Gerry Beckley is a founding member of the rock band America. The title of Gerry's first solo work is a very clever play on the names of two impressionist painters. The first is, of course, Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch painter who painted in the south of France. He was a very troubled, but colorful, individual who at one stage of his life cut off part of one of his ears as an act of self torture. His painting style was to use heavy brush strokes with thick paint and he used predominantly, primary colors, creating a style not used before his time.

Bennie Maupin's Cryptogramophone label follow-up CD to Penumbra both parallels and provides a departure from that excellent effort. What is similar is the softer tone Maupin is displaying in his far post-Headhunters days, refined by experience and cured though wisdom. The music Maupin plays on this beautiful effort is even more subdued, as he collaborates with an ensemble of relatively unknown musicians from Poland. If you've been hearing recent efforts from Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and his ECM recordings with the teenage pianist Marcin Wasilewski and his trio, you hear stark similarities. But further, the recently reissued Maupin epic Jewel in the Lotus, which was also on ECM, is quite different than this ECM sounding project. Old may in fact be new again in some respects, but in this case, new is really new. Maupin offers so much appealing music within the undercurrent, starting with the delicate but paced "Black Ice" and the waltzing title track with Maupin on soprano sax. Separate flute and piano lines are woven into a more somber waltz "Tears," or the sparse, spacy, long "Spirits of the Tatras" with dynamics patiently rendered up and down with lots of piano from Michal Tokaj, who rivals the crystalline musings of Wasilewski on the entire album.

Ritchie Blackmore is an British guitarist and songwriter, began his professional career as a session musician as a member of the instrumental band The Outlaws and as a backing musician of pop singers Glenda Collins, Heinz, Screaming Lord Sutch, Neil Christian, etc.. Blackmore was also one of the original members of Deep Purple, playing jam-style rock music which mixed simple guitar riffs and organ sounds During his solo career, he established neo-classical metal band called Rainbow which fused baroque music influences elements with hard rock…

Violinist Tim Fain has worked extensively with minimalist composer Philip Glass in performances and in the preparation of new pieces, and the most impressive result of their collaboration may be the Partita for solo violin (2010), a seven-movement suite written especially for Fain. Associations with Johann Sebastian Bach's violin partitas are inevitable, and it's clear that Glass has had them in mind while composing in what can be described as an aspirational, rather than a merely imitative, manner. Glass has for the most part avoided his customary ostinatos and static sections, and his use of broken chords only suggests counterpoint, rather than propulsive rhythmic patterns. He has also eschewed any direct references to Bach or Baroque style, yet the Partita's kinship with the older models is certainly felt, and Fain's playing has a lot to do with it. The ebb and flow of tempos and the expressive use of rubato give the Partita an introspective feeling, and the freedom of individual expression is quite removed from the locked-in, high-energy ensemble playing that was Glass' early trademark style.

Heitor Villa-Lobos is widely recognised as Brazils most important composer, whose style reflects his country and his era: rooted in 20-th century European modernism, he developed his own unique style, blending all colours, smells and sounds of his homeland into his rich, exuberant and vibrant music. Villa-Lobos wrote an immense oeuvre. An important place hold his guitar works, the perfect instrument to present his own style, fusing Latin-American folk-inspired elements with more learned European forms, like Etudes and Preludes. The complete guitar works of Villa Lobos, played by one of the best classical guitarists of today, Frédéric Zigante.

Among his contemporaries, Kalevi Aho stands as one of the most exciting composers, and foremost among his peers in revitalizing the Finnish symphonic tradition for the postmodern period. A student of Einojuhani Rautavaara, Aho has surpassed his teacher in orchestrational skill and daring. He has amply demonstrated that the symphony should not be treated as an academic exercise in imitation of past masters, and that it deserves the full resources of today's virtuoso orchestra and all the freedoms of the avant-garde's explorations. The Symphony No. 11 for six percussionists and orchestra consolidates the gains of modernism and spans innovations from Varèse to Xenakis.

Legendary conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy releases Johann Sebastian Bach's English Suites 1 - 3. This stunning, brand-new recording sits alongside a remastering of his first-ever Bach recording, the D Minor Concerto, recorded in 1965 in a must-have 2 CD Digipak collection. Amassing over 850M streams with a vast catalogue, Ashkenazy is amongst the foremost musical figures of our time and this release is a must-have for any classical music fan.

"There's a lot going on in this world between the good, the bad and the in-between, and this album attempts to ride some of those horses," Willie Nile says of his memorably-titled new album World War Willie. The dozen-song set lives up to Nile's reputation as a world-class songwriter, a singularly energetic performer and a true rock 'n' roll believer. Currently in the fourth decade of a recording career that's yielded a panoply of musical riches, the New York-bred artist is currently experiencing an exciting renaissance at a time when many of his contemporaries are winding down or giving up. World War Willie lives up to that standard with some of the most resonant songwriting and performances of Nile's career.

After teaming up with Herbie Hancock for the jazz-flavored The Swing of Delight album, Carlos Santana reentered the pop/rock realm with the rest of his band for 1981's Zebop!. He still managed to include a little bit of his famed Latino sound into a few of the tracks ("E Papa Re," "American Gypsy"), albeit only slightly, but Zebop!'s overall feel is that of commercial rock, with the guitar arriving at the forefront through most of the cuts. Santana does a marvelous job at covering Russ Ballard's "Winning," taking it to number 17 on the charts, while "The Sensitive Kind" is built around the same type of radio-friendly structure yet it stalled at number 56. Zebop!'s formula is simple, and all of the songs carry an appeal that is aimed at a wider and more marketable audience base, with "Changes," "Searchin," and "I Love You Much Too Much" coming through as efficient yet not overly extravagant rock & roll efforts…

On the blazing heels of their highly-lauded 2021 debut album, Sermons Of The Sinner - which debuted within the Top 20 on charts in the United States, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Finland and more - KK's Priest return to sin again with their savage sophomore offering, The Sinner Rides Again, out September 29, 2023 via Napalm Records. The powerhouse heavy metal amalgamation of iconic Judas Priest alum and Grammy Award winning/nominated musicians K.K. Downing (guitar) and Tim “Ripper” Owens (vocals), along with A.J. Mills (guitar), Tony Newton (bass) and Sean Elg (drums), double down on the ripping melodic force of their debut - which Metal Hammer UK dubbed “hugely enjoyable” and Metal Injection cited as boasting “catchy hooks and plenty of guitar wizardry”. The Sinner Rides Again boasts nine tracks of pure hellfire, produced and written by Downing and mixed/mastered by Jacob Hansen.