IQ are a British neo-progressive rock band founded by Mike Holmes and Martin Orford in 1981 following the dissolution of their original band The Lens. Although the band have never enjoyed major commercial success and had several line up changes, IQ have built up a loyal following over the years and are still active as of 2016. In 2011, IQ performed a series of concerts in the UK and Europe celebrating their 30th anniversary.

Taj is an album by American blues artist Taj Mahal. From the Universal vibe of “Everybody is Somebody” to the political and environmental message of “Light of the Pacific” and the charm of “Soothin” Taj takes you on a musical adventure as you travel from track to track. Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician, a singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments. He often incorporates elements of world music into his works and has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, and the South Pacific.

Volume 65 of Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series journeys to Spain and the heart-on-sleeve world there to be found. The Albéniz Concierto fantástico owes much to Schumann and Chopin, albeit with an added drizzle of the Iberian peninsula; the perennially popular Rapsodia española, on the other hand, throws all such classical models to the wind.

Dmitri Shostakovich was the most versatile of composers: popular and serious styles came to him with equal ease and are frequently found together in the same work. In his twenties, before the heavy hand of Soviet officialdom slapped him down in 1936, music of every kind poured out of him: symphonies, operas and full-length ballets but also a great amount of music for film and theatre. Here Andrew Litton leads the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in a programme which explores this lighter side of a composer who is otherwise often regarded as unrelentingly serious.

It was very rare for the musical careers of women who composed in the 19 th century to progress effortlessly – as if an invisible hand opened up one career opportunity after another. For the Frenchwoman Mélanie Bonis, this seemed to be the case when she started out. The talent of this gifted young woman did not go unnoticed and was thus developed upon so that Bonis was accepted into the Paris Conservatoire – where she studied with the likes of Claude Debussy – and her composition professor considered nominating her for the coveted Prix de Rome. Numerous composition prizes were awarded to her during her lifetime, yet Mel Bonis was not able to complete her studies and she did not receive the fame worthy of her talent.

Johannes Oerding's career curve has been pointing steadily upwards for 20 years. With six studio albums to date, a live DVD and countless tours, the successful singer and songwriter has been going his own way since 1999: step by step into the top league of the country - without compromise.
After a performance at a town festival in the Lower Rhine, he is invited to a studio in Hamburg – far away if you come from the village like he does. Although the singing job is a complete success, his next step is not a record deal, but back to the live stage. The 18-year-old gained thousands of kilometers of concert experience over five years before the legendary Udo Lindenberg certified him a "throat of gold" in 2005 and the search for the right label began. In 2007, the contract, under which Johannes Oerding does not have to bend, is sealed with a handshake and his career continues to pick up speed.

In Raffaele Calace’s considerable musical production – approximately 200 opus numbers – 9 pieces are for solo guitar, obviously not including his single composition for Hawaiian guitar, Piccolo fiore op. 168. This statistical datum takes on a greater importance if we consider that Calace’s other solo pieces were all for the two main instruments to which he devoted his existence, the mandolin and the cantabile lute: for these instruments he composed respectively 30 and 26 works, in addition to his handbooks, which are a fundamental point of reference for the modern teaching of these instruments. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to consider this production unworthy of interest: it shows us the taste and charm of a period, and offers us compositions that are refined and far from commonplace. These pieces convey the emotions and intimacy of the romanticism that could be felt in drawing-room music, during the so-called “periodiche”, the musical gatherings in the Neapolitan middle-class homes. The young guitarist Roberto Guarnieri plays Calace's music on a precious 1936 "Mozzani” guitar part of the collection of the Modenese luthier Lorenzo Frignani.