The Syn featuring, some of the music world's best progressive rock musicians. Following a fairly quiet time for The Syn while their legendary vocalist and songwriter Steve Nardelli has been the force behind the first eco town to be built in the UK, the iconic pre-Yes band from the 60's returns with a live CD recorded in 2009 at Rosfest in Philadelphia on their Big Sky tour and a 2 films bonus on a single DVD 'The Syn in the 21st Century' and 'The Making of Big Sky', the latter charting at number one on the Amazon VOD chart in America. Big Sky studio album was voted the best progressive music album of 2009 by USA Progressive Music magazine and much of that music is featured on this remarkable live album, described by Precision Mastering as "the finest live album we have worked on". The bonus DVD features the 23 minute film The Making of Big Sky and 20 minute The Syn in the 21st Century.

Gluck‘s wonderful but neglected 1774 opera Iphigénie en Tauride, inspired by the Greek legend, is treated with forceful and convincing simplicity in Klaus Guth‘s revolutionary production staged at the Zurich Opera House. The psychological drama in a tense atmosphere of fears and traumas is underlined by Guth‘s use of huge masks and enclosed spaces. Conductor William Christie and his typically transparent but never cold orchestral sound perfectly match the descriptive elements in Gluck’s score, while the Armenian mezzosoprano Juliette Galstian as a fabulously good Iphigénie, the leading American opera baritone Rodney Gilfry as Oreste and the deceased South African tenor Deon van der Walt as Pylade head a superb cast.

Through its crystalline labyrinth of granular synths and tape saturation treatments, Blochemy’s “Rea” sheds the artist’s former Tri Repetae-era Autechre and Atol Scrap-era Arovane influences, instead trading these in for more panoramic electro ambient forward material.

This encounter between tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt (who doubles on tenor and alto) is a true classic. Ammons and Stitt teamed together many times over a three-decade period, including co-leading a band during 1950-1952, but Boss Tenors is arguably their finest recording. Backed by pianist John Houston, bassist Buster Williams, and drummer George Brown, Ammons and Stitt battle it out on "There Is No Greater Love," Ammons' "The One Before This," "Autumn Leaves," "Blues Up and Down," and Stitt's "Counter Clockwise." This is competitive bebop at its best, with Stitt and Ammons proving to be equal matches. Essential music for all jazz collections.