VIVARTE is the legendary Sony Classical period music label known for producing outstanding recordings on period instruments. The recordings by legendary producer Wolf Erichson are made with the best recording technologies available and by one of the best production teams in the world (Tritonus Music Production, Stuttgart). The collection contains a perfect overview of VIVARTE's legendary catalogue ranging from Vivaldi to Brahms including recordings with specialists in historically informed performance practice such as Anner Bylsma, Gustav Leonhardt, Tafelmusik, Huelgas Ensemble, L'Archibudelli among others. Many of the recordings received critical acclaim all over the world and won prestigious awards. This box set includes CDs presented in paper sleeves with the original artwork, a 250 page booklet with track listings and the original liner notes for each recording.

An odd collection of live tracks and what sound like cuts from the two Eric Burdon and War albums released at the turn of the '70s, 1976's LOVE IS ALL AROUND was probably a contractual obligation album. That said, it's a pretty terrific collection of long, loose War jams, which sound marvelous. Limber rhythms and dead-on horn and harmonica accents made this L.A. band one of the premier funk outfits of the '70s. Unfortunately, as was usually the case with Eric Burdon and War, their free-flowing funkiness and his more constricted, blues-based singing style don't always mesh as well as they might, as on the slightly awkward verses of the title track. But when War opens up and lets loose, it's hard to imagine a better band.

Funeral Doom titans ESOTERIC return with the monolithic ‘A Pyrrhic Existence,’ the collective’s first new album in eight years. Their undeniable power and time-warping arrangements are unparalleled even by doom metal standards, taking on an almost psychedelic hue at times here. As each of the six songs in this 2CD set roar to life, including the 27+ minute epic "Descent," the gravity swallows’ listeners up as they are pulled into their depths. ESOTERIC are, quite literally, one of metal’s heaviest bands, and the somber ‘A Pyrrhic Existence’ is further proof of their mastery.

The most notorious black metal band of all times is back! By the power of darkness and the might of black-hearted will, no two Mayhem albums have been or will be the same. Thus, the newest offering Daemon is unto itself. It’s not the next chapter but rather the next tome in Mayhem’s authoritative oeuvre. Composed and decomposed with the same lineup—Necrobutcher (bass), Hellhammer (drums), Attila Csihar (vocals), Teloch (guitars), and Ghul (guitars)—that handled Esoteric Warfare and performed De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in its entirety over the last few years, Daemon also isn’t a retrofit of classic songs like “Freezing Moon,” “Pagan Fears,” or “Buried by Time and Dust.” That’s what the live album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive (2016), was for. Daemon is a chance for change, for new hells to be envisioned and offered.

This set gave pianist McCoy Tyner his first opportunity to write music for a larger group that included brass, flutes, and - on two of the five songs - a string section. The powerful pianist is in fine form and the main soloist throughout (although there are spots for trumpeter Virgil Jones and the flute of Sonny Fortune). Most memorable is the title cut and a reworking of "Afro Blue."

The Rarum series on the ECM label is unique in that it issues "best-of" compilations picked by the artists themselves. While this can be a double-edged sword (oftentimes what an artist and his or her own fans enjoy are two different things), in this case it turns out to be a blessing. Metheny is obviously a fine judge of his own work, both from artistic and popular points of view. The selections are accompanied by an album-by-album overview by Metheny in the liner notes.

This is a disc of music by Turkish-born pianist Fazil Say – one can't really say by Haydn. It's hard to blame Say for his well-known antics, which most famously include humming along with something other than the melody. Modern marketing is all about filling niches, and the one once occupied by Glenn Gould is wide open. As with Gould, Say doubtless brings something important to music where he achieves a meeting of minds with the composer. But it doesn't happen with Haydn. The delicate balance of these earlier Haydn sonatas is shattered by Say's capricious shifts in tempo and accent and his far overwrought treatments of Haydn's deadpan, often neo-Baroque slow movements.

The Cannonball Adderley Quintet - 74 Miles Away / Walk Tall (1967) {2011 Japan 24-bit Remaster} [Jazz Masterpiece Best & More 999 Series]
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 227 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 83 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 11 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24-bit remaster
© 1967, 2011 Capitol / EMI Music Japan | TOCJ-50153
Jazz / Hard Bop / Soul Jazz / Saxophone

With the hit "Mercy Mercy Mercy" still reverberating on the sales charts, Capitol simply had the Quintet crank out one live club date after another at this point, hoping for another smash. They never really got one, but Cannonball and Nat Adderley, in league with pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Victor Gaskin and drummer Roy McCurdy, left a strong legacy like this vigorous live Hollywood gig. One of Nat's best gospel-styled hip-shakers, "Do Do Do," opens the record, and Joe Zawinul comes up with another bluesy, catchy self-help tune in the vein of "Mercy" called "Walk Tall," prefaced by another of Cannonball's wryly inspirational talks.

Prendre l'air is the third album by French singer Shy'm. It was released in June 2010 and five singles ("Je sais", "Je suis moi", "Prendre l'air", "Tourne" and "En apesanteur") have been released. A departure from the R&B sound that Shy'm had previously been accustomed to, Prendre l'air showed a more pop-oriented side to her musical persona. The album debuted on the French album chart at #6, and has since gone on to be certified 3× Platinum, becoming Shy'm's most successful album. It has been released in three editions: standard, collector and deluxe.

Dutch cellist Mayke Rademakers performing the suites for cello solo by Bach, alternated with cello works by Gubaidulina, Britten, Kurtág, Penderecki and Schnittke. According to performer Mayke Rademakers, an authentic listening experience is, despite what we would all like to believe, simply not possible. For that reason she has strived to make a connection with today's world, by pairing the suites with works by contemporary composers, setting them in an unusual and sharp perspective.

BRIGHT SIZE LIFE, his first solo album, is an anomaly in the Pat Metheny discography. Rather than inaugurating a new era in his music, it celebrates the end of another. Of the eight superb arrangements that make up BRIGHT SIZE LIFE, only the gentle ballad "Unity Village" (an overdubbed duet between electric 6- and 12-string guitars) made it to the Pat Metheny Group repetoire. And yet, some 20 years after documenting the music of his first working group, BRIGHT SIZE LIFE endures as among the finest, freshest trio recordings in the history of jazz.

1996 release on Geffen featuring Pat Metheny's original soundtrack to Italian director Antonio Baiocco's film 'Passagio Per Il Paradiso'. Passaggio Per Il Paradiso songs Metheny plays all of the instruments on the album's 13 tracks, which include 'Marta'sHouse Story', 'Wolf Story' and 'Learning On The Road'.

Back in the days before the Cuneiform and Voiceprint labels began issuing a host of archival Soft Machine music (including reasonably well-recorded live sets from the so-called "classic" period of the band), bootleg tapes - often live audience recordings of poor quality - circulated widely among Softs fans. One of those tapes was a mysterious "lost studio album" called Rubber Riff, and fans might be forgiven for enthusiastically seeking out a tape of this session, or at least displaying healthy curiosity about why Soft Machine would record an entire studio LP that would then sit on the shelf, hidden well away from public ears. Granted, the recording was made by a Soft Machine lineup from the group's mid-'70s "fusion" period, a band that practically no one viewed as "classic"…