Rodney Dillard taking fictionalized song titles from episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and fleshing them out into real compositions. "… the long awaited cd featuring the beloved titles from a town called Mayberry that made Charlene Cry.. Sung by the last Darling, Rodney Dillard, these include… NEVER HIT YOUR GRAMMA WITH A GREAT BIG STICK” “WET SHOES IN THE SUNSET” “DANCE ‘TIL YOUR SOCKS ARE HOT AND RAVLIN” and more… There were 9 titles, now soon to be classic songs and yes, “THERE IS A TIME”, sung as a tribute to our beloved Charlene, Maggie Peterson Mancuso. As always, in Mayberry, we are left with a chuckle and a tear…"

Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985 is a historically significant recording, presenting Stevie Ray Vaughan in the biggest show of his life to that date, then three years later, once he had become a star. The 1982 show is essentially the show that got his career started. He met both Jackson Browne and David Bowie after his set, and they were so impressed that Browne volunteered use of his studio (for free!) for Stevie to record what would become his debut album, and Bowie recruited him as lead guitarist for the Let's Dance album and tour (alas, the tour was not to be). However, not everyone was so impressed. In fact, there are choruses of boos that follow nearly every tune. Vaughan was basically a nobody at the time, playing very electric blues at the end of a mostly acoustic program.

Organist and pianist James McVinnie makes his PENTATONE debut with Dreamcatcher, an intimate sequence of contemporary classical music centred around the act of imagining. The recording features the organ of St Albans Cathedral—an epoch-making instrument closely associated with legendary organists Peter Hurford and Ralph Downes. The piano segments of the album were recorded on a Steinway D of exceptional beauty at Studio Richter Mahr, co-founded by composer Max Richter and visual artist Yulia Mahr. A mesmerising sonic trip, Dreamcatcher reflects the unique artistic persona of McVinnie, whose mastery of core organ repertoire extends to an extensive body of work written for him by leading contemporary classical composers, as well as collaborations in the world of electronic and experimental music.

The ‘Quatuor Ellipsos’ tells us a family story through four iconic works firmly ingrained in the collective unconscious: Carmen, Casse-Noisette, West Side Story and Rhapsody in Blue. Like a small-scale symphonic orchestra, in a spirit bordering on that of chamber music, they invite three great pianists, Marie-Josèphe Jude, Charles Heisser and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger. With the coruscating arrangements we are immersed into the innumerable timbres of their saxophones in association with the piano.

Didier Rotella’s "Zone Grise" unfolds in a space of perpetual transformation, where sound navigates between density and purity, acoustic and electronic, structure and fluidity. Catharsis combines hybrid instruments and spatialized textures to evoke a dramatic journey of evolution and renewal, while Fragrances draws inspiration from perfume composition, blending musical elements into a rich, multi-layered tapestry. Mogari reflects on ritual and humanity through augmented instruments and poetic gestures, tracing a spiritual passage from lament to resolution. Each piece reveals Rotella’s ability to craft intricate, ever-shifting soundscapes that invite reflection on balance, motion, and the ephemeral nature of musical expression.

Released in collaboration with the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music in New York and coinciding with celebrations of Sir Simon Rattle's 70th birthday in January 2025, the London Symphony Orchestra's signature label will release a new recording of Weill's stinging critique of capitalist society, 'The Seven Deadly Sins'.Featuring soloists such as Magdalena Kožená, Andrew Staples and Florian Boesch, this adds to Rattle's acclaimed series of opera recordings on LSO Live.

Having barely arrived in London, Handel laid the foundations for his unprecedented operatic career in 1711 with the magic opera Rinaldo. In addition to the novel Italian music, the fantastic plot, which exploited all the possibilities of baroque theatre, also met with enthusiasm from the audience: love, anger and passion amid sensational scene changes, fire-breathing monsters, flying dragons and an exotic magical island. The libretto, based on an episode from Torquato Tasso's epic Gerusalemme liberata, which was popular at the time, tells the story of the young crusader Rinaldo, who would much rather marry his beloved Almirena than fight and who must resist the magical arts of the sorceress Armida - who is in love with him - in order to find happiness. Twenty years later, in 1731, Handel fundamentally revised his successful opera once again. This rarely performed version can be heard here on CD for the first time and features an outstanding cast of singers, above all the leading Italian countertenor Filippo Mineccia in the main role and Roberta Mameli and Vivica Genaux as the ladies fighting for him. Marco Angioloni, who also sings Goffredo, conducts