The Bossa Nova: Exciting Jazz Samba Rhythms is a six-volume series of music highlighting some of the beautiful music of Brazil, shown by the artists of the country along with outsiders who too have fallen in love with the bossa nova. The first five volumes were released by Rare Groove Recordings in 2000 and due to its success, a sixth and final version was released two years later, highlighting some of the bossa nova music used in motion pictures. Some of the material are sourced from vinyl.

Traces Of Love is a sampler CD found in the February 2002 issue of Jazziz. It was released to coincide with Valentine's Day but is perfect for any romantic time of the year.

Diana Krall is an attractive lady with a good voice who plays decent piano, but this somewhat ridiculously packaged Verve CD seems like an obvious attempt to turn her into a pop icon and sex symbol to boot. The bland arrangements by Claus Ogerman (who conducts the London Symphony Orchestra on each track) border on easy listening, while Krall and her various supporting musicians – including John Pisano, Russell Malone, Christian McBride, and Peter Erskine (among others) – clearly seem stifled by their respective roles. There are plenty of strong compositions here, including standards like "I Remember You," "The Night We Called It a Day," and "I Get Along Without You Very Well," but the unimaginative and often syrupy charts take their toll on the performances.

Ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Records can be accused of scraping the bottom of the barrel in its second compilation of old Sarah Brightman tracks released to take advantage of the singer's international popularity due to her albums Time to Say Goodbye, Eden, and La Luna, all recorded for a different company. Happily, even the bottom of the barrel contains some excellent material, even after the cream was skimmed off with The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection. During and after her marriage to Lloyd Webber, Brightman performed on the Original London Cast recording of The Phantom of the Opera and recorded the albums The Songs That Got Away (1989) and Surrender (1995), and that's the material sampled here, that is, the remaining tracks that weren't used on The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection.

Rootsier than Robert Cray, more soulful than Jimmie Vaughan, and boasting a gospel background similar to the great Sam Cooke, Joe Louis Walker is a contemporary soul/bluesman who flawlessly and effortlessly mixes his diverse influences. On his first album in three years (and Telarc label debut), Walker proves he's an artist capable of terse, searing guitar solos, as on the R&B "Do You Wanna' Be With Me?"; mid-tempo, jazzy soul such as "Leave that Girl Alone"; or rugged acoustic Delta blues like the appropriate album-closing "Strangers in Our House." Walker - who began his career playing religious music - not surprisingly proves himself a more than adequate soul/gospel vocalist in the Al Green vein on the spiritual "Where Jesus Leads"…

Millennium Monsterwork 2000 is a live album between Fantômas and Melvins, who became one and called themselves The Fantômas Melvins Big Band. This was released in 2002 through Ipecac Records.

Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano. His best-known compositions, "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999…

Born Caroline Catharina Müller in the Netherlands, she moved with her family to Germany in the late '70s. In 1980, she became a member of the girl quartet Optimal, who issued two singles. During one of the band's concerts in Hamburg, she was approached by songwriter/producer Dieter Bohlen who had just taken the continental charts by storm with his duo Modern Talking…

One of the last of the old country bluesmen to record, the diminutive Tommy McClennan delivered 40-some tracks to Bluebird Records between 1939 and 1942 before vanishing into the haze of blues history. Although small in stature, McClennan had a strong, raspy voice that brought a lively exuberance to his often generic lyrics, and his habit of tossing in spoken interjections - he literally talked to himself as he sang - give his songs the feel of intimate dialogues. This collection is the second, and final, installment of McClennan's Bluebird sessions to be released by Document Records. Unfortunately, the first one, 1939-1940 Whiskey Head Woman, Vol. 1, has most of his essential recordings on it. McClennan was a limited guitarist, and his singing approach, while exciting, was essentially shouting, and he had obviously run out of fresh ideas by the time of these final recordings…

Touching Air is a 2002 CD by Indian violinist Kala Ramnath. She is joined with tabla player Vijay Ghate. Sense World Music made this true.

Jukin' is the debut album recorded by The Manhattan Transfer. Released on Capitol Records in 1971, it was also the only album released by the first incarnation of the group which consisted of founder Tim Hauser, Erin Dickins, Marty Nelson, Gene Pistilli, and Pat Rosalia. The album was later reissued in the UK by EMI's Music for Pleasure under the title The Manhattan Transfer and Gene Pistilli Pistilli had been best known for his performing and songwriting collaborations with Terry Cashman and Tommy West. The group line-up endured only about two years. According to Tim Hauser, "Gene and I were in two different places. He was more into country & western,..

Tommy McClennan would work in the cotton fields by day and in the evenings he would play on the streets of Greenwood, MS. Later he worked in juke joints and for dance parties, playing both the guitar and the piano. McClennan was a small man, standing just 4 feet 10, but this in no way negated the powerful voice that he possessed. His guitar playing is typical of the Mississippi style; simple, dominant, solid rhythms from the bass end with dashes of spikey treble riffs interjected between the vocal choruses. His voice was rough, hoarse and loud. Loud enough to be heard over the hubbub in a Mississippi juke joint on a Saturday night. Honey Boy Edwards tells of Tommy’s habit of standing in front of a mirror talking to himself…

Edward Ka-Spel is a singer, songwriter and musician. He is probably best known as the lead singer, songwriter and co-founder (with Phil “The Silverman” Knight) of the prolific underground band The Legendary Pink Dots.

Mythos can be described as ethereal, ambient instrumental music focusing on acoustic guitar, piano and vocal melodies. Added to this mix are hypnotic electronic beats, orchestral arrangements and world instrument flavors. Mythos has always had the goal of creating music without borders; creating a blend of sounds from all over the planet.

Like Steely Dan, The The wasn't so much a band as a personal musical conceit/alter ego, this one for English writer-performer Matt Johnson. While Johnson's "band" came of age during the English synth pop boom of the early ‘80s, electricity was about the only common denominator between Johnson and his fashion slave contemporaries. Indeed, the sense of conscientious outrage that informs many of the two decades worth of singles collected here fostered a perception of Johnson as something of a prickly malcontent. But fashion was never an end in itself for Johnson, even on early pop fare like "Uncertain Smile" and "Perfect." Johnson's restless creative bent has led him to remix many of these tracks anew, ensuring that this set would never be seen as mere artistic obituary. Johnson's reputation as a socio-political crank reached its zenith on tracks like "Heartland" (which decries the reverse cultural colonization of Britain by America) and "Armageddon Days" (a shotgun blast at pan-religious hypocrisy, here introduced by a hilarious parody of the Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz": "Are you ready Jesus? Yeah! / Budda? Uh-huh."), but subsequent history has only proven him sagacious.