“My enthusiasm for Brahms goes back to my youth, and the piano concertos are largely responsible for it,” writes Sir András Schiff in a liner note for this remarkable new recording. It finds the great pianist reassessing interpretive approaches to Brahms in the inspired company of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. To fully bring out the characteristics of Brahms’s music Schiff’s choice of instrument is a Blüthner piano built in Leipzig around 1859, the year in which the D minor concerto was premiered.

Among the many instrumental pieces that remained incomplete at Mozart's death there were four particularly beautiful fragments for violin and piano. Timothy Jones has made multiple new completions of these fragments based on Mozart's evolving style during the 1780s, exploring the open-endedness of the fragments and the different directions the music might have taken. Rachel Podger and Christopher Glynn present the world premiere recordings, which include two completions of each Sonata fragment, enabling listeners to take alternative journeys through Mozart's material.

For many, Johann Sebastian Bach is ‘the’ composer of the Baroque period, a master of harmony, counterpoint and genre. During his lifetime he was particularly renowned as a virtuoso organist, and his compositions for the instrument have formed the core repertory of any aspiring organist ever since. The content of the Orgelbüchlein – a selection of chorale preludes composed while Bach held the post of Ducal Organist at Weimar – includes several pieces that are considered to be among Sebastian’s finest works.

Al Jarreau and George Duke were friends long before they became household names. They began playing together in the mid-1960's in San Francisco as Al Jarreau and the George Duke Trio. The successes of these performances are what helped to launch both their careers. George's tragic passing in August, 2013, inspired Al to record this loving tribute to his longtime friend. With the exception of the fitting title track composed by Jarreau, all the tunes were written by George. Guest artists/collaborators include Gerald Albright, Stanley Clarke, Dr. John, Lalah Hathaway, Boney James, Marcus Miller, Jeffrey Osborne, Kelly Price, Dianne Reeves and Patrice Rushen. There's even a song with George Duke playing on it!

The Allman Brothers Band compilation album, released on the Japanese label Buena Suerte, is part of the Super Stars Best Collection series. Partially unofficial release.

With "Soundtrack To The End of Times", Denmark’s Mercenary will rekindle the flames of hard hitting metal hymns for all melodic metal fans! With album number eight and ten years since their last release, Mercenary return with a masterpiece for every melodic death & progressive metal fan.
Official album single the haunting 'Heart of the Numb', featuring Trivium vocalist Matt Heafy proves that death metal does not always need fast-paced riffage and thunderous blast beats - Mercenary spices their dark mood with a heavy dose of doom and a significant black metal touch, to deliver a colossal record and new piece of pure art! Tracks such as ‘Anthems of the Anxious' and the haunting 'Beyond the Waves’, showcase the band’s epic facets and extraordinary songwriting talents; always keeping you warm and welcome yet haunted and hopeless…

2CD FM broadcast captures Tom Petty s complete 1993 homecoming concert, his first show in Gainesville, Florida for 20 years. This show was just prior to the release of his greatest hits album and while he was in the process of moving to a new label. The greatest hits album also included 2 new recently recorded songs ; 'Mary Jane's Last Dance' and a cover of Thunderclap Newman's 'Something in the Air', both of which are included in this show. And the show was broadcast on the radio nationwide, in superb FM quality. So, here is Tom Petty's triumphant, yet somewhat overdue, return to Gainesville. Although some of the circulating FM versions of the show are shortened substantially, this is the full show in all its glory.

Prisoner is the sixteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Ryan Adams. It was released on February 17, 2017. The album is Adams' first album of original material since his 2014 album, Ryan Adams, and was preceded by the singles "Do You Still Love Me?", "To Be Without You", and "Doomsday". Prisoner received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 79 based on 26 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic rated the album four out of five stars, calls it "charming", and states, "it's not a record that wallows in hurt, it's an album that functions as balm for bad times." Writing for Slant Magazine, Jeremy Winograd rated the album four of five stars and states Prisoner is "one of Adams's most sonically artful albums to date."

Time Life Music’s Singers & Songwriters: 1976-1977 collects 24 radio hits over the span of two discs. Despite the title, the compilation doesn’t just favor traditional singer/songwriters like Al Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, and England Dan & John Ford Coley, though they are represented here. Group contributions include Orleans (“Still the One”), Fleetwood Mac (“Say You Love Me”), Chicago (“If You Leave Me Now”), and Bread (“Lost Without Your Love”), but it’s the solo acts that provide the most recognizable hits.

Generally speaking, guitar wizard Al Di Meola has divided his musical attentions over the years between electric and acoustic, fusion and world music directions. This time out he splits the difference with some dazzling results. Coming off his short-lived reunion with Return to Forever, Di Meola returns to the solo spotlight with Pursuit of Radical Rhapsody, a strong and varied effort that moves mostly in the acoustic direction and features some high-profile personnel, including pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and bassist Charlie Haden.

This album is something of an anomaly in Frank Zappa's catalog. On all but two of the songs, Frank plays guitar, bass and keyboards. Terry Bozzio plays drums, and other favorites add tracks (Ruth Underwood, Roy Estrada and "Donnie" (van) Vliet, among others) to fill out the music. So among his seventies albums, this is more of a solo album than any.
Zappa proves himself to be a fair keyboardist. Although none of the keyboards stand out as great, they don't detract from the music either. And he tends to stay somewhat low key on the bass as well. The one place his bass stands out is on Friendly Little Finger, where Zappa is soloing on bass and guitar at the same time, with spectacular results.
The two guitar solo pieces are also outstanding. Black Napkins became one of Frank's signature guitar solos, and Zoot Allures is beautiful as well…

Abdullah Ibrahim revisits seven of his old compositions on this release, recorded live in Germany with the 17-piece NDR Big Band under the direction of Dieter Glawischnig. The new arrangements by Steve Gray and Fritz Pauer give Ibrahim's infectious melodies and rolling vamps added power. Even Ibrahim seems excited: between tunes he verbally invites the audience to "come with us" (e.g., "Now come with us to an African Market," "Now come with us, a beautiful African sunset, and soft rain, soft rain, Pule."). "African Market," "Kramat," and "Black and Brown Cherries" are nothing if not danceable, while "Mindif" and the relatively brief "Whoza Mtwana" introduce a more contemplative mood. The charts leave plenty of room for resourceful solos, chiefly by trombonist Joe Gallardo, saxophonist/flutist Fiete Felsch, trumpeters Claus Stötter and Ingold Burkhardt, and of course Ibrahim himself…

Though they ultimately made their name as a blues-rock band, and Peter Green's admiration of artists like Jerry Garcia eventually found its way into their music, Fleetwood Mac began as a straight-ahead blues band. A bunch of Brits devoted to the music of Chicago and the Delta, Green and company couldn't help but put their own twist on the blues, but they were simultaneously reverential towards it. This is the situation presented in this 1968 live recording. While the sound quality is less than stellar, it's good enough to make the guitar talents of Green and Jeremy Spencer obvious, as they work up effective solos over "Got To Move," "Vuzz Me" and others. Unlike their peers, who used blues as a vehicle to something larger and louder, Mac circa '68 stuck close to their roots and made it work. The live setting proved even more inspiring for the two guitarists, whose blistering lead work is the central focus throughout this album.