Albert Harris (1916–2005) was an English musician who worked in Hollywood for most of his life as an orchestrator, arranger and composer for several of the big film Studios and for such pop icons as Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack and Cher. He was born in London and studied piano from age 6, becoming also a self-taught guitarist. His knowledge of the guitar enabled him in later years to compose pieces specifically for it (his Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Handel was recorded by Andrés Segovia). In the mid-1930s he began to make a name for himself as a session musician in London where he featured on many recordings, most notably as session guitarist with the Lew Stone band, his delicate but swinging improvisations enhancing many of Stone’s records during 1934/35. Harris came to New York in 1938 and started playing piano in big bands across the US then began studying at the NYU College of Music, where he earned a doctorate in 1944. He finished the PhD remotely, having moved to Los Angeles in 1942, where he studied composition with Mary Carr Moore and Eugen Zador and conducting with Richard Lert. He served as professor of orchestration at UCLA and was Assistant Musical Director for broadcaster NBC from 1946 to 1949.

Extras offers 26 B-sides, rarities and unreleased tracks that, while far from complete (the wonderful "See Saw" is absent, for instance), is a fan's dream come true. This is a fans' album, to be sure, but for fans, the never-before-heard demos (like "Burning Sky" and "Thick As Thieves") have a certain spine-tingling effect, and the covers (like "So Sad About Us," "And Your Bird Can Sing," and "Disguises") are undeniably fun – often more so than the covers they chose to include on the proper albums. Extras is not a good introduction, to be sure, but for the converted, this is essential.

Featuring several world-premiere recordings, the most comprehensive set ever released of Pizzetti’s song output.
Art song occupies a substantial space in Pizzetti’s oeuvre, with over 40 pieces, and yet the composer is still remembered mostly for his opera Murder in the Cathedral, and more tangentially for chamber and choral pieces such as the Cello Sonata and Requiem. Pizzetti composed songs for almost his entire life as a composer, starting with Nuvole (1899), a romanza still unpublished, up to the Tre canti d’amore, which belong to the group of his last works, from the second half of the 1950s.

The music of Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) is rooted in the tradition of Elgar, Parry and Vaughan Williams, but Bach was also a very significant influence for him. This album’s programme features the ‘Benedetto Marcello’ Chamber Orchestra under Flavio Emilio Scogna tackling the British composer’s complex personality with contextual awareness of the great trajectories of 20th century musical thought.

Massimo Farao' is a wonderful Italian pianist was born May 16th, 1965, in Genoa. Farao's passionate style and stoic romanticism are very attractive along with the rich harmonies he creates. He studied piano with Maestro Flavio Crivelli and began his career collaborating with musicians from the Genoa Area, especially with the bassist Piero Leveratto. In 1993 he was invited for the first time in the USA. He plays with Red Holloway and Albert "Tootie" Heath on a tour on the West Coast. In the same year he founded "We love Jazz" Workshop, now become one of the biggest events in Europe for jazz teaching.

Ella Fitzgerald virtually invented the live album. The reason is simple: her performances were so consistently great that almost any live show was special enough to release as a record. In a sense, for Ella Fitzgerald, every night was 'The Moment of Truth'. Mixed directly from 4-track tapes recorded by Wally Heider-resulting in higher-fidelity audio than most `lost' recordings. Ella's band features the rarely-heard but hard-swinging trio of Jimmy Jones, Bob Cranshaw and Sam Woodyard. The Ellington band captured here was at its peak, featuring Cat Anderson, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope

Le temps des lilas is an ode to Romanticism, a love song and a nostalgic reflection on the bittersweet beauty of lost happiness. Dedicated to the music of Ernest Chausson, this album oscillates between passion and melancholy, wonder and nostalgia. The Concert Op. 21, a masterly work on the borderline between chamber music and orchestra, is carried by Pierre Fouchenneret's magnetic violin and David Violi's colorful piano. I Giardini also deliver a previously unpublished version of Poeme Op. 25, reworked for violin, piano and string quartet. The album closes with Pauline Buet's equally sensitive retelling of Chausson and Barbara's 'Temps des/du lilas', using cello in the former and singing voice in the latter. Barbara's song and Chausson's melody stand as a simple, timeless tribute to the magic of past moments and the fragility of human existence. Le temps des lilas is I Giardini's first full-length album for PENTATONE, following an already rich discography: Nuits (which has been awarded the prestigious Diapason d'Or), Bleu, Shaw and Faure, an EP released with PENTATONE in 2024.

The 1978 recording debut from reformed avant-garde composer and eventual ambient forerunner Harold Budd consists of four chamber works (written between 1972 and 1975) that use varying combinations of harp, mallet instruments, piano, saxophone, and female or male vocals. Two years before his fateful first studio collaboration with Brian Eno (who produced this album), Budd was creating hypnotic music in an acoustic mode. All of the works herein–including "Two Rooms," whose latter half is an adaptation of John Coltrane's "After the Rain"–sustain a similarly dreamy vibe. An important credo for Budd was to make music as pretty as possible as an antidote to the noisy avant-garde he had escaped from. One cannot fault him for the lovely sounds he creates here, although fans familiar with his more cinematic works might be caught off-guard. Regardless, the pleasant Pavilion of Dreams provides insight into Budd's past, and it offers the same somniferous effect as a gentle lullaby, making it perfect for late-evening listening.

