The Great Performances/Great Songs series by Verve is a new attempt to get prospective buyers interested in its vast jazz catalog by introducing them to large-scale hits by artists who appeared either on its label proper, or on one of its licensees'. In the case of saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr., these are sides he cut for Creed Taylor's Kudu imprint - Motown’s jazz label at the time - between 1971 and 1978. The six selections are all covers of very popular soul or pop numbers, and come from recordings like Inner City Blues, All the King’s Horses, and Soul Box, Vol. 2, though the gorgeous reading of Billy Joel's “All the Things You Are” comes from 1978’s Reed Seed. Other tracks included here are stylish renditions of “Where Is the Love?,” “Georgia on My Mind,” Marvin Gaye's “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology Song),” a reggae version of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me,” and Stevie Wonder’s "You are the Sunshine Of My Life”…

As Robert Fripp had done with King Crimson's first live LP, Earthbound (1972), USA is a single-disc concert package documenting the quartet during its 1974 swing through North America. As with its predecessor, USA was also issued as a sonic cenotaph of the concurrently defunct Krim. So insistent that the band would not be resurrected, Fripp concluded the LP's liner notes at the time with another three-letter epitaph: "R.I.P." The 1973/1974 King Crimson included the collective efforts of Fripp (guitar/Mellotron), David Cross (violin), John Wetton (bass/vocals), and Bill Bruford (drums/percussion).

2025 is a year of highest importance for the Norwegian/Irish duo Secret Garden as it marks the 30th anniversary of their debut single, debut album and winning Eurovision in 1995. The launch of the global campaign for their newly remastered debut album, Songs From A Secret Garden, on the 30th birthday of the Eurovision-winning track, "Nocturne," marks the start of the catalog campaign for this huge album and legendary artists. With a big global audience, this will be a year the band reaches even bigger achievements than ever before!

Heartical Sound & Label’s brand new one-riddim album pays tribute to the great Freddie McGregor’s song “I’m a revolutionist”, originally recorded in 1976 at Studio One under the name “I man a rasta”. As usual, all instruments are played by the Basque Dub Foundation band, under the leadership of Inyaki Yarritu.

While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few of them experienced a more radical stylistic evolution than Fleetwood Mac. Initially conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late '60s, the band gradually evolved into an incredibly popular and influential pop/rock act over the course of a decade.

Zulu Guitar's Pioneering Tricksters But for this compilation of rescued songs masterfully restored from rare 78 rpm shellacs, few could imagine the diversely beautiful roots of Zulu Guitar Music emerging during the period 1950 – 1965. Story-tellers and master musicians appropriate outlaw personae, re-purpose country and western, Hawaiian and other styles, to stretch and challenge our notion of “the Zulu guitar”. Twenty-five songs (18 on vinyl) plunge us into the depths of the migrant experience. Translations in the liner notes offer us glimpses of pugnacity, melancholy and heartache, all coloured by the paternalism that circumscribed the singers’ apartheid-dominated lives.

With this recording, volume 42 of the complete music for solo keyboard by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Miklós Spányi continues his exploration of transcriptions of concertos originally written for keyboard and orchestra, to which he adds some movements from early versions of sonatas (the standard versions of which appear on earlier volumes in this series). Four of the six concertos from the Wq 43 collection are featured here (the remaining two appear on the previous volume, BIS-2397). When Bach published this set of six concertos for keyboard and orchestra in 1772, he also prepared a version for solo keyboard intended for moderately advanced amateurs who could then play them at home, without orchestra, thus opening up a much larger market. A smart move by the shrewd businessman that Bach was. About his decision to record these works on a clavichord rather than a tangent piano as previously, Spányi says that it allows ‘nearly infinite possibilities for fine dynamic shadings’ and that ‘the required dynamic contrasts can be emphasized even better than on other keyboard instruments of the period’. Spányi adds that this release is a tribute to the clavichord, and especially to his own instrument, built by Joris Potvlieghe.

"Bach from St Ludgeri in Norden" is a celebration of Johann Sebastian Bach's organ music, recorded on one of Europe's most magnificent historic instruments.One of Norway's most revered organists, Kare Nordstoga, returns with a deeply expressive and masterfully performed new album: Bach from St Ludgeri in Norden. This recording captures Nordstoga at the console of the renowned Arp Schnitger organin St Ludgeri Church, located in Norden, Germany.

