Isabella Leonarda was one of a small number of women musicians of the seventeenth century, and the only one to have left us such a vast amount of music. Her life certainly differed from that of her more or less famous male “colleagues”, for she was a nun composer with a great sense of devotion to the Virgin Mary. Music was for Leonarda an expression of her deep faith, a reflection of the parallel between divine and human order, contemplated and experienced through her own creative abilities. Her more than two hundred compositions include her instrumental works the twelve sonatas for 1, 2, 3 and 4 instruments from her op. XVI. The sonata as a form took hold in the centers of northern Italy, and for 34th of a century, or approximately until 1650, it was cultivated almost exclusively in that area. It was nearly always published in groups of 6 or 12, and collections would conclude with a final sonata, often in the form of variations (such as Corelli’s Follia, op. V, n. 12) or another single composition. Leonarda herself followed this practice her op. XVI indeed contains 12 sonatas, eleven of which are for 2 violins, violone and basso continuo, while the twelfth piece is for solo violin and basso continuo.

Slade Alive! was a live album released by the British glam/hard rock band Slade. The album was released on March 24, 1972, and reached No. 2 on the UK Charts. This album included, probably, the first ever recorded stereophonic burp by Noddy Holder during the track "Darlin' Be Home Soon". It has also been consistently voted as one of the all-time Top 10 greatest live albums ever released.

Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois) is an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist and composer. Hancock is one of jazz music's most important and influential pianists and composers. He embraced elements of rock, funk, and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz.

The compact disc, as a sound carrier, was still on the horizon when Herbert von Karajan urged his record company to utilize the new digital technology in his recordings. Consequently Karajan's Magic Flute, recorded in 1980, became the first release of a Deutsche Grammophon digital production and was first released on LP. By the time the maestro died in 1989, the CD had finally replaced the LP as the primary sound carrier, yet he was realistic enough to know that the pioneering early stages of the digital era would be followed by further technical development. This is reflected in Karajan Gold. In this series the later development of the digital process that occurs after Karajan's death could be turned to the benefit of the Maestro's own recordings. Thirty releases from the early digital era were remastered for this series using DG's special Original-Image Bit-Processing technology. They were issued between 1993-1995.

Billy Cobham, born May 16, 1944 in Panama, is one of the world's best and most influential drummers known for his jazz fusion in the 1970s, with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, where he pioneered a powerful style of drumming with jazz, rock and funk influences. He has played and recorded with musicians including Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Larry Coryell, and Horace Silver; and is famous for his fast, explosive, and powerful playing. His most recognized contributions lie in the realm of fusion, and is considered one of the genre's greatest figures.