Featuring the best material from their first two albums as well as their classic debut single "Market Square Heroes," 1984's Real to Reel is an excellent live document of Marillion, the undisputed leaders of the short-lived mid-'80s progressive rock revival. In fact, these recordings make a strong case for the many fans who actually prefer the band's more refined live versions over their rather flat studio counterparts. For the uninitiated, Marillion basically picks up where Peter Gabriel-era Genesis left off, writing complex, multifaceted, and unashamedly overblown compositions topped with dense, often incomprehensible lyrics from vocalist Fish. Thematically, the darkly ironic "Assassing" and the flippant "Garden Party" are complete polar opposites and clearly display the band's incredible creative scope. But the album's centerpiece has to be the dramatic, ten-minute war chronicle "Forgotten Sons." The CD reissue also features an excellent bonus track titled "Emerald Lies." ~ Eduardo Rivadavia. Allmusic.com

Now little can be said, if you like both Peterson and Grappelli you will just love this. Gitanes Jazz Productions have come up here with yet another winner. Your feet will start to tap right from the very first note. Don't be a fool and prevent being the only jazz lover without this CD.

All Music Guide
A holy grail among contemporary music collectors, this release on Brian Eno's Obscure label, which went out of print almost immediately, features two of the finest compositions of the late 20th century, both by Gavin Bryars. The title track, Sinking of the Titanic, had since been recorded again on two occasions, arguably to better effect on Les Disques du Crepuscule in 1990 and once, more pallidly, on Point in 1994, but this initial production was an extremely special event. Bryars' idea was to construct an aural picture of the disaster, complete with songs and hymns supposedly played by the ship's orchestra even as she was sinking. He combined this with the acoustical phenomenon of the enhanced ability of sounds to travel great lengths underwater and produced an eerie and romantic sub-aqueous soundscape of remarkable subtlety and beauty. As though one masterpiece wasn't enough, however, the second composition on the album might be even greater. Surely one of the most beautiful "concept" works ever created, Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet begins with the faint, faded-in voice of a London tramp singing the old hymn plaintively but without pathos and more or less in tune. The lush, sensuous music, entirely sympathetic to the song, gives it increased strength and humanity as it swells to near-majestic proportions and then, just as gradually, subsides. The emotional impact of this 25-minute piece, in its honest and charitable stance toward the singer, cannot be understated.

here creates his own, convincing language by juxtaposing idioms from jazz, classical and contemporary music and free improvisation, to form fresh new, lively organisms.Symbiosis, the Concerto for Trumpet and Clarinet, is characterised by electrifying rhythms, scintillating harmonies, vibrant strings and the soaring virtuosity of the two soloists. It was written “to create a major work for Tara Bouman and me in which we can play as equally important soloists, and combine our different sound colours and playing techniques.”

One of the seminal works of the 20th century and a milestone in the history of music, The Rite of Spring famously caused a riot at its first performance in Paris in 1913. Since then, this revolutionary masterpiece has found its place as one of the most performed and admired scores of the twentieth century.
Now published in The Masterworks Library: Landmark 20th century works from the Boosey & Hawkes catalogue available for the first time in full score format at pocket score prices with introductory notes, illustrations and photographs. Ideal for students, conductors, performers, libraries, CD collectors and general music enthusiasts.

In his Poetics of Music (1942) Stravinsky says: "Summing up: What is important for the lucid ordering of the work – for its crystallization – is that all the Dionysian elements which set the imagination of the artist in motion and make the life-sap rise must be properly subjugated before they intoxicate us, and must finally be made to submit to the law: Apollo demands it." Stravinsky conceived Apollo as a ballet blanc – a "white ballet" with classical choreography and monochromatic attire. Envisioning the work in his mind's eye, he found that "the absence of many-colored hues and of all superfluities produced a wonderful freshness." Upon first hearing Apollo, Diaghilev found it "music somehow not of this world, but from somewhere else above." The ballet closes with an Apotheosis in which Apollo leads the Muses towards Parnassus. Here, the gravely beautiful music with which the work began is truly recapitulated "on high" – ceaselessly recycled, frozen in time.

