The first ever live performance and recording by Marc Moulin's sought-after jazz-funk band Placebo, captured at Casino Kursaal during the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1971 and never released before.

Expansive, stirring, and majestic, German band Grobbschnitt's music rivaled that of Genesis and Yes in the symphonic rock sweeping sweepstakes, combining absurdist jokiness, circus music, seriously orchestral passages, and rock-inspired grandiosity. This 1975 album - the band's third - is an adventuresome and only slightly dated outing that is a must-have for prog fans, and highlights include the joyful "Clown." The 2007 reissue includes both English-language and German versions of every song.

The Wurttembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen presents a Mozart program on ARS PRODUKTION with two Swiss guests, conductor Christian Erny and pianist Hans-Jurg Straub, that is full of contrasts: On one hand, Mozart's festive, life-affirming so-called Haffner Symphony K385 and, in stark contrast, the sombre, emotional Piano Concerto in C minor K491.

For it's first recording for BIS Records, the Marmen Quartet tackles three major works from the twentieth-century string quartet literature. The two quartets by Gyorgy Ligeti belong to two different periods in the composer's output. Written before Ligeti left Hungary and emigrated to the West, the First, subtitled 'Metamorphoses nocturnes', represents the peak of his 'Hungarian' period. Regarded as a virtuoso exercise, the work reveals the influences of Bela Bartok, particularly from his Third and Fourth Quartets.

Despite all the warnings from the prophets of doom, Bruckner’s music has thankfully prevailed. Bruckner was always in search of the ideal structure for his symphonies. Dissatisfaction and perfectionism both caused him anguish and served as motivation in his determination to advance on an artistic level. His goal was to compose absolute music in the spirit of Beethoven. It is his Third Symphony, above all, “in which the trumpet introduces the theme,” that encapsulates this striving for absolute music – music that is timeless and continues to touch people’s hearts.

Trumpet was meant to have a bright future after Handel and Bach, but history decided otherwise. Relegated to a military signal role with timpani, it had to wait until the later Romantic period to flourish once again. A brainchild of Andrew Balio, this album showcases his own transcriptions of works from the golden age of chamber music, inviting trumpeters out of the cold and into the cozy world of Brahms, Schumann, and Schubert. Pianist John Wilson partners Andrew for these new arrangements of Brahms's clarinet sonatas, Schumann's Adagio and Allegro, and Marchenbilder, and Schubert's lied 'Auf dem Strom', in which tenor Nicholas Phan gives voice to the text. Thanks to Andrew, trumpeters and music lovers can now enjoy an expanded repertoire which invites us into an entirely new soundworld.

5 is the fifth album by J. J. Cale. Released in 1979, it was his first album in three years. Most of the tracks were recorded and mixed at The Lakehouse, Old Hickory, Tennessee. When the album was re-issued on CD, "Katy Kool Lady" was replaced by a new song listed as "Out of Style," though it was still listed as the former on the CD. "Out of Style" is also included on the 2007 album Rewind: The Unreleased Recordings". There is still no U.S. domestic release of the song "Katy Kool Lady" on CD. 5 marks the first appearance of Christine Lakeland on a J.J. Cale album, a singer and musician who would play a significant role in Cale's music in the years ahead.

The first album from Dust is interesting on many levels. The rhythm section featured drummer Marc Bell, who would later join New York punk rockers Richard Hell & the Voidoids, while bassist Kenny Aaronson would sign on with labelmate Stories on the group's third album, as Ian Lloyd moved from bass/vocals to complete frontman. The songwriting team of producer Kenny Kerner and singer/guitarist Richie Wise would go on to produce the third Stories album, making this Dust debut and its follow-up an important piece of the Stories puzzle. Wise's lead vocals on Dust were decent enough to complement his very competent guitar playing; Wise would eventually get hired as A&R man at Scotti Brothers Records. This record is not only the document of a record executive/producer as recording artist, but of musicians who would go on to do more substantial work in the industry…

A limited-edition five-CD box set comprising both albums that Janis Joplin made with Big Brother & the Holding Company (Cheap Thrills and Big Brother & the Holding Company), both of her solo albums (I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! and Pearl), and a bonus EP with five previously unreleased recordings. Each of these four albums includes previously unreleased bonus tracks (including live material), and each is available separately with the same bonus cuts. The tracks on the bonus EP aren't available anywhere else, and if you're devoted enough to consider laying out for this deluxe box, you're probably most interested in what's on that fifth disc.

In November 2021, even before taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle began a cycle of Mahler symphonies with a performance of the Ninth (BR-KLASSIK 900205). The Sixth followed in September 2023 (BR-KLASSIK 900217) and the conductor is now tackling the composer's Seventh Symphony. This cycle marks the beginning of a new chapter in Mahler interpretation, as Rattle is just as passionate a Mahler admirer at the helm of the orchestra as his predecessors Jansons, Maazel and Kubelik. BR-KLASSIK has already released the live recording of the current concert with Mahler's impressive Seventh Symphony from November 2024.