indications' live set, including soulful takes on Ides of March's "Vehicle" and Jimmy Webb's "By The Time I Get To Phoenix." Elsewhere The Impressions' "Gypsy Woman" gets a dirge-y makeover, while The Temptations' "Just My Imagination" is reimagined as a top-down cruiser. What It Is? compiles the best of Liggins' stage set and his only original material, a sonic time machine back to those smoky, late-'60s club nights.

Mogens Pedersøn was a pupil of Melchior Borchgrevinck, later royal kapellmeister, and in 1619 he became royal vice kapellmeister. His major work, Pratum Spirituale ("Spiritual Pasture"), was published in Copenhagen in 1620, containing 21 five-part hymns and a mass, three motets, and a number of responsories. The works directly reflect the church-musical requirements of the time, which made available in print some kind of offerings for ultimately all situations of Lutheran culture. In addition to the hymns that were part of the core liturgical program for the three feasts (Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost), there are Danish hymns, ten psalm hymns, and nine "free" hymns, partly from the distinctly Danish hymn tradition, partly from Luther's closest repertoire. The stylistic world that Pedersøn reveals in "Pratum Spirituale" is unquestionably only a very narrow segment of what this internationally experienced musician mastered: schooled between organ playing, Italian madrigal, Venetian double choir and English "consort music".

Four years ago, just after the birth of their first daughter, Sheila Jaffé’s husband, pianist Peter Longworth, passed away. This album is a deeply personal reflection on the experience of grief that followed. The Franck sonata was a regular in Sheila’s home - and Sheila and Peter played it together in lieu of a ‘first dance’ at their wedding. Recording at Potton Hall in Suffolk, with the Welsh pianist Huw Watkins, the album includes Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae (recorded after a field trip to the Britten library at the Red House and fish and chips on the Aldeburgh coast) and concludes with Elgar’s vast and expressive Sonata for Violin and Piano.

One of the few great things about lockdown for me was the opportunity to discover and share some wonderful solo violin music, both old and new, via YouTube. In a time when I couldn't work with other musicians or play to live audiences, I felt I could still connect and relate to you, my virtual audience, through music.

SOMM Recordings is thrilled to announce Dance!, the debut recording by the Minerva Piano Trio, featuring seminal pieces by Stravinsky and Ravel alongside new works by two British composers, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Richard Birchall, and Pulitzer Prize-winning American, Caroline Shaw.

An emblematic figure of her time, Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) taught and inspired several generations of musicians, from Igor Stravinsky to Quincy Jones. Her musical and pedagogical philosophy, demanding yet highly stimulating, influenced the entire twentieth century. Astrig Siranossian, a rising star of the cello who now joins Alpha for several recordings, is fascinated by this musical personality whom everyone respectfully called ‘Mademoiselle’. She met some of her most illustrious students, including the late Michel Legrand, and Daniel Barenboim who has agreed to accompany her in a piece on the album. With the pianist Nathanaël Gouin, she has devised a very eclectic programme, including the three pieces for cello and piano written by Nadia Boulanger in 1915, three years before the death of her sister Lili.