Bluegrass? Jazz? Ambient? With piano and Weissenborn guitar, Lien and Hem create music for inner wanderings.

This is, like the others in the series, deserves the warmest possible recommendation.

During his lifetime Odysseus was one of Bruch’s most frequently performed and highly regarded works: the influential English critic J. A. Fuller-Maitland thought it his masterpiece, and Brahms admired it greatly. It was a very successful performance of Odysseus in Liverpool in 1877 that led three years later to Bruch’s appointment as Director of the Philharmonic Society there. It is an oratorio, not an opera (subtitled Scenes from the Odyssey), and one reason for its decline into obscurity may be that for such a subject it is often undramatic, in word-setting (sometimes rather square and inexpressive) and in its choice of episodes: Odysseus’s return to Ithaca, and the jubilation over his rout of the suitors are portrayed, but not Penelope’s recognition of him nor the fight itself. There is no narrator, and there are very few dramatic links between the 12 self-contained sections.

METAL ALLEGIANCE principal partner Mark Menghi, the project’s original material came together from the creative minds of David Ellefson of MEGADETH, Mike Portnoy of THE WINERY DOGS,and Alex Skolnick from TESTAMENT, alongside Menghi. The four writers then reached out through their metal phone books to a diverse lineup of performers, each adding their own personal musical stamp to the collection of nine original songs.

"Suspicious Heart", VAN STEPHENSON's second album for MCA Records and his last as solo artist, is a must have in your collection too. Despite of being recorded with almost the same personnel from the previous, including Dann Huff / Alan Pasqua and Richard Landis producing, the album - released in 1986 - has a pretty different sound.

The Symphony in C was conceived in Paris in the late 1930s, but completed in America in 1940, and is dedicated to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary. Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premièred in 1946, the Symphony in Three Movements presents us with movements that also manifest different ways of moving: a march, a slow dance, and a march-jog-race.

The term sinfonietta is generally used to describe a work that is smaller in scale or lighter in approach than a standard symphony. It only came into common usage during the first half of the 20th century, which is when the three works included on this disc were in fact composed. Worth noting is also that Sergei Prokofiev and Benjamin Britten wrote their respective sinfoniettas while they were still in their teens – early attempts at multi-movement works for ensemble. Prokofiev revised his Sinfonietta twice, with the 1929 version recorded here, and later went on to become one of the great symphonists of his time.

Like their West Coast contemporaries in Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley steadily gained traction in indie pop circles throughout the late '90s and early 2000s before the record industry (and public at large) officially took note. Led by former child actors Jenny Lewis (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Blake Sennett (guitar, vocals), the L.A.-based quartet held its first practice in 1998. Bassist Pierre de Reeder and drummer Dave Brock (later replaced by ex-Foundation Lassie member Jason Boesel) completed the lineup, and a weekly residency at the Spaceland nightclub in Silverlake allowed Rilo Kiley to hone its mix of classic pop, country, torch song, and folk. Collection includes: Take Offs and Landings (2001); The Execution of All Things (2002); More Adventurous (2004); Under the Blacklight (2007).