It may or may not be a fact that jazz musicians age with grace and class. Perhaps someday we will understand this idea better. But in Miles Donahue’s case, the concept certainly bears out. His latest album, coming on the heels of The Bug (Whaling City Sound, 2017), Just Passing Thru is large in scope and beautiful in execution.

"Whenever it rains, it rains star money from the sky. Don't you know that every cloud contains star money? You'll see your luck fall from the sky all over town. "Be careful that your umbrella is upside down, and exchange it for sunshine and flowers…" (from: Lyrics Pennies from Heaven by Johnny Burke) The current CD of the Mandelring Quartet brings together small treasures, as promised by the song Pennies from Heaven from the 1936 film of the same name starring Bing Crosby: favourite pieces, single movements, encores, which the Mandelring Quartet regularly plays in concerts, but also works which stylistically do not fit into or follow a usual programme and which now find their place here. Whether classical or non-classical, original literature or successful arrangements for string quartet: all works are highly appreciated by the ensemble! For weeks, the members of the Mandelring Quartet have been searching through their music archives, which have been accumulated over more than 30 years, and have sifted out the best from the huge fund of works.

This new recording by Belgian pianist Stphane de May is a remarkable escapade around several composers who were of particular importance to him. These pieces have marked out his career as a musician and, put end to end, are a succession of emotions. Recorded under particular conditions of intimacy (in his own work studio and on his own piano), this very personal disc contains many slow and meditative pieces, those in which one can also hear the silencesurrounding the notes.

Works by Fux, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, Bruckner, Webern and Zemlinsky alongside a newly imagined Strauss trumpet sonata. Building on his highly successful transcriptions of sonatas by Fauré, Grieg, Mendelssohn and Schumann, Freeman-Attwood pushes the boundaries further delivering a fully realised trumpet sonata which Strauss did not write. This innovative approach embraces various levels of transcription, transformation, realignment and composition to create a significant new contribution to the trumpet repertoire, full of the gloriously idiomatic writing for which Strauss is renowned. The material is variously drawn from the first movement of Strauss’s Violin Sonata Op. 18, a combination of both light and very significant arrangements of miscellaneous music, newly composed music, and development or transitions based on existing material within the Sonata itself.Accompanying Freeman-Attwood is pianist Chiyan Wong, who was awarded the prestigious 40th Grand Prix du Disque by the Franz Liszt Society.

Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson are the creative spark behind Heart, a rock group who initially found success in the mid-'70s via guitar-heavy radio hits like "Magic Man" and "Barracuda," only to reach greater heights after engineering a major pop comeback a decade later. Drawing from progressive rock, hard rock, and folk, the band's 1976 debut, Dreamboat Annie, and 1977 sophomore effort, Little Queen, helped establish Heart as a hard-hitting hitmaking machine with both hooks and attitude. Their eponymous eighth album, 1985's Heart, reached quintuple platinum status via more mainstream fare such as "Alone," "What About Love?," and "These Dreams," the latter of which scored the band its first number one single. Heart managed to land Top Ten albums in each of the band's four decades, despite taking a break in the late '90s to pursue other interests – the Wilsons did release a pair of roots-oriented LPs under the moniker the Lovemongers in 1997 and 1998.

Born Joan Chandos Báez in New York in 1941, the American folk singer-songwriter Joan Baez is undoubtedly one of the most striking voices of her generation, literally and figuratively, endowed with a crystalline timbre and ambassador of many movements including the one against the American intervention in Vietnam. Known for her relationship with Bob Dylan whose songs she performs like "it's All Over Now, Baby Blue", Baez also delivers her readings of compositions signed Tim Hardin, Jackson, Donovan or Wilson as well as her own creations, first of which titles like "Diamonds and Rust "or" here's to you " with Ennio Morricone. Very present until the end of the 70s, Baez became more rare but still active over the following decades.

Kind of like him almost on his own ? Reggae is obviously inseparable from Bob Marley's name. And in a way, ska and rocksteady also owe this outsized Jamaican artist. Marley's music heavily influenced by the social and political themes of his native Jamaica will undoubtedly be the most powerful voice on this island. With him, the Rastafari movement will find a charismatic spokesman who will reach all over the world and spread its pacifist ideas. Bob Marley was especially a demented songwriter who left a large number of masterpieces that became anthems, among them I Shot the Sheriff, No Woman No Cry, Could You Be Loved, Duppy Conqueror, Stir It Up, Get Up Stand Up, Jamming, Redemption Song or even One Love.