1000 Hands: Chapter One is the fifteenth studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician Jon Anderson, released March 2019. The album originates from sessions for a project to have been called Uzlot (a northern English pronunciation of "us lot") that Anderson had been recording in Big Bear, California, with Brian Chatton in around 1990. Chatton wrote most of the music, played keyboards and also sang. Anderson asked his then Yes bandmates Chris Squire and Alan White to play on the project too. At the time, Yes were preparing for a tour and Anderson put the master tapes in his garage and, as he has recounted, gave them very little thought for many years. In 2016, producer Michael Franklin contacted Anderson about using the tapes and finishing an album. Further recordings followed at Solar Studios in Orlando, Florida. Along with some newly written material, the final result is 1000 Hands.

Influences features works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—the three giants of the sonata form.Mariam has selected her favourite sonatas, as well as Liszt's Fantasia quasi sonata.The album also includes Liszt’s famous Liebesträume Nos. 1 & 3 and La Campanella, along with other beautiful solo works.

For their latest album, recorded live at the Reitstadel in Neumarkt, Christian Gerhaher and his long-time duo-partner, Gerold Huber, have revisited the songs of the great Romantic composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). Yet it is not their first time: on their debut album in 2002 you´ll already find the ‘Four Serious Songs’ Op. 121, and in 2017 they released their version of ‘Romances from L. Tieck´s Magelone’, Op. 33. However, with this album, they bring single songs and cycles to the fore that testify to an intense striving by Brahms to create a new ‘folk tune’. Embedded into social changes of the 19th century, Brahms here tries to establish the art song as a reflection of its own imagined history as well as a reminiscence and portrayal of a naturalness gradually becoming lost during the rise of the modern world – similar to the ambivalence between tradition and progress, noticeable in his instrumental works.

Downtown Train is a 12-track distillation of Rod Stewart's four-disc box set Storyteller, but instead of containing early hits, it concentrates on '80s singles like "Passion," "Young Turks," "Infatuation," "People Get Ready," and "Forever Young," adding a few '70s songs ("Stay with Me," "Tonight's the Night," "Killing of Georgie," "I Don't Want to Talk About It") and the new hit single "Downtown Train" for good measure. It may not have a wide scope, but it's a good sampler of his latter-day work for casual fans.

On their third CD, the outstanding concertante duo Reinhold Friedrich & Eriko Takezawa bring to life music that has hitherto lain dormant or has not yet appeared in such a brilliant light.In their new CD production, the two exceptional artists present three new discoveries by Alexander Albrecht, Boris Asafiew and Harold Shapero, which are of the utmost importance for the trumpet-piano repertoire. Also noteworthy are the three important repertoire works, the sonatas by Thorwald Hansen, Jean Hubeau and George Antheil, which shine here in completely new splendour.

Thomas Hoppe is widely recognized as one of the finest piano partners of his generation. He has performed with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Antje Weithaas, Vilde Frang, Tabea Zimmermann, Jens Peter Maintz and Frans Helmerson, to name but a few. Amongst his many partners within the younger generation are Richard Lin (2023 Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall), Feng Ning (2023 Wigmore Hall London) and Bomsori Kim (2022 Tonhalle Zürich, 2023 Davies Hall San Francisco).Born in 1971, the German pianist went to the USA as a student of Lee Luvisi and later completed his studies at the Juilliard School in New York City, where he was a long-time studio pianist for Dorothy DeLay and Itzhak Perlman. At the invitation of Mr.Perlman, Hoppe worked for many years at the PMP Music Program on Shelter Island, USA.

Banjo. Drums. Harp. Huh? To be sure, the new all-star trio of B?la Fleck, harpist Edmar Casta?eda and drummer Antonio S?nchez features instrumentation that might safely be called uncommon. Unless, of course, you're already familiar with 19-time Grammy-winner Fleck - the genre-blurring virtuoso who has done more to expand the possibilities of the banjo than any other player in the instrument's history. From his bluegrass beginnings through his otherworldly Flecktones, his duo with Chick Corea and his reimagining of Rhapsody in Blue, Fleck's work never fails to surprise.