These are exuberant performances, overflowing with arch character and impish brio. Lortie doesn't merely phrase responsively; he deftly teases and articulates, so that even routine passage-work lifts into scintillant repartee, wittily met by Pehiavanian and The Hague Residentie Orchestra. For salient instance, this is the first time I've heard the young Liszt's hilariously slapdash, formally sprawling Lelio Fantasy actually.

The renowned chamber choir Ensemble Horizons presents its debut album with GENUIN – an "unheard-of" production in every sense of the word. Many of the featured works are the first recordings of neglected masterpieces by women composers from the 19th through 21st centuries. From the enchanting early Romantic settings of Tübingen’s own Josephine Lang to works by Clara Schumann, Luise Adolpha Le Beaus, Ethel Smyth, and contemporary a cappella pieces by Iris Szeghy, Cecilia McDowall, and Galina Grigorjeva – this moving and pristinely performed choral music expands the repertoire in a way that truly makes one sit up and listen!

Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues are considered one of the most profound and technically demanding collections of piano music of the 20th century. This masterpiece of harmonic exploration and emotional depth comprises 24 pairs of preludes and fugues and was dedicated to the great Soviet Bach interpreter Tatiana Nikolayeva. Among numerous other honors, Italian pianist Sofia Sacco was a City Music Foundation Artist for 2024-2026, a Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music (both in London), and an Artist in Residence at the Società del Quartetto di Bergamo. A video recording in collaboration with Fly on the Wall Productions will be released alongside the album.

The Allman Brothers Band was an American rock band formed in Jacksonville, Florida in 1969[2] by brothers Duane Allman (founder, slide guitar and lead guitar) and Gregg Allman (vocals, keyboards, songwriting), as well as Dickey Betts (lead guitar, vocals, songwriting), Berry Oakley (bass guitar), Butch Trucks (drums), and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe" Johanson (drums). The band incorporated elements of blues, jazz, and country music, and their live shows featured jam band-style improvisation and instrumentals.

Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen once said he intended to make an album with words like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector with vocals like Roy Orbison's, a nifty summary of many, but not all, of his artistic ambitions and a key to his appeal. Unlike any other singer/songwriters saddled with the appellation of "the new Dylan" in the early '70s, Springsteen never hid how he was raised on '60s AM radio. He loved rock & roll, whether it was the initial blast from the '50s or the mini-symphonies from the days before the Beatles or the garage rockers that surfaced in the wake of the British Invasion, and all this could be heard within his wild, wooly collective E Street Band, a group who debuted on his second album, 1973's The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, and who would support him throughout most of his career.

One of the great bands of the rock & roll era, the Kinks pioneered hard rock with such wild early ravers as "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night," singles that inspired such peers as the Who and David Bowie while also pointing the way forward for punk and metal. That turned out to be the first act in a career that ran into the 1990s, making them the only British Invasion band outside of the Rolling Stones to last that long. Where the Stones always occupied center stage, the Kinks operated on the margins, both by accident and design. Lead singer/songwriter Ray Davies fashioned himself as an observer of human behavior, developing a gift for character and commentary that flourished on such mid-'60s singles as "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "Sunny Afternoon."

Recorded live at Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA, USA, May 1, 1970
(soundboard recording of very good to excellent quality)

When Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, Dickey Betts, Duane Allman, Jaimoe, and Gregg Allman finally coalesced in 1969 as The Allman Brothers Band, after stints in other bands and musical endeavors – some alone, some with each other – the group’s very first informal jam together was the stomping Muddy Waters song, “Trouble No More.” Almost immediately the six musicians knew they were on to something special. Shortly after, it also became the very first song they officially demoed together for their eponymous debut record, an album that would begin their legendary, unparalleled, and often times, turbulent journey as one of the best American rock bands to ever exist.

Chicago, the legendary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band with more than 100 million albums sold worldwide, bring their iconic sound to Ovation Hall at the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, NJ for a unique event which finds them joined by special guests Robin Thicke, Chris Daughtry, Steve Vai, VoicePlay, Judith Hill, Robert Randolph and Christone "Kingfish" Ingram. This once-in-a-lifetime event showcases Chicago's greatest hits and celebrates the 55th anniversary of their groundbreaking double-platinum debut album, THE CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY. The recording also captures "unplugged" a cappella arrangements and reimagined Chicago hits in an emotionally moving centerpiece.

