As a trio, this edition of guitarist Grant Green's many ensembles has to rank with the best he had ever fronted. Recorded on April Fool's Day of 1961, the band and music are no joke, as bassist Ben Tucker and drummer Dave Bailey understand in the most innate sense how to support Green, lay back when needed, or strut their own stuff when called upon. Still emerging as an individualist, Green takes further steps ahead, without a pianist, saxophonist, or - most importantly - an organist. His willpower drives this music forward in a refined approach that definitely marks him as a distinctive, immediately recognizable player…

Recorded live in April 2013 at the Royal Opera House in London, Sony Classical is proud to present Verdi: Nabucco starring the legendary Placido Domingo in his debut in the title role. Conducted by Nicola Luisotti, the release celebrates the bicentenary year of Verdi’s birth.

Freedom to Glide are a two-piece progressive rock band from England. Featuring Pete Riley and Andy Nixon, both of whom played in a Pink Floyd tribute band, Freedom to Glide draw together the sound of Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Porcupine Tree on an album that is very much the spiritual successor to ‘The Final Cut’ with its conceptual theme of the costs of war. Beautifully played and perfectly recorded, ‘Rain’ is a throwback to the sublime melodies and fluid guitar work of ‘WYWH’-era Floyd with a touch of ‘Starless and Bible Black’ era Crimson thrown in for good measure. Poignant and intelligently written, there is no surprise that the album gained a number of plaudits (including Prog Mill album of the year) upon its release.

Mind Soup recordings are designed to entice the listener using familiar tones and melodies. Using innovative recording and production techniques, Mind Soup highlights the integral tones inherent in a wide array of emotions. Mind Soup creates a vivid sonic environment which reawakens the core of the imagination.

Art As Catharsis are proud to release the energetic self-titled debut from COAST – riveting experimental jazz that fluctuates between heavy and silk-smooth, structured with the composition expertise of Paul Derricott. Delicate but rapid. Smooth but heavy. These characteristics usually stand as opposites, but Coast’s debut weaves these elements together in faultless form. High in energy and full of energetic instrumentals, you can hear hot flushes of heavy rhythmic jazz similar to Kneebody, Mark Guiliana Quartet and Donny McCaslin throughout the album, along with a gentle hint of early BadBadNotGood’s contemporary sheen.

Art As Catharsis is proud to announce the release of COAST’s second album, SKIM – a polyrhythmic record of expansive jazz, pushing the band into new, adventurous territory. Taking inspiration from mixtapes pieced together by Minimal Miggy, Godtet, Mecca 83 and more, Coast note that Skim attempts to emulate a love for grazing music interaction – a love that becomes more and more evident as the record progresses. Beyond that, drummer and composer for COAST Paul Derricott has spent the past 12 months sharing stages with Charenee Wade, Vivian Sessoms and Aloe Blacc – their influence being critical to the writing process.

With 27 symphonies to his name, Nikolay Myaskovsky is known as the ‘father of the Soviet symphony’, his legacy placing him in the same line as other great Russian symphonists such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Myaskovsky’s richly Romantic Symphony No. 1 won him the Glazunov scholarship, and as a graduation work reveals the influence of Tchaikovsky and Scriabin in its expressive, dramatic impact. The more experimental but also deeply inward-looking and disconsolate Symphony No. 13 is regarded as one of Myaskovsky’s most individual statements.

In earlier times, adaptations and rearrangements of their own works or those of others formed an integral part of the daily lives of musicians and composers. So-called ‘historically informed’ performance practice, which has developed out of a strictly historical perspective on past eras of music, long left this way of treating an existing composition almost totally unexplored. Today, however, it is enjoying a renaissance and is part of a musician’s training. The idea of arranging Bach’s works is a natural one, since the composer himself was an inveterate transcriber. Most of the programme recorded here consists of solo keyboard works rescored for a chamber formation – in other words, the performers have chosen an approach that is the contrary of Bach’s usual practice. A fascination for the timbral possibilities of the viola da gamba trio and a shared passion for Bach’s music prompted the Cellini Consort to create this original and personal programme.

During his long and exceptionally fruitful creative life, Richard Strauss (18641949) composed only a few works for the cello. Only three have survived and small as that number may seem, those cello works are critical to the composers development. Daniel Müller-Schott sees the early Sonata for cello and piano op. 6 and the late tone poem Don Quixote op. 35 as marking the path that was to lead Strauss within the space of a few years from Romanticism to the Modern era in music. The cellist highlights this watershed in Strausss artistic development with his own transcriptions, expressly made for this CD, of the Lieder Zueignung op. 10/1 and Ich trage meine Minne op. 32/1.

Pablo Casals showed the world that Bach's solo cello suites were more than mere teaching exercises. Modern ears weaned on historically informed versions might flinch at Casals' tempo fluctuations and distensions of line. Yet his imposing personality, intense concentration, and penetrating musicianship transcend time. Seth Winner's revelatory transfers restore the warm overtones to Casals' cello missing from EMI's harsher remasterings.

From a string of early career successes in the 1970s, Emanuel Ax has emerged as one of the most versatile, brilliant, and universally respected pianists on the international concert scene.

Portland, Oregon's dreamy indie folk duo the Helio Sequence have built their discography on a series of somewhat unfortunate but ultimately sound-shaping external circumstances. Starting off with a focus on ambient soundscapes and buried vocals, the band's experimentation with bringing the vocals to the forefront for its yelpy 2004 album, Love and Distance, resulted in singer Brandon Summers damaging his vocal cords shouting the songs out night after night on tour. His bruised voice was reborn in a raspy Waits-meets-Dylan style, which informed the overarching indie folk feel of the band's 2008 breakthrough, Keep Your Eyes Ahead, and brought out its more somber, low-lit moments…

Prikosnovénie rereleased the first sold-out album of 'Ashram' in a luxuous digipack with a new unreleased Track 'Fourth'. The Napolitan trio consists in Luigi Rubino (piano), Sergio Panarella (voice), Edo Notarloberti (violin). Since the first release in 2002, Ashram became one of the most popular neoclassical band playing a nostalgic & ethereal music reminding Michael Nyman's original sountracks.