The music on Among Friends was actually performed at San Francisco's Keystone Korner during a recorded engagement by the Bobby Hutcherson sextet. Pianist Cedar Walton opened each set with a few numbers and he was playing so well that in 1990 Evidence decided to release his material as a separate CD. Walton performs three songs ("Ruby My Dear," "My Old Flame" and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face") solo, interprets four other pieces (three standards plus his own "Midnight Waltz"), in a trio with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Higgins, and Hutcherson himself makes the group a quartet on "My Foolish Heart." Excellent hard bop-based music from the talented pianist.

Partially growing out of their success in the country they were named after, as well as growing friendship and affiliation with such bands as Yellow Magic Orchestra, Japan, on Tin Drum, made its most unique, challenging, and striking album. It was also the final full studio effort from the group, and what a way to bow out – there was practically no resemblance to the trash glam flailers on Adolescent Sex anymore. Rather than repeat the sheer restraint on Gentlemen Take Polaroids, Tin Drum is an album of energy, Sylvian's singing still the decadently joyful thing it is, but the arrangements and performances tight, full, and active. The fusion of exquisite funk courtesy of Karn and Jansen's joined-at-the-hip rhythm section and a range of Asian music influences, from instrumentation to subject matter, combined with an even wider use of technological approaches to create the dramatic, sly songs on offer.

Places of Worship signals trumpeter and composer Arve Henriksen's return to Rune Grammophon and furthers his collaboration with both Jan Bang and Erik Honoré. Here his experimentations with sound, space, and texture offer listening environments that reflect various sacred spaces the world over, hence its title. While these tracks are impossible to separate from the influences of Jon Hassell's Fourth World Music explorations or the more murky moodscapes of Nils Petter Molvær, they are also more than a few steps removed from them. Henriksen never separates himself from the environmental information provided by his natural Nordic landscape. The lush, wild, and open physical vistas of its geography provide an inner map for the trumpeter and vocalist that amounts to a deeply focused series of tone poems.

Falco was the most internationally successful pop artist ever to come out of Austria, best known for his 1986 chart-topping hit "Rock Me Amadeus." Born Johann Holzel in Vienna on February 19, 1957, he was a classically trained child prodigy, but after graduating from the Vienna Conservatoire, he relocated to West Berlin and began fronting a jazz-rock band…

Passport To Romance (1956). Come aboard the S.S. Percy Faith for a simulated cruise to the romantic and exotic sites of Europe via Passport to Romance and its 12 orchestral pop instrumentals. Faith, our musical tour guide, leads us through the bright, enticing scenery of the Old World, pointing out tourist attractions with one hand while conducting his orchestra with the other. You'll see the "Heart of Paris," see "The Portuguese Washerwomen" at work, and enjoy a fine "Madeira." Passport to Romance was Faith's first charting album, and made use of the extended format to create a theme of travel in music, which later became a hallmark of 101 Strings albums. Faith's orchestrations are cheerful and varied, evoking sunny days and happy times; the music conjures film images of cafés, gondola rides, and tango dancers…

Lindsey Buckingham hadn't recorded a studio album with Fleetwood Mac in 16 years when Say You Will was released in April 2003. His partner, Stevie Nicks, had been missing in action from the group since 1990, and while both joined the reunited group in 1997 for a tour and live album (The Dance), not to mention Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration, it had been a long, long time since the two made new music for the Mac…

In 1970 members Linda Rothwell (vocals), Malcolm Grundy (guitar), Joseph Rosbotham (woodwinds), John Williamson (bass), Eric Eastman (drums, percussion) released their debut and only album self titled. Scouring the web is nigh impossible for finding information on this band, suffice to say if you like Traffic, Gravy Train or even early Greenslade then Goliath's lighter jazz infected crossover progressive sounds may well work for you. From the UK.

This rather memorable Pablo recording, his only album as a leader for Norman Granz's label (although he made several notable appearances as a sideman), features the great jazz harmonica player Toots Thielemans in a sparse trio with guitarist Joe Pass and bassist Niels Pedersen. The four main numbers ("Blues in the Closet," "Thriving on a Riff," "Autumn Leaves," and "Someday My Prince Will Come") are pure bebop, and Thielemans' solo guitar rendition of "The Mooche" is also a highlight.

The Hamburg-based electronic act are best remembered for their huge international hit, ‘Das Boot’, a techno treatment of Klaus Doldinger’s 1981 film theme, which crept into the UK Top 20 in the summer of 1992.
Originally released in 1991, ‘Das Boot’ single was number one in Germany (and other European countries) for several weeks. Their follow-up single, ‘I Wanna Be A Kennedy’, which borrowed heavily from Visage’s ‘Fade To Grey’, was another huge European hit.
U96’s debut album was largely built around the success of ‘Das Boot’, bookended with two versions of the hit track, as well as an attendant third single, ‘Der Kommandant’. The follow-up album, Replugged, released in 1993, was a far more diverse collection, featuring a wider range of electronic and ambient sounds.

The set that made Cray a pop star, despite its enduring blues base. Cray's smoldering stance on "Smoking Gun" and "Right Next Door" rendered him the first sex symbol to emerge from the blues field in decades, but it was his innovative expansion of the genre itself that makes this album a genuine 1980s classic. "Nothing but a Woman" boasts an irresistible groove pushed by the Memphis Horns and some metaphorically inspired lyrics, while "I Wonder" and "Guess I Showed Her" sizzle with sensuality.

Robert "Bob" Hurst's 2013 album Bob: A Palindrome follows up the bassist's 2010 studio album Bob Ya Head. Recorded in 2001, the album's release was delayed by 9/11, as well as Hurst's own busy career as a highly sought-after sideman and professor of music at the University of Michigan. Joining Hurst here are such longtime associates as saxophonist Branford Marsalis, drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, flutist and bass clarinetist Bennie Maupin, pianist Robert Glasper, and percussionist Adam Rudolph. With all the songs composed and arranged by Hurst, including the epic mid-album Duke Ellington-style three-part "Middle Passage Suite," Bob: A Palindrome is a superb showcase for Hurst's improvisational skill, songwriting ability, and talent for assembling an all-star band. This is urbane, highly creative, and straight-ahead modern jazz at its finest.

Recordings of Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, are abundant, and even the pairing with the rarer Robert Schumann Violin Concerto, WoO 23, of 1853 are not as infrequent as they used to be. The thorny Schumann concerto has undergone a reevaluation upward, and plenty of players now concur with the judgment of Yehudi Menuhin: "This concerto is the historically missing link of the violin literature; it is the bridge between the Beethoven and the Brahms concertos, though leaning more towards Brahms." Violinist Carolin Widmann who (like the ECM label on which the album appears) has focused mostly on contemporary music, takes up the challenge of providing something new here, and she meets it. The central fact of the recording is that Widmann conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe from the violin. Others have done this before, but few have pursued the implications of the technique as far as Widmann has: the performances are unusually light and transparent, and they are perhaps thus in accord with the sounds an orchestra of the middle 19th century might have produced. Sample the unusually lively, sprightly reading of the Mendelssohn concerto's finale.