This collection spans their entire career, from their '69 debut Chicago TRANSIT AUTHORITY to 2006's Chicago XXX. Includes hits from the band's entire career, inclduing "25 or 6 to 4", "Saturday in the Park," "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?," and many more!

SUPERB TRIPLE DISC SET OF LIVE BROADCAST RECORDINGS FROM THE 1970s Formed in 1967 as Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago shorted their name in 1969, and throughout the 1970s and 80s were a regular fixture on both single and album charts universally. One of the world's best-selling groups of all time, having sold more than 100 million records, in 1971, Chicago was the first rock act to sell out Carnegie Hall for a week. To date, Chicago has sold over 40 million units in the U.S., with 23 gold, 18 platinum, and eight multi-platinum albums. They have had five consecutive number-one LPs on the Billboard 200 and 20 top-ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1974 the group had seven albums, its entire catalogue at the time, on the US albums list simultaneously.

On Saturday May 26th, 1973 before 100,000 plus fans on the Great Lawn of Central Park in New York City, a generational talent singer-songwriter at the undeniable top of her game enjoyed a humbling homecoming a mere 14 miles from the house in Brooklyn where she grew up. The historic event highlighted the earth-moving power she’d unleashed with her watershed Tapestry (already being touted as one of the highest selling albums in history a mere two years after its release), all the way through her soon-to-be released song-cycle album Fantasy, (her fourth consecutive Lou Adler-produced album to land in Billboard’s Top Ten), Carole King’s performance that day was, according to Jack Nicholson, one of only two current events “proper” to be seen at in public.

Prince No artist of the rock & roll era compares to singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Prince. He was the rare combination of a visionary pop conceptualist and master musician who could capture the sounds he imagined. This quality fueled his remarkable success throughout the 1980s, a decade in which he authored a string of nine gold, platinum, or multi-platinum albums that included 1999 (1982), Purple Rain (1984), and Sign 'o' the Times (1987). Ideas came to Prince so quickly that they couldn't be contained on his own records. He masterminded albums by the Time and Sheila E. and gave away hit songs to the Bangles and Sheena Easton, shaping the sound of popular music in the process. There wasn't an area of pop music in the '80s that didn't bear his influence: it could be heard in freaky funk and R&B slow jams, in electro-techno and neo-psychedelic rock, and at the top of the pop charts.

Rock's longest, strangest trip, the Grateful Dead were the psychedelic era's most beloved musical ambassadors as well as its most enduring survivors, spreading their message of peace, love, and mind expansion across the globe throughout the better part of three decades. The object of adoration for popular music's most fervent and celebrated fan following – the Deadheads, their numbers and devotion legendary in their own right – they were the ultimate cult band, creating a self-styled universe all their own; for the better part of their career orbiting well outside of the mainstream, the Dead became superstars solely on their own terms, tie-dyed pied pipers whose epic, free-form live shows were rites of passage for an extended family of listeners who knew no cultural boundaries. The roots of the Grateful Dead lie with singer/songwriter Jerry Garcia, a longtime bluegrass enthusiast who began playing the guitar at age 15. Upon relocating to Palo Alto, California, in 1960, he befriended Robert Hunter, whose lyrics later graced many of Garcia's most famous melodies; in time, he also came into contact with aspiring electronic music composer Phil Lesh.

Purely a touring ensemble by 1991 - their final studio album, 1989 s Built To Last was no classic - Grateful Dead were nevertheless as active as they d ever been, and indeed between 1990 and 1995 the band earned $285 million, second only to The Rolling Stones in tour revenue for the period. Their show at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, on 27th October 91, featuring both Carlos Santana and Gary Duncan on a brace of tracks, was, as-almost-ever, considered extraordinary by fans. Emotional is indeed the word here to describe this show; there is a voodoo to a great many of these songs in terms of their placement and interpretation - Sugar Magnolia to open, a just-ironic-enough Touch of Grey to close the first set. 2nd set is top notch; Gary Duncan's playing is much more prominent than Santana's in the extended Mona-jam, which evokes some great multi-dueling-guitar moments.