Musician, boxer, painter, and poet, Champion Jack was the renaissance man of the blues. He spent the last 30 years of his life living in Europe, but returned to his New Orleans birthplace for some of the early '90s Jazz and Heritage Festivals. In 1991 he stayed stateside long enough to record his second Bullseye Blues album and play a few select U.S. dates before returning to Europe for an exhibition of his paintings in a Swedish art gallery. This batch of Champion Jack originals includes "Yella Pocahontas," the name of the tribe he ran with in New Orleans in the old days (Bo Dollis of the Wild Magnolias sings and plays tambourine on this one), and features backing from his longtime guitarist Kenn Lending, slide player John Mooney, New Orleans bassist Walter Payton, Jr. and others.

Ian Matthews left Fairport Convention in 1969, and while the U.K.'s greatest folk-rock band was beginning to reinvent itself in a more traditional and very British direction, Matthews began digging deeper into the American influences that had marked his old band's first era. Later That Same Year, the second album from Ian's new group Matthews Southern Comfort (it was released in late 1970, a mere six months after their debut, hence the title), is a beautiful set of songs that splits the difference between West Coast folk-rock and early country-rock, with Gordon Huntley's pedal steel and Roger Coulam's lending an air of sunny sadness that dovetails beautifully with Matthews' silky tenor. Matthews wrote three of the songs on Later That Same Year, and they rank with the album's finest moments, especially the ethereal harmonies of "And Me" and the graceful simplicity of "My Lady," but Matthews also borrows some excellent material from American writers, including a cover of Neil Young's "Tell Me Why" that remains faithful while creating a languid mood of its own.

Unlike many bands whose careers had begun in the 1970s, Camel continued to enjoy much success in the 1980s, producing fine studio albums such as Stationary Traveller. Although destined to be Camel's final studio album for Decca Records, it was a fine effort. The subsequent tour to promote the album was equally memorable and was captured by Decca at Hammersmith Odeon on 11th May 1984 and released as the album Pressure Points later that year. The concert saw Camel joined by former member Peter Bardens for certain songs during the set, including a rousing version of Lady Fantasy, not featured on the original album. Long unavailable on CD, this newly re-mastered Esoteric Recordings reissue has been expanded to a 2CD set to include songs not featured on the original album.

Back in the '80s, Paul Murphy developed a cult following as the U.K. DJ who fueled the parties at the WAG Club's Jazz Room. By drawing heavily on the soul-jazz and hard bop records of the '50s and '60s, he developed something of an underground dance craze, one that ran parallel to Northern soul and one that got big enough to attract patrons as prominent as Jerry Dammers of the Specials. A record called The Jazz Club presented highlights from these swinging parties and Murphy continued to DJ outside of the WAG Club, but the trend faded away by the early '90s and, along with it, so did Murphy. Many years later, producer Dean Rudland eventually reconnected with Murphy via Facebook, a rekindling that led to this Ace compilation from 2014. The Return of Jazz Club: Dancefloor Classics from the Original Jazz Dance DJ is a 15-track collection culled from the Prestige and Riverside vaults…

French composer, keyboardist and guitarist Philippe Grancher is a musician those familiar with the French music scene most likely will connect with blues, as he's been a rather succesful purveyor of that kind of music for the last couple of decades. But this veteran musician, born in 1956, first honed his skills on a rather different kind of music. In his late teens Grancher became fascinated with the, at the time, state of the art synthesizers. And his experiments with these instruments ultimately lead to the recording and release of a full length album, 3000 Miles Away. The album is an experimental affair fusing classical piano, synthesizer and guitar into sparse progressive rock compositions.

This recording juxtaposes works, some quite rare, from different stages in Arriaga’s career. Among them are the first and last of his orchestral works, composed in the overture form of this period. In the field of the vocal music, Arriaga wrote, in addition to the above-mentioned opera Los esclavos felices, several church pieces and a series of arias and dramatic scenes. One of them is Herminie, that is here sung by the prestigious sopran singer AInhoa Arteta.

Antonín Rejcha (1770, Prague - 1836 Paris) was a respected professor of counterpoint and fugal technique at Paris Conservatory, and an author of pedagogical works which even Bedřich Smetana and Fryderyk Chopin studied. He wrote wind quintets, piano fugues, overtures and symphonies. It wasn't until the late 20th century that the discovery of his manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris revealed that he was also a composer of large works for choir and orchestra. One such discovery was Rejchas's Missa pro defunctis - Requiem, written in Vienna, where Rejcha lived from 1802 to 1808 before settling down in Paris.

The chant and polyphony on this record is easier to approach than that on the Patriarchate Choir's Panikhida disc (OPS 30-97). The znamenny chant is "harmonized" in a way that shows clear Western influence: The parts often move in parallel thirds; six-four chords are common; the melodies seem to move toward a tonic. Fortunately, distinctive Russian elements remain. The basic melodies are typical of znamenny chant; there are plenty of passing-tone dissonances; and the most usual cadence is 1-4-5 (e.g., d-g-a), which gives a pleasing shimmer to the ending of each chant. The performance by Anatoly Grindenko and his singers is entirely persuasive. This is yet another valuable addition to the discography of this important, little-known repertory.

The Freiburger Barockorchester, directed from Gottfried von der Goltz’s violin, released a brand new recording of Telemann’s rare Passion, entitled Seliges Erwägen (Contemplative Meditations). More than just setting to music the story of the passion of Christ, such as Bach did, we hear in this score a succession of meditations. If we know little about its genesis, it is acknowledged that the success of this work was considerable, even more than that of his Passion after Brockes or his oratorio The Death of Jesus. The clear diction and the transparency of the voices in the chorals perfectly convey the dramatic expression, typical of these sacred works.

Following its highly acclaimed album featuring the three most richly scored Ouvertures (Gramophone Editor’s Choice – shortlisted for the 2017 Gramophone Awards and included among the Top 10 recent Bach recordings), Zefiro comes full circle with the famous collection of Concerts avec plusieurs instruments, that kaleidoscope of colours that seems almost tailor-made to highlight the salient qualities of the ensemble founded by the three historical wind specialists, Alfredo Bernardini and Paolo and Alberto Grazzi.