No eighteenth-century composer was so adept at so many musical styles as Georg Philipp Telemann. Telemann's versatility and inventiveness kept his musical style avant-garde during his entire life. He was not only praised by his contemporaries but was highly respected by the next generation: his fame was immense. Thererfore New Collegium, one of the promising ensembles of the younger generation, has chosen for their first CD on the Ramée label to show Telemann the chameleon, the breadth of his musical palette. Some of the pieces will undoubtedly sound familiar; others, such as the Italianate Trio for violin and cello obbligato, or the pastoral Trio for two violins in scordatura, will surely be delightful, new surprises for many. Coming in and out of disguise with Telemann’s chameleonic notes we often find ourselves wondering: is this truly music by just one composer, not six?

Composed during a few hectic weeks in the autumn of 1739, the set was partly intended by Handel – renowned mainly as a writer for singers and as an organist – to reinforce his stature as an instrumental composer. The result is music that exhibits a great variety of musical thought and invention, here interpreted by the highly acclaimed Polish ensemble Arte dei Suonatori making their third recording for BIS. The recordings are the fruit of a regular collaboration between the ensemble and French conductor Martin Gester, focusing on the baroque concerto.

En 1516 Ludovico Ariosto publicó su poderosa epopeya Orlando furioso, una secuencia de aventuras heroicas entrelazadas. La historia del caballero Orlando, enloquecido por un amor decepcionado por la princesa Angélica, sirve a toda la gama de emociones y rápidamente alcanzó un gran éxito en toda Europa. Se crearon decenas de óperas en torno a Orlando y otros personajes de la epopeya de Ariosto. El contratenor Filippo Mineccia ha reunido un variado programa de arias de óperas de Steffani, Porpora, Vivaldi, Handel, Mele, Wagenseil y Millico en torno a la figura de "Roland el Furioso", en el que despliega brillantemente todas las facetas creativas de su voz.

As he headed into 2014, Kenny Chesney's career wasn't in need of a revival but after two successive commercial underperformers, it needed a jolt of energy, something The Big Revival provides. Abandoning the sun-bleached intimacy of Life on a Rock, Chesney cranks up the volume on The Big Revival, but it's not so much that the record is loud; rather, it's blazingly bright, crisp, and clean, from its singalong party tunes to its ballads. One of those ballads, "Wild Child," features Grace Potter, the singer who helped take "You and Tequila" high on the charts in 2011, her presence a subtle reminder that Chesney's biggest new millennial hits have been slow songs.

Cassandra Wilson continues to move down a highly eclectic path on Belly of the Sun, the somewhat belated follow-up to Traveling Miles. While displaying a jazz singer's mastery of melodic nuance and improvisatory phrasing, Wilson draws on a variety of non-jazz idioms – roots music, rock, Delta blues, country, soul – to create a kind of earthy, intelligent pop with obvious crossover appeal. Her core band includes guitarists Marvin Sewell and Kevin Breit, who blend marvelously, Sewell mostly on mellow acoustic and Breit adding atmospheric touches on electric, 12-string, and slide guitars, as well as mandolin, banjo, and even bouzouki.

Innamoramento is the fifth studio album by Mylène Farmer, released on April 7, 1999. Very poetic, all texts were written by Mylène Farmer who also composed the music for five songs. The album deals with the singer's anxieties, such as pain, unhappy love, sexuality and the passage of the time. But as the album's title suggests, love is the central theme of the latter. The album is slower and with less rock sonorities than Anamorphosée. The sound is more techno-pop and intimate. In 2000, Innamoramento won a NRJ Music Awards in the category 'Francophone album of the year'.

Vocalist Asha Puthli was well-known in her native India before she moved to New York and made a splash in the jazz world. For her Western recording debut, Puthli lent her vocals to "What Reason Could I Give" and "All My Life," a pair of ballads on Ornette Coleman's 1971 Science Fiction LP. She recorded two LPs for Columbia, 1974's Asha Puthli and 1978's The Devil Is Loose, but success in America eluded her, even as she matured into a European chart mainstay. Puthli's popularity grew not in the U.S. but in Europe where she signed a record deal with CBS.