A new stereo mix of the album by Giles Martin. Sgt. Pepper Sessions on 2 CDs with over 100 minutes of audio illustrating how the album was created. Newly mixed from the original four-track tapes, most of the material is previously unreleased. Also contains the original 1967 mono mix of the album and bonus tracks including three previously unreleased mixes.
144-page hardback book featuring an introduction by Sir Paul McCartney, comprehensive song-by-song details and recording information, in-depth essays about the design of the cover, the album's musical innovations and its historical context… and much more. Illustrations include photographs from the recording sessions, handwritten lyrics and Abbey Road documentation…

The fact that Billy Branch's backing band for this live date from 1982 is called the SOBs gives listeners hope that this will be a nasty, biting concert. For the most part, that's incorrect, since this wasn't a performance that reached a rolling boil - it was one that kept to a low simmer. Nearly all of the songs are taken at slow tempos, and the band lays back greatly; even when they get a little bit of steam, as on "Eyesight to the Blind," they're relaxed. This isn't a bad thing, and the group - including not just Branch, but Lurrie Bell, Eli Murray, J.W. Williams, and Carey Bell, all held in place by drummer Mose Rutues - works well together, creating some nice off-hand moments in nearly every track.

Magic Moments 1 (2000). With the 1996 release of "A Little Magic In A Noisy World", the first of its anthology series, ACT began to document its repertory concept of a permanent exchange between jazz and other forms of music. The release of "Magic Moments" in January 2000 is the forth installment of this "music without borders". This time the CD combines over 40 ACTs on 18 titles.
Some of the musicians on this anthology speak the American - born language of jazz with the accent of their own mother tongue. Others add new words to the language, or expand the grammatical rules. Yet others speak in their native language, but owing to their long time away from their homeland, scatter scraps of American "slang" over their musical landscape; the flow of their speech has even taken on an American tone and color…

The term 'South German' in keyboard music refers geographically to the southern part of the German-speaking region, also containing parts of Austria and Switzerland – and even eastern European regions of Poland, Bohemia and Transylvania. Joseph Kelemen has been an active church musician in the South German region since 1986. He is passionately dedicated to historical performance practice and is considered in the specialist world as the authority for German organ music of the 17th century and the organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Mahler considered The Song of the Earth his most personal work, and indeed it is one of his greatest and most moving. Its six sections, sung alternately by the mezzo-soprano and tenor, are set to seven poems from The Chinese Flute, a collection of Chinese lyrics translated into German by Hans Bethge, which echo Mahler's love of nature and contrast the earth's renewal each spring with the transience of human life. Composed after he lost his beloved 4-year-old daughter and was diagnosed with a serious heart ailment, the music encompasses heart-rending anguish and sublime ecstasy; conceived in the shadow of death, it is suffused with a sense of sorrowful, reluctant leave-taking finally transformed into resigned renunciation.

It was an awakening experience when Christoph Koncz, principal violinist of the Vienna Philharmonic and conductor, first held Mozarts original concert violin in his hands. This was the violin on which Mozart had played as concertmaster in the Salzburg Hofkapelle: a Baroque violin that was carefully preserved after Mozarts death and treated almost as a holy relic. The idea of recording Mozarts five violin concertos for the first time on the composers own concert violin was one that Christoph Koncz found irresistibly fascinating. Theres a close connection between these concertos and this instrument, and Mozarts own experience of this violin undoubtedly inspired him greatly.

You'd probably need a mainframe computer to keep track of all the personnel changes in Yes over the years, and the quality of the prog rock giant's music has fluctuated nearly as much as the lineups. The Ladder is a synthesis of the best traits of the experimental Fragile era and the pop-oriented 90125 era. Producer Bruce Fairbairn completed The Ladder shortly before his death in 1999, and unlike some of his work with Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Kiss, and others, he didn't overproduce it. Vocalist Jon Anderson, lead guitarist Steve Howe, and bass guitarist Chris Squire all have fine moments, and drummer Alan White is consistent. The roles of keyboardist Igor Khoroshev and, in particular, guitarist Billy Sherwood are less clear. It occasionally seems the purpose of Khoroshev's keyboards is providing a variety of sonic textures instead of functioning as a lead instrument…

Shades Of Orion (1993). Tetsu Inoue's second full-length collaboration with Pete Namlook splits evenly between beatless and beat-oriented ambient, with spacey, immersive textures and subtle arrangements. High production values and the wealth of creative territory covered make for one of the finest early Fax releases.
Shades Of Orion 2 (1994). One of the better long-form releases in the Fax stable. This second Shades of Orion project is quite different from the first… a single relaxing, drifty, ethereal piece that will slow your body down and put you to sleep if you need it to. Meditative and very gentle, this recording is free of spoken word samples and sonic distractions, which makes it ideal for just chilling out to.