Like evangelistic sax great Kirk Whalum, versatile vocalist/guitarist Jonathan Butler has drawn upon his success in contemporary urban jazz to create opportunities in the realm of worship and gospel music. The South African-born artist launched this phase of his career with 2004's The Worship Project and has since anchored his live jazz performances with the crowd-pleasing "Brand New Day" and "Falling in Love with Jesus." While tracks like the title tune "Grace and Mercy," "You're All That I Need," and "Who Is Like the Lord" are rousing, choir-filled, R&B-driven call and response church tunes, the crux of what Butler is going for on this dynamic and heartfelt set is his simple but emotional exhortation on the passionate reflective ballad "Moments of Worship" to "Lift those hands…give glory to God."

Amidst a new album bursting with hope, joy, romance and inspiration, including eleven songs penned or co-penned by the artist, it’s the Johnny Nash cover “I Can See Clearly Now” that Jonathan Butler elected to record on the So Strong album, his 15th solo collection, that speaks volumes about his outlook after a tumultuous year wrought with immense personal loss, pain and suffering.

Most of you probably already know that Freedom was formed with two former Procol Harum members, guitarist Ray Royer and drummer Bobby Harrison.
Freedom were a legendary British psychedelic hard-rock band. This is their fourth album, originally released for the collectable Vertigo label in 1971. Powerful hard-rock / bluesy sound with loud wah /distorted guitars, long tracks, wasted vocal. Recommended to fans of Clear Blue Sky, Budgie, Jodo.
Although the roots of "Through The Years" are in hard rock, it has many blues influences in most of the songs (especially at guitar solos). Furthermore, folk and pop music in not strange to Freedom, since apart from acoustic guitars, they use very "catchy" vocal harmonies in their songs. Typical example of the "softer" side of Freedom is the ballad "Thanks", which easily stands out from the rest of the songs.

A genre-defining moment from pianist Keith Jarrett – a record that really set the world on fire, and which continues to charm all these many decades later! Although Jarrett had already made some amazing music in a trio setting during the 60s, and in his more freewheeling groups with Dewey Redman in the early 70s, it's this sort of format that forever put him on the map – long, extended improvised passages on solo piano – played at a level that's still extremely lyrical, tuneful, and thoughtful – quite different than the free jazz waves that were building at the time! And while so many other people copied the style over the years, nobody does it better than Jarrett – especially on this landmark outing for the style.

In his very first album, pianist Rodolphe Menguy invites us to reflect on two groups of composers (Bartók / Kodály versus Franz Liszt) and how they dealt with traditional music but also what influence this had on the evolution of music-writing - thereby on the evolution of pianism. An ambitious programme that reveals a more than promising talent.

A puzzling piece with a tormented history, Rossini's Edipo a Colono for bass, male choir and orchestra is rarely performed today and represents a unicum in the entire repertoire of Italian music. The fruit of an unusual collaboration between librettist Giambattista Giusti and Italy's most sought-after composer at the time, Rossini's astonishing incidental music for Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus is brought to life again by Nahuel Di Pierro, the Coro del Teatro della Fortuna and the Filarmonica Gioachino Rossini conducted by Fabrizio Ruggero. Recorded live at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.

Nielsen’s epic Violin Concerto was premiered in Copenhagen in February 1912, by violinist Peder Moller. Nominally the work is set in two movements; both open with a slow section and move to a faster one. Whilst unusual, this could be seen as a more usual fast – slow – fast three movement form, but with an extensive slow introduction to the first movement. The music moves quickly from one idea to the next, and overall has a bold, playful and optimistic feel. In stark contrast, although written only a few years later, the fourth symphony is more cohesive and unified as a work. Written against the background of the first world war, the work is a celebration of life itself. Just before the premier in 1916, Nielsen described it as: ‘Music is Life, and, like it, inextinguishable.’ Composed in the usual four movement form, each movement continues from the last without a break. The final movement features two sets of timpani battling each other across the orchestra.

