The Crux of the Biscuit is a compilation album by American musician Frank Zappa, released in July 2016, originally intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his album Apostrophe (').

Fernando Sor was born at a time when the guitar enjoyed increasing prominence. He differed from other virtuoso-composers for the instrument such as Giuliani and Carulli due to his far greater sense of harmonic refinement. Sor’s studies and exercises have been fundamental to guitarists for two centuries, and his sequence of Themes and Variations are his best-known compositions. His three collections based on popular French melodies have enjoyed popularity as has Les Folies d’Espagne avec Variations et un Menuet, but his masterpiece remains the Introduction et Variations sur un Thème de Mozart, a sublime example of his skill.

The Enescu Project began life in the concert hall and has now been faithfully recorded to create this album. The programme is devoted to the music of the great Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, and to that of his contemporaries and friends, creating a sense of the context in which Enescu was composing. Enescu studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Massenet and Fauré; rubbed shoulders and shared a stage with Bartók and Ravel; was the dedicatee of a sonata by Ysaÿe; and Debussy attended the premiere of Enescu’s First Symphony.

During Neil Young‘s recent tour, the rocker and Crazy Horse have been road-testing a new track titled “Who’s Gonna Stand Up?,” an environmental activism anthem that Young has since used to lend support to the anti-lobbyist documentary Under the Influence, Farm Aid and the People’s Climate March in New York.

When Billy Strayhorn died of cancer in 1967, Duke Ellington was devastated. His closest friend and arranger had left his life full of music and memories. As a tribute, Ellington and his orchestra almost immediately began recording a tribute to Strayhorn, using the late arranger's own compositions and charts.

After a prolonged retirement, Patti Smith returned to action in 1996 with Gone Again. It was recorded after she suffered the loss of both her brother and her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, two losses so great that it's not surprising she is still exploring that pain on Peace and Noise, which quickly followed Gone Again in 1997.

New Gods is the second album by indie rock musician Withered Hand, released on 10 March 2014. It features appearances from Pam Berry of Black Tambourine, as well as Eugene Kelly, Scott Hutchison and members of Belle and Sebastian and King Creosote. It was funded in part by Creative Scotland.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the second volume of Romantic Revolution, a revelatory exploration by pianist Michael Dussek of the musical relationship between his ancestor, Jan Ladislav Dussek, and Fryderyk Chopin. Volume II focuses on music composed during the period 1789 to 1846 spanning the early years of Dussek’s compositional career and the final years of Chopin’s.

SOMM Recordings celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birth with insightful, deeply felt accounts of his String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2, coupled with Gustav Holst’s Phantasy Quartet, by the Tippett Quartet.

The place of Domenico Scarlatti in the history of 18th century music is certainly exceptional. This exquisite and imaginative group of works is included in the fourteenth volume of Scarlatti’s manuscript sonatas preserved in the Marciana Library in Venice. Although known as keyboard sonatas, research reveals that they were very likely to have been conceived for performance on the violin – multi-movement works, often showing the presence of figured bass accompaniment, rapid changes of register and numerous passages better suited to a violin than a keyboard instrument all support the theory. This is flashy and virtuosic writing for violin at its finest.

Tuba virtuoso Justin Benavidez is heard in three new tuba concertos, two recent solos, and stunning transcriptions of works by Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy. Benavidez is currently Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at Florida State University and performs as principal tuba of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. In the summer he is on the faculty at the Round Top Music Festival in Texas.

In this program, Tutti Bassi explores the rich and varied repertoire for baroque cello by sampling works from across 18th century Europe. With them, we will visit the forests of Germany, the elegant palaces of France, sunny Italy, and foggy London Town, to hear the fascinating differences and similarities of these works, and to appreciate the variety within them. Colleen McGary-Smith & Sarah Freiberg, cellos. Tutti Bassi formed in 2012. Their inaugural concert, presented at the Belmont Public Library, was made possible by the Belmont Cultural Council. Since then, they have performed throughout New England, at library concert series, retirement communities and churches-perfect venues for their intimate, informative performances.

Lyrical and delightful music by Ellen Zwilich — the beautiful cello concerto with soloist Zuill Bailey, the humorous “Peanuts® Gallery”and more, with the Santa Rosa Symphony and conductor Francesco Leccce-Chong.

The superb Richard Casey, most notable for his recording for Prima Facie of the complete Works of Peter Maxwell Davies, explores an altogether different territory in the music of Paul Newland. Paul paints a vivid but bleak and minimalist landscape in his almost impenetrable music. Paul Newland is a composer and performer with interests in acoustic, collaborative, interdisciplinary (particularly dance) and site-specific work that invites close listening to sound through patterning, extended duration, amplification and slowing of often sparse, pared down materials making use of both traditionally notated and open scores.

The most extreme aspects of life, the different directions in which it leads, and the importance of creating a personal balance. All these issues are at the heart of this debut album of the Canadian Chloe Charles … She taught herself the guitar, there are only a few years, developing a passion for strings, in which it has drawn heavily to depict the musical landscape This Break The Balance . Chamber music, pop and folk, the partition in which love its singular voice is primarily a real class. No frills, no effects of free rounds. Upon arrival, a revelation.