Badfinger completed their best album in 1975, then had it pulled from the shelves in a haze of managerial misdeals and contractual screw-ups. They were good soldiers, at least for a while, heading into the studio (without Joey Molland, who bailed at the last minute) to bash out another album for Warner, completing it in two weeks. Warner rejected the effort, lead songwriter Pete Ham committed suicide not long afterward, and the album sat in the vaults until late 2000, when Artisan/Snapper released Head First as a double-disc set (the second disc consisting of demos and outtakes). Head First confirms that Badfinger had settled into a groove with Wish You Were Here, finding an effective middle ground between their pop gifts and hard rock inclinations, with both Ham and Tom Evans contributing equally strong works.

The Subscription Concert Series of the Wiener Philharmoniker from the Golden Hall of the famous Musikverein are special concerts reserved for subscribers. Due to the exceptional quality of the concerts and the limited offer, the average waiting time for subscribers is more than 10 years. With this series, these very special concerts are made available for the first time audiovisually to a wider audience worldwide. For this subscription concert, the Wiener Philharmoniker asked a long-time artistic companion to take the podium: more than 140 concerts and a multitude of celebrated recordings connect Christian Thielemann with the traditional Viennese orchestra.

Véronique Gens und Susan Manoff standen 2024 als den Patinnen der Académie Orsay-Royaumont zur Seite. Unter ihrer Schirmherrschaft entstanden vier Duos aus jungen Sängern und Pianisten, die ein Programm zusammenstellten, in dem bildliche und musikalische Formen verwoben sind. Dazu gehören die Meister des Liedes und der Melodie - Franz Schubert, Claude Debussy, Henri Duparc - sowie weniger bekannte Komponisten wie Rebecca Clarke, Ivor Gurney oder Isang Yun. Das Album bei b-records präsentiert die erfolgreiche Arbeit der jungen Musiker.

As an album title, Good to Be… drifts off on a wave of ellipses, but on the record itself, it's presented as "Good to Be (Home Again)," making the spirit of Keb' Mo's 15th studio album explicit: he's settled into a comfortable groove, appreciating good vibes and mellow grooves. Despite cameos from Darius Rucker and Americana stalwarts Old Crow Medicine Show, there's not a pronounced country or folk undercurrent here. Good to Be… is cut from the same cloth as 2011's slick, soulful The Reflection, only it's even smoother and mellower – so low-key, it can veer into adult contemporary territory, a connection underscored by Kristin Chenoweth's appearance on the album closer "Quiet Moments." If Good to Be… sometimes is a little too cozy – it's executed well and its unifying spirit is evident, but a cover of "Lean on Me" still feels a little overly familiar – it's nevertheless a warm, welcoming album that's every bit as soothing and comforting as Keb' Mo' intended it to be.

Once considered a long-lost (and in most cases, complete unknown) studio recording from John Lee Hooker, 'The Standard School Broadcast Recordings' is the first commercial release of a rare 1973 fully electric blues band recording. Performed direct-to-tape at Coast Recorders in San Francisco, the session captures Hooker at a tumultuous and deeply transformative time of his career, accompanied by his reliable standby rhythm section of bassist Gino Skaggs and drummer Ken Swank, plus Hooker's pianist son Robert.

More than 50 years after the original quartet assembled as The Drifters to accompany an up and coming young singer named Cliff Richard on stage and record - and after some changes of personnel, fallow years and successful comebacks - The Shadows are still statistically among the top raters in the overall history of the UK pop singles and albums charts. During the late 50s/early 60s period of this celebratory compilation they became for a while the most influential group in Britain, greatly boosting the sales of Fender guitars, Vox amps and mohair suits. Founders Hank Marvin (lead guitar) and Bruce Welch (second guitar) still front the group's intermittent sell-out revivals. Their original sidekicks Jet Harris (bass guitar) and Tony Meehan (drums) have been replaced over the years but the sound of The Shadows remains a distinctive reminder of where it all began - with the 66 tracks on this comprehensive 2CD set, the recordings that inspired a generation of young wannabes to pick up a guitar and kick a leg in tune and in step with the renowned 'Shads'.

A native of Ukraine, Alexey Shor now lives and works in New York. His music has received prestigious performances and recordings in collaboration with leading international musicians. Joining a long tradition of music inspired by literary sources, From My Bookshelf is a series of musical character portraits that range from the tortured soul of Quasimodo to the dashing D’Artagnan, with plenty of fantasy and romance in between. The engaging and virtuoso Flute Concerto No. 1 combines traditional Classical forms with unexpected harmonic language and intricate rhythmic vitality.