Faith No More's 1997 release Album of the Year featured the talents of another new guitarist, Jon Hudson, who replaced Dean Menta (Menta only toured with the group in support of King for a Day before being dismissed). Like King for a Day, Album is more straightforward musically than past releases and remains one of FNM's most focused and concise works. Recorded in bassist Billy Gould's home studio, Album of the Year would turn out to be their last studio recording before splitting up in 1997. A trio of outstanding tracks - "Stripsearch," "Last Cup of Sorrow," and "Ashes to Ashes" - blend hard rock and pop melodicism the way only FNM can, while "Helpless" is an unpredictable composition that alternates between heavy guitar riffing and Mike Patton's tempered vocals…

With this production of Francesca Caccini’s 'La liberazione di Ruggerio dall'isola di Alcina', directed by Elena Sartori, an important stepping-stone in the development of 17th-century opera receives a superb new recording from Glossa. For much of her career - Caccini was a composer, a virtuoso singer, a teacher, a poet and a multi-instrumentalist - she worked at the Medici court, and was commissioned by the grand duchess of Tuscany, Maria Maddalena of Austria, to write this commedia in musica for performance in Florence in 1625.

Spirits is more than a jewel in the rough. It is the rough of a jewel. By this, I mean to say that through its hard-won journey Keith Jarrett has peered into the heart of darkness that is life and compressed it into a diamond so honest that no amount of polishing will wear away its blemishes. Recorded at his home studio, then post-processed by ECM engineer Martin Wieland, this is a most personal album of boundless expression. Then again, so is every Jarrett album. The difference is in the instrumentation: an unusual array of flutes, keys, and percussion, overdubbed in various combinations and densities (Jarrett even picks up a guitar, which he treats more like a sitar). Jarrett also sings, wails as if in and of the earth, finding in Nature a single feather plucked from nowhere. Bird-less, it has no recourse to flight, and can only call to a sky it will never know.

Interweaving the Baroque era and the 20th and 21st centuries, the newest addition to Emmanuel Pahud's Warner Classics catalogue is an imaginative 2-CD collection of music for unaccompanied flute. Among the composers are Telemann, Nielsen, Honegger, Varèse, Berio, Takemitsu, Pärt, Pintscher and Widmann. "Most of the pieces are about exploring new paths," says Pahud. "The power of this music often lies in the contrast between a simple line and the most refined complexities, between a note so quiet as to be barely perceptible and the loudest, most extreme notes playable on the instrument."

Sergey Taneyev was a distinguished pianist and influential educator, succeeding Tchaikovsky as professor at the Moscow Conservatory and counting Scriabin and Rachmaninov among his students. The Piano Trio Op. 22 is a demonstration of Taneyev’s technical skill, filled with subtle use of counterpoint, lyrical expressiveness and virtuoso fireworks. Alexander Borodin was a leading member of the ‘Mighty Handful’, and his incomplete but brilliant Piano Trio was seen by Glinka as setting a precedent in the genre for its deeply Russian character.

These must be among the earliest of oboe quintets, either on or off record. They are also among the least familiar; but of course not at all necessarily among the least rewarding on that account. Most rewarding is the Crussel; and it is good to see such a long-neglected composer now at last coming into his own. A divertimento as such is far from unusual for wind; but this one, in a single continuous movement (with varied sections) certainly is. The sections add up to a normal balance of (roughly) quick-slow-quick, the slow particularly effective in its evocation of Mozart's favourite G minor laments by deserted sopranos (there is a difference, though: probably none of Mozart's sopranos ever played the oboe so well as this). Throughout Crusell, himself a wind-player, treates the oboe as leader, and throughout he writes the most elegant and varied of music.

The Danish DJ, composer and producer Katrine Ring is one of the few DJs at the international level who has specialized in classical music. On this album she remixes and deconstructs a number of chamber concertos by the composer Vagn Holmboe in a musical game of hide-and-seek that breathes new life into the works in a constant play of memory and recognition. The original recordings by the Danish National Chamber Orchestra and the conductor Hannu Koivula are included as a bonus CD.