Rock music's first two-LP box set, A Gift from a Flower to a Garden overcomes its original shortcomings and stands out as a prime artifact of the flower-power era that produced it. The music still seems a bit fey, and overall more spacy than the average Moody Blues album of this era, but the sheer range of subjects and influences make this a surprisingly rewarding work. Essentially two albums recorded simultaneously in the summer of 1967, the electric tracks include Jack Bruce among the session players. The acoustic tracks represent an attempt by Donovan to get back to his old sound and depart from the heavily electric singles ("Sunshine Superman," etc.) and albums he'd been doing - it is folkier and bluesier (in an English folk sense) than much of his recent work.

Originally released back in 1980, at a time when traditional country artists seemed to be struggling to understand where their sound would fit in with the newly polished production of the time, his eight-song collection The Real Thang was only released on vinyl and met with mixed reviews when it came out. Listening to it now, it's odd to think that the album's blend of White's signature swamp rock sound and smooth late 70s disco was so cruelly overlooked, because it feels totally in step with a lot of other things that were happening in country in the early 1980s.

SFJAZZ proudly releases "Collective Imagery", by the 2024-25 edition of SF Jazz Collective, the distinguished organization’s flagship group since it launched in 2004 with a mandate that, annually, each band member create a fresh arrangement of works by a modern master and a newly commissioned piece. On Collective Imagery, for the first time, SFJC eschews arrangements and presents a program of entirely original music, upholding a remark by its first putative leader and musical director, Joshua Redman, that it is “a true composer’s collective.”

Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony deliver a commanding new interpretation of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, released on SFS Media. With precision, power, and crystalline clarity, Salonen illuminates the rhythmic vitality and architectural brilliance of Stravinsky’s post-war masterpiece. The orchestra’s dynamic range and refined textures bring fresh urgency to the work’s angular energy and cinematic scope, capturing both its modernist bite and emotional depth. Stravinsky: Symphony in Three Movements stands as a testament to Salonen’s deep affinity for 20th-century repertoire and the San Francisco Symphony’s world-class artistry.

Following on from Amadeus and Ludwig, the Zaïde Quartet continues its exploration of the great masters’ repertoire with Franz, an opus devoted entirely to Schubert. True to their original and daring approach to recording, the four musicians paint a striking portrait of the Austrian composer through one of his greatest masterpieces: Death and the Maiden. This masterpiece is framed by transcriptions of two lieder: ‘Le Roi des Aulnes’ and a sublime aria from the opera ‘Fierrabras’. The Schubertian universe is expressed here in all its existential depth, with a permanent duality between light and darkness, gentleness and blackness, life and death, leading to a final redemption of overwhelming beauty.

Far and away the season's best cabaret show… Sometimes, something remarkable can grow from the most unexpected juxtapositions. At 28, Marissa Mulder has a voice like a spring morning and a face to match. Her singing frequently puts experienced cabaret-goers in mind of Blossom Dearie's little-girl innocence, and therefore the least likely material she could tackle would be the gin-soaked, hard-luck, grimy inner-city stories of Tom Waits. No, she doesn't take the easy step of addressing the songwriter's lighter material, nor does she try to brighten up any of Mr. Waits's infamously dark, rumpled anthems. Instead, she takes his darkest and most profound songs and looks them straight in the eye. Complementing Ms. Mulder's starkly honest interpretations is pianist Jon Weber, who helps her extract the majestically dysfunctional beauty of texts like "Broken Bicycles" without merely prettying them up.

Trumpeter Joe Magnarelli is cut from the cloth of true New York bebop. Magnarelli has a lyrical, searching voice and plays a program of Monk, standards and some originals. With the legendary Mulgrew Miller on piano, Dwayne Burno on bass and Jason Brown on drums, this is a top-flight New York City jazz group captured live at Smalls for an exciting and gratifying set of music.

New York's ace trumpeter Joe "Mags" Magnarelli's third outing on SteepleChase is condensed to a quartet format with trumpet as the sole frontline giving the leader new dimension and depth to define his voice.

Featuring Handel's substantial Neun Deutsche Arien (Nine German Arias), HWV 202-210, this engaging late-'80s Bis recording gives the composer's relatively neglected vocal chamber music the royal treatment. It is masterfully produced by the label's founder, Robert von Bahr, and realized with utmost love and expertise by soprano Christina Högman and I Quattro Temperamenti.

On two previous discs, London Baroque has explored the genre of the trio sonatas as it unfolded in 17th Century France and England. Both these issues have met with great acclaim: the English volume being described in Goldberg Magazine as ‘A programme of outstanding music … A gem of a disc’, while the French issue received top marks on German website Klassik Heute, with the following words: ‘Everything that one might possibly wish for in a performance of this music is present here: charm, elegance, eloquence, force, flexibility, fire, intimacy, and the most important: soul.’ The ensemble has now arrived in Germany, or more correctly: the German-speaking world of the time, as the programme also features works from the Low Countries and Austria.

Playlist: The Very Best of Laura Nyro gathers 14 tracks recorded during the singer/songwriter's tenure with Columbia. Included are the original versions of "And When I Die," "Stoney End," and "Flim Flam Man [aka Hands Off the Man]." While this budget-priced compilation should please most casual listeners, it does leave off "Eli's Coming," one of her essential songs.

After his Bach concertos, a classical bestseller in both France and Germany, the young French pianist David Fray brings his unique sensibilities to Schubert. David Fray has already declared his particular affinity with Austro-German music, and after two CDs featuring Bach (and a DVD featuring him in Bach concertos) he now turns to the early Romantic era and Schubert, with a programme of the six Moments musicaux D780, the four Impromptus D899 and the Allegretto in C minor D915, recorded in Berlin.

There are curiously few complete cycles of Beethoven's five sonatas for cello and piano, given that the five, unlike the violin sonatas, were almost equally distributed among the composer's early, middle, and late periods, and that each one was in its way a formally daring work. The last two sonatas in particular, with their mysteriously lyrical third relations and compact finales, fugal in the case of the Cello Sonata No. 5 in D major, Op. 102/2, might be regarded as having inaugurated Beethoven's late period. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexander Melnikov (here playing a modern piano unlike on the trio recording the pair made with violinist Isabelle Faust) have an efficient, quick, tough style that beautifully fits these late sonatas.

This Set is the first overview of a life, a dream that is already an oeuvre: the dream of a singer who wanted only to be a voice in the service of the Lord, and who in spite of herself has become a star in the eyes of men and women.
Over the course of the three albums included here, the listener will follow the ascension of an artist in the years when she asserted herself as one of the great interpreters of traditional spirituals and gospel songs. This is a repertoire whose masterpieces date mostly from the 19th century, that period when Liz Mc Comb’s ancestors freed themselves from the chains of slavery through hope and through faith. In the last few years, without distancing herself from her roots, Liz Mc Comb has proven herself to be an enlightened composer, and her fourth album, "Time Is Now", is an indispensible addition to this trilogy.