Born on Long Island in 1979 around guitarist Brian Setzer, counter-bassist Lee Rocker and drummer Slim Jim Phantom, the American rockabilly and rock & roll band The Stray Cats is established as the leader of the revival rampant in the early 80s, carried by a lightning style and imagery tailored for the still young MTV, able to emulate the vein of the 50s while bringing a surplus of energy inherited from the punk movement ("storm the embassy"). Delivering a collection of eight albums marked by the seminal Stray Cats and Gonna Ball of 1981 before disappearing after 1993 in favor of Setzer's solo career, the band did not return until 2019 with opus 40, released forty years after its formation.

One of America's most venerated bands since they gained a national audience in the mid-'80s, Los Lobos were seasoned musical veterans with nearly 15 years of experience under their belts when they scored their first hit in 1987 with a cover of Richie Valens' "La Bamba." Though their time as pop stars was short, the group – who enjoy calling themselves "just another band from East L.A." – won over critics and a legion of loyal fans with their bracing mixture of rock, blues, Tex-Mex, country, R&B, and folk influences. The group got their start playing acoustic Mexican folk music (as documented on their self-released 1978 album Just Another Band from East L.A.) but as they added rock and blues accents to the mix, they won a following outside their hometown with 1983's …And a Time to Dance and 1984's How Will the Wolf Survive? Los Lobos showed off the full range of their roots-based influences on 1990's The Neighborhood, then threw away the rule book with 1992's Kiko, a set full of melodic experiments and ambitious production that delivered some of the most evocative music of their career.

Although Adrian Belew has played with some of rock's biggest names over the years (Frank Zappa, David Bowie, the Talking Heads, King Crimson, etc.), he remains one of the most underrated and woefully overlooked guitarists of recent times.

After spending several years as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist for the mid-'70s hard rock band Montrose, Sammy Hagar began a solo career that produced several hits and made him an album rock favorite. Hagar became a true star once he joined Van Halen in 1985, but he'd been a popular hard rocker ever since his first album with Montrose. After giving up a boxing career, Hagar began singing in the late '60s, performing with various California bands including Skinny, the Fabulous Catillas, Justice Brothers, and Dust Cloud. During this time, he built up a solid reputation in the California hard rock scene. Former Edgar Winter guitarist Ronnie Montrose asked Hagar to join his band, Montrose, in 1973.

A pianist and composer, Neil Sedaka and his friend Howard Greenfield wrote multiple choruses for Connie Francis, Jimmy Clanton, LaVern Baker and Clyde McPhatter. In 1958, he started acting by chance and achieved great success. His first tracks "The Diary", " Oh! Carol " and "Breaking up is Hard to Do" launched a six-decade crooner career that included many gold records and other awards. Fallen into disuse in the heart of the Sixties, Neil Sedaka resurfaces thanks to Elton John who signs him on his label Rocket Records.

John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his career. He was known for his deep, calm bass-baritone voice, the distinctive sound of his Tennessee Three backing band characterized by train-like chugging guitar rhythms, a rebelliousness coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor, free prison concerts, and a trademark all-black stage wardrobe which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black".

A stew mixing flavored broth, meats or crustaceans, thickening and especially the Holy Trinity of vegetables (celery, peppers and onions), gumbo is the dish of New Orleans. A culinary classic whose musical version is called Dr. John. At 77, he was born as Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. died of a heart attack on June 6, 2019. At the end of the sixties, this doc pianist had the idea of concocting a magical potion - not reimbursed by the security – based on New Orleans rhythm'n'blues, raw blues, boogie woogie eternal, Creole songs, drunken jazz, mystical funk, zydeco and a pinch of rock psychedelia then Ambient.

If only mention the name of John Coltrane and you provoke a whole world of fantasies and feelings, even to the most recalcitrant and indifferent. Coltrane, whom some consider a God of music and improvisation, inspires the deepest respect for an uncompromising work, marked by a deep search for spirituality. He was, after Charlie Parker in the 1940s and 1950s, considered the most revolutionary and influential saxophonist in jazz history, leader of the avant-garde movement in the 1960s, and one of the most important artists in music of the second half of the 20th century. John Coltrane has always sought to surpass himself on all levels: technical, exploring new modes of expression, seeking new sounds, new timbres and new ways to extend the tessitura and dynamics of his instrument.