Avid Jazz continues with its Four Classic Album series with a re-mastered 2CD second set release from Ahmad Jamal, complete with original artwork, liner notes and personnel details.
“Chamber Music Of The New Jazz”; “Ahmad Jamal Trio”; “Count ‘Em 88” and “Listen To The Ahmad Jamal Quintet”.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1930 Ahmad Jamal started playing piano at 3 years old and turned professional at 14! His early influences include Earl Hines, Erroll Garner and Mary Lou Williams and he had the distinction of being spotted as a “coming great” by none other than Art Tatum. He discovered Islam in his 20s and in 1950 Fred Jones became Ahmad Jamal as he took the Muslim faith…

With each successive album, Tinsley Ellis has moved further and further away from mainstream blues grooves and closer and closer to hard rock. While his guitar playing is as explosive as ever, it also remains unfocused, the end result being soloing that never reaches a musical climax, but is nonetheless played with an unrelenting energy that music fans who like their blues with rock muscles will appreciate. Tracks like "Diggin' My Own Grave," "One Sunny Day," "Soulful," "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)," and "I Walk Alone" sound like they could be on anybody's blues-rock or roots rock album, and even legendary producer Tom Dowd can't do much with Ellis' consistently flat and generally lifeless vocals.

Endangered Species: A Compilation Of Rare And Obscure Tracks is a 2000 compilation album by British singer-songwriter Des'ree. As suggested by its title, it is not a greatest hits compilation, but a collection of assorted b-side only tracks, songs from soundtracks, and live versions of her hits from her first three albums. The selection features five b-sides from her different singles (with "Warm Hands, Cold Heart", a b-side to "You Gotta Be" being a new mix specially done for the compilation), five live songs, an acoustic mix, the song "Silent Hero" which was recorded for the 1995 film Clockers, and one then-unreleased song, "Soul Mates". It is Des'ree's only compilation to date. Des'ree was taking time off from music at the time to focus on her private life and the making of her fourth album Dream Soldier and therefore did not promote the album, which did not chart.

The psychedelic southern rock band DeWolff presents on February 5 next year their latest album Roux-Ga-Roux. The album appears on the own Electrosaurus Records in collaboration with Suburban Records. It is the sixth studio album by the band. DeWolff are a psychedelic rock band from the Netherlands’ deep south, formed in 2007 by brothers Pablo & Luka van de Poel and Robin Piso. When their psychedelic yet hard rocking, self-titled EP was released in 2008 it immediately conquered the hearts of rock music lovers all across the country and in December 2008 the band played their first show at Paradiso, a legendary venue in Amsterdam. The release of their 2009 debut album “Strange Fruits and Undiscovered Plants” was followed by a successful tour through the Netherlands and Germany.

This is another great, but completely underrated album from obscure UK progressive rock band. Released in November 1970 on Beacon Records, the Whichwhat's First (and last, unfortunately) album contained an eclectic mix of styles - from bluesy prog, through jazz-rock to folk ballad. That varied and (sometimes) simply stunning album will certainly appeal to the fans of early Jethro Tull, Family and Traffic - with plenty of sax and flute, nice guitar leads and very busy and inventive drumming. It's worth noting that the drummer Steve Harris played before in Woody Kern - another very underrated UK progressive band. In addition to the original LP listing, the four singles tracks has been included as a bonus. This CD has been carefully remastered from the original source and sounds better than ever!

After the homonymous first album (2013) which celebrated AURORA LUNARE of the 70s, and the interlocutory “Translunaggio” (which paid homage to important progressive bands), the band from Livorno returns with “Terzo Luogo”: seven totally new songs, which contain the magic of a past (clear echoes of the historic Italian progressive) that has been able to renew itself brilliantly, with surprising freshness! “Terzo luogo” (Third place) as a middle ground between life and death, forgiveness and damnation, hell and heaven, the human and the divine, like a “third eye” capable of reading the subconscious.

This quintessential release presents one of Hooker's most difficult to find albums: Burning Hell. Recorded in Detroit in April 1959, the Riverside label only originally issued the LP in England. A country-­blues classic, John Lee Hooker only plays acoustic guitar throughout the album, and sings straight to the bone with his soul drenched vocal delivery. Highlights include songs associated with Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Big Bill Broonzy, as well as a number of Hooker's own finest compositions. In addition to the original masterpiece, this remastered CD also contains 8 bonus tracks, including a number of solo recordings taped in different locations between 1952 and 1961.

Here's a fantastic horn rock opus from the earliest days of progressive rock music, or perhaps the waning days of progressive jazz music, shockingly without the strut or support of vocals so the program music has to stand on its own two feet. And boy does it ever stand tall, at least in moments. This one-off group created a uniquely representative jazz-rock sound, a bit more blues-centred or BST-centred than legendary contemporaneous masters Nucleus or Isotope, but with still that striking originality that makes us jaded listeners perk up, take notice, and for sure replay it and subsequently bore our close friends and family members with.

Outpost (2002). "Outpost" is the first collaboration between British synthesist Ian Boddy and American recording artist Robert Rich. Together, Rich and Boddy have concocted a mysterious blend of fluid electronic rhythms and impressionistic 50's Sci-Fi soundscapes. With tools ranging from vintage and modern analog modular synthesizers, prepared piano, metallic percussion, feedback networks, and digital signal processing, the two musicians have crafted a sonic journey to the remote edge of a future, lost civilization…

Nicola Antonio Porpora (1686-1768) was a celebrated composer and singing teacher, his ability to set the Italian language to music was internationally acknowledged during his lifetime. In a career that spanned almost 70 years Porpora worked in Naples, Rome, Venice, London, Dresden and Vienna. As a singing teacher he created stars such as Farinelli, Caffarelli and Porporino. Much of his compositional output is of exceptional quality. He made his chief contribution in the vocal realm, having written many worthwhile secular and sacred operas, oratorios, serenatas and cantatas, as well as various lamentations and duets.

Saint Katherine of Alexandria may or may not have actually existed, but the tale of the imprisoned 17-year-old Christian martyr was catnip to medieval Christians, and the English cult of devotion to this saint (ca. 287-ca. 305) was in full swing in the era of Dunstaple and his contemporaries. This puts it right in the sweet spot of England's Binchois Consort and its conductor, Andrew Kirkman. Katherine was represented in quite a number of alabaster sculptures of the time, and Kirkman takes the unusual step of employing a "sculptor in residence," Sarah Danays, to add to this body of work.

The Kölner Akademie under its proven conductor Michael Willens now presents more atmospheric Christmas compositions by Francesco Durante, one of the greatest Neapolitan church composers of the first half of the eighteenth century. Durante continued the Neapolitan tradition of composing Christmas cantatas or motets, with a series of vocal works that he assigned to the category of the ‘Pastorale’ in order to indicate their relation to the Feast of Christmas and to the shepherds in the field.

Both these couplings are extremely fine, but taken together they add up to even more than the sum of their parts. The point of coupling Shostakovich’s first and last string quartets is obvious, and the contrast between what the composer himself called his “Springtime Quartet” and the unprecedented sequence of six slow movements written months before his death could not be more poignant.

Carlos Kleiber was perhaps the most highly regarded conductor of the late 20th century, but his relatively few excursions into the studio have left the musical world with a frustratingly small number of recordings. Thus we are particularly fortunate that, from among the relatively few appearances in his career, several concerts, one operetta and two operas were filmed. This concert with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester from Munich's Herkulessaal in October 1996 was on of his last.