Even for Stravinsky, the Symphonies of Wind Instruments is strikingly original, grounded not in the "symphonic" genre but – as the musicologist Richard Taruskin has shown – in the Russian Orthodox service for the dead. It began as a serene and archaic chorale composed in memory of Debussy. Stravinsky then expanded this "Fragment" with music more popular in flavor. The chorale, at the close, became an apotheosis sublimating an eclectic wealth of material. The ensemble eschews strings in favor of colorful, chanting winds. According to Stravinsky, in 1936: "I did not, and indeed I could not, count on any immediate success for this work. It lacks all those elements that infallibly appeal to the ordinary listener, or to which he is accustomed. . . . It is an austere ritual which is unfolded in terms of short litanies . . . This music is not meant to 'please' an audience, nor to arouse its passions." More than half a century later, the religious elan of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments seems both pleasing and arousing.

Commissioned by CBS television, The Flood conflates the Creation with the story of Noah's ark. Stravinsky: "Why did I call my work The Flood, instead of Noah? Because Noah is mere history. As a genuine antediluvian he is a great curiosity, but a sideshow curiosity. And even as 'eternal man,' the second Adam, the – to Augustinians – Old Testament Christ image, he is less important than the Eternal Catastrophe. The Flood is also The Bomb." God, impressively strange, is sung by two basses, Lucifer by a tenor; there is also a Caller (for the animal parade) and a Narrator. Stravinsky called the "musical speed" of The Flood "cinematographic;" writing for television, he eagerly dispensed with "the afflatus of overtures, connecting episodes, curtain music."

Thankfully, the brains behind this double-disc reissue of two almost forgotten 1970 sessions determined that the first CD should be simply the six tracks originally released on the America label. The false starts and incomplete and alternate takes are left for the second disc. This way, the album closes properly – in a fit of passion, with Mingus's sextet spinning intense yarns out of "Pithecanthropus Erectus," a tune un-recorded in the studio since 1956. Here, Jaki Byard gets a midnight solo, wobbling on the rails between his well-known clustering talent and his deeply lyrical bent. Bobby Jones on tenor, Charles McPherson on alto, and Eddie Preston on trumpet offer a variety of predispositions, mostly post-bop but certainly aware of the tonal advances Eric Dolphy made with Mingus. "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" is lovely, slightly tense – which helps with the drama, and "Peggy's Blue Skylight" is dynamic and lazily vigorous. As for the second disc, it's instructional in how Mingus the bandleader thought and led: beyond that, it's for the initiates only. Keep in mind that these tunes comprise the first studio album Mingus made after Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus and show the bassist returning to the forge, readying himself for the great stuff yet to come with George Adams and Don Pullen. –Andrew Bartlett

Like a lot of black American jazz musicians in the 1950s and 1960s, when playing in the U.S., Earl "Fatha" Hines was stuck performing music he was good at but didn't necessarily love to perform - in his case, after 1948 or so, mostly Dixieland standards. It paid the bills. But in 1957 he went to Europe, where he cut two albums in Paris playing the much more modern jazz he had pioneered and at which he excelled. This CD combines both records on one disc, and if you haven't heard "Fatha" Hines much, this is a great place to start. You can hear some of his signature innovations, such as a left hand that played almost recklessly with timing, acting almost like impulsive punctuation to his precision right hand. It was a departure from stride piano that influenced probably every major piano jazzman after him. You can also hear a couple selections of the Dixieland he was slotted into in the U.S. - notably, a fine version of "Muskrat Ramble" without the Dixieland band, but with plenty of strut remaining - it's different from what you might expect in this genre and very interesting. He's playing with a small ensemble on these cuts, so you won't hear examples of his big-band skills, the ones that had him playing for years with longtime friend Louis Armstrong, but you'll hear just about every other style that made him famous. He died in 1983 so when I saw this terrific compilation of late 50s pre-comeback cuts, I was delighted. Highly recommended.