This Dutch prog-rock band took root in '95 when schoolboy friends Roland van der Horst (guitar and vocals) and Joost Hagemeijer (drums and keyboards) teamed up and started to write their own compositions. In '98 they released the album "Cold World" as a project titled Brainstorm. Two years later singer Eric Holdtman joined Roland and Joost, but unfortunately left in 2001 due to personal circumstances…

The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery is an album by American jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery. Most of its tracks exemplify two of Montgomery's distinguishing techniques: "thumb picking" and the use of octaves. In 2017, the album was selected for the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or artistically significant."

2012 release from the Drone/Noise band led by former Sleep vocalist/bassist Al Cisneros. Advaitic Songs achieves a level of composition that would've been impossible to foresee. There remains the singularity of purpose that is the core of all Om records, but whatever drone-doom camp that Om had been placed in has been decimated by the sheer imagination and expansive quality of this recording. Let's call it "heavy world music".

Jeff Parker is arguably the most exciting and thoughtful jazz guitarist of the past two decades, a masterful free improviser who's also fluent in everything from postbop to postrock. Considering his busy schedule, it’s no surprise Bright Light in Winter is only Parker’s third album as a leader. Bassist Chris Lopes and drummer Chad Taylor have almost as much input on this session as their leader, since they wrote two and three pieces, respectively, for the album. The equal participation can be felt throughout their performances, which feel engaging whether Parker is strumming warm jazz chords or bordering on harmolodics.

The DVD version of Turandot is based on an outstanding MET production from 1988: “A straightforward, spectacular and star-cast staging by Franco Zeffirelli that comes over extremely well. At the heart of it is James Levine’s massive, stormy reading. The Met orchestra are in tremendous form; so is the chorus. Eva Marton sings with stinging power and passion; Plácido Domingo is a superb Calaf, Leona Mitchell is a silvery-voiced Liu. It is superbly directed and recorded…A clear first choice.” (The Classical Video Guide)

To most listeners, Jeff Berlin is utterly unknown as a musician and composer; to progressive rock enthusiasts, however, Berlin is a god, ranked alongside Jaco Pastorious and Victor Wooten as one of the most exciting virtuoso bassists ever. Crossroads compiles his first two albums, Pump It! and Champion, into a single-disc "greatest hits" of sorts, although neither album had much impact beyond jazz-rock circles.

The Movie Album is a career aspiration come true for Till Brönner, a record he's desired to make for more than a decade. His themes from Hollywood movies, classic and contemporary (with a TV theme thrown in), make this more a pop-jazz record than one for cinephiles. Co-produced by the artist and guitarist Chuck Loeb, most of the set was recorded at Hollywood's East West Studios with a crack band of studio aces, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester's parts recorded in Berlin.

Following up his 2007 effort Light On (HighNote), trumpeter Tom Harrell continues to document his original compositional voice and uncommonly tight working band with Prana Dance. Again there's the youthful, hungry lineup of tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, pianist Danny Grissett and drummer Johnathan Blake, with long-serving Harrell stalwart Ugonna Okegwo digging in on bass. The material is all original, all new, teeming with harmonic secrets and an uncanny marriage of the simple and complex, not to mention ample possibilities for elaboration in the live setting—as the band proved during a galvanizing Thursday night set at New York's Village Vanguard in April, 2009.