To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story is a 3 CD Career Retrospective (1957-1993) including her work for Bethlehem, Colpix, Philips, RCA, CTI and Elektra, PLUS a DVD featuring the 1970 Emmy-nominated never-before-released documentary. This package includes 54 songs, 8 previously unreleased tracks, including some never recorded elsewhere. The box includes all chart hits (U.S. and U.K.) and her most famous signature songs. An added bonus are liner notes which include track-by-track commentary from Simone biographer, David Nathan, and introduction by Ed Ward, NPR's "rock & roll historian", and never-before-seen photos from her family archives, recording sessions and performances.

Icy strings swoop and sway in an ocean wave of sound on Percy Faith's Bouquet, one of this talented conductor/arranger's most popular albums. Piano chords swell and xylophones delicately plink in the distance, but Faith's arrangements are really all about the massed strings: the melodies, the counter-melodies, the gorgeous undulation of violins (32 of them!). If you have a good stereo system, find a CD or clean vinyl copy of Bouquet and turn up the volume – immerse yourself in the glorious flux and reflux of pure sound. This is one of the most beautiful and distinctive mood music albums ever made, and if hearing it does not give you a new appreciation for the genre, then there is no hope for you. Highly recommended.

Secret Story is among the more provocative recordings in Pat Metheny's oeuvre. Combining the relaxed groove of the early Pat Metheny Group recordings, it is full of odd sounds, exotic instrumentation, and the participation of members of the London Orchestra conducted by Jeremy Lubbock. Along with regular group members – bassist Steve Rodby, drummer Paul Wertico, percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, pianist-keyboardist Lyle Mays – numerous guests adorn these tracks as well: bassists Charlie Haden and Will Lee, percussionist Armando Marcal, vocalist Mark Ledford, jazz harmonica legend Toots Thielmans, Gil Goldstein, and Pat's brother Mike Metheny. But what's most notable is that none of these players are constants, as this is most certainly a Metheny solo effort: Secret Story is his own song, so to speak. His acoustic and electric guitars are augmented by synthesizers and samplers, and no matter how lush these proceedings get, they are never overwhelmed by production.

What one feels about this 27-song CD will depend entirely upon one's tolerance for soft rock and bubblegum pop. Pickettywitch were huge in England for about two years, and remain one of the more fondly remembered pop/rock groups of their period, mostly by virtue of singer Polly Browne, who has maintained a fandom for 30 years. The sound is soft rock in a modified group context, similar to the kind of music generated by the Partridge Family, the Cowsills, and, on a two-dimensional level, the Archies in America, slick and smooth, catchy and unthreatening; their version of Paul Simon's "Sound of Silence" is something akin to what the New Seekers' rendition might've been like, while "Days I Remember," which came close to charting in America, is akin to the Carpenters trying their hand at blue-eyed soul. It's all rather pretty, for all of its relative wimpiness, and difficult to dislike on that basis – "Solomon Grundy," the B-side that launched their public success, is one of those tunes that was meant for radio airplay two or three times daily, and the title track, a top-five U.K. hit, is a breezy piece of romantic soft rock.

Formed as a side project by two Jefferson Airplane members, they became a solid blues-rock unit with a cult following on the jam band circuit. Hot Tuna is an American blues band formed in 1969 by guitarist/vocalist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady. Deluxe Vinyl Replicas by Culture Factory constitute high quality reissued compact-discs which reproduce all the components of the original LPs and are their exact replicas in compact-disc size (5.3 x 5.3 inches), with authentic single or gatefold cardboard jackets and paper sleeves. In addition to the above, each compact-disc Deluxe Vinyl Replica includes a black finish CD complete with the original label to give it the look and feel of the original record album. The music is encoded using state of the art, high definition remastering in 96 kHz / 24 Bit audio. Brand new, original, factory-shrinkwrapped, limited edition CD release.

Collection includes all studio albums and two compilations by English musical group Talk Talk. The group had a string of international hit singles including "Today", "Talk Talk", "It's My Life", "Such a Shame", "Dum Dum Girl", "Life's What You Make It" and "Living in Another World". In their later years the band's commercial appeal receded, but their critical reputation increased as they moved from synthpop to a more experimental form. Their final two albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, were highly acclaimed and remain influential to experimental alternative rock genres, especially post-rock.

Art of Noise (also The Art of Noise) were an English avant-garde synth-pop group formed in early 1983 by engineer/producer Gary Langan and programmer J. J. Jeczalik, along with arranger Anne Dudley, producer Trevor Horn and music journalist Paul Morley. The group had international Top 20 hits with "Kiss" and the instrumental "Peter Gunn", which won a 1986 Grammy Award. The group's mostly instrumental compositions were novel melodic sound collages based on digital sampler technology, which was new at the time. Inspired by turn-of-the-20th-century revolutions in music, the Art of Noise were initially packaged as a faceless anti- or non-group, blurring the distinction between the art and its creators. Collection includes: (Who's Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise! (1984); In Visible Silence (1986); In No Sense? Nonsense! (1987); Below The Waste (1989); The Ambient Collection (1990); The FON Mixes (1991); The Seduction Of Claude Debussy (1999).

An amazing collection – every single Jorge Ben album recorded for Philips – one hell of a massive legacy in music, packaged here with a bonus CD of rare material too! The albums in the collection are the stuff of legend – amazing discs that forever changed the face of Brazilian music with Jorge's unique blend of samba and soul, plus a touch of funk as the 70s came on – and together, the music is a mindblowingly heavy batch of work that few other artists could ever match! Titles include Samba Esquema Novo, Sacudin Ben Samba, Ben E Samba Bon, Big Ben, Jorge Ben (1969), Forca Bruta, Negro E Lindo, Ben, 10 Anos Depois, A Tabua De Esmeralda, Solta O Pavao, Gil E Jorge, and Africa Brasil. Rarities disc is unique to this set, from what we can tell – and is filled with goodies too!

Eugene Istomin (1925–2003), one of America’s most respected pianists, was highly esteemed by audiences and colleagues alike for his mindful virtuosity and unusually wide-ranging repertoire. 2015 marks Istomin’s 90th birthday year, a milestone that Sony Classical celebrates with the first-ever release of his complete Columbia Masterworks concerto and solo recordings in a limited original-jacket collection including 10 previously unreleased studio recordings. Many of these performances appear in their first authorized CD editions, including the 19-year-old pianist’s recorded debut in Bach’s D minor Concerto led by Adolf Busch; his youthful concerto collaborations with Pablo Casals; Chopin’s complete Nocturnes; Brahms’s Handel Variations; Schubert’s D major D 850 Sonata, plus the long-out-of-print Rachmaninoff 2nd, Tchaikovsky 1st, Brahms 2nd, and Beethoven 4th and 5th (“Emperor”) Concertos with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Newly remastered from the original analogue tapes, the discs are presented in facsimile sleeves and labels corresponding to the original LP releases. An enclosed booklet offers full discographical information, an essay by Jed Distler, and a photographic retrospective.

A collection includes: 'Faith' (1987); Listen Without Prejudice (1990); 'Older' (1996); 'Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best Of George Michael' (1998); 'Songs From The Last Century' (1999); 'Patience' (2004); and 'TwentyFive' (2006).

Australian new wave rockers known best for their '80s hits "Crazy" and "Electric Blue." Collection includes: Flowers (1980); Primitive Man (1982); Sidewalk (1984); Measure For Measure (1986); Man Of Colours (1987); Code Blue (1990); Big Wheel (1993).

Collection includes: Can't Buy A Thrill (1972); Countdown To Ecstasy (1973); Pretzel Logic (1974); Katy Lied (1975); The Royal Scam (1976); Aja (1977); Gaucho (1980).

He's been called the best-known unknown singer in the world, a musician's musician, a full-tilt street poet. He's Bill Champlin, a founding member of the legendary San Francisco band Sons of Champlin, and songwriter with two GRAMMY® awards and six critically-acclaimed solo albums. Fed up with the music industry, he hasn't released a solo album in 10 years, leading fans to ask, "Where have you been?" This cult figure has been hiding in plain sight: playing in the band Chicago and singing some of its biggest hits, and penning a remarkable collection of songs, No Place Left To Fall.

In 1997, it came as a quite a surprise when Fantasy reissued Opa's albums Golden Wings (1976) and Magic Time (1977) on a single 74-minute CD – surprising because the fusion trio had only a very small following; its albums were far from big sellers, and the original LP versions were in print for only a few years. If one notices some similarity between the melodic blend of jazz, rock, funk, pop, and Brazilian music heard on this disc and Airto Moreira's CTI dates of the 1970s, it's no coincidence – Moreira produced both Golden Wings and Magic Time and plays percussion on both of them. Opa members Hugh Fattoruso (keyboards, vocals), George Fattoruso (drums, vocals, percussion), and Ringo Thielmann (bass, vocals) often worked with the percussionist and his wife, Flora Purim, in the 1970s, and his influence clearly rubbed off. It's regrettable that Opa were never as commercially successful as either Moreira or Purim, although this CD points to the fact that it wasn't due to a lack of rewarding material.

Named after the 1934 Ray Noble-penned standard made famous by Bing Crosby, The Very Thought of You is the sixth studio album from Canadian jazz vocalist Emilie-Claire Barlow. Released in 2007, it features silky-smooth renditions of Nat King Cole's "Almost Like Being in Love," Billie Holiday 's "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," and Mama Cass' "Dream a Little Dream of Me" alongside interpretations of hits from various musicals including Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma!, and Pennies from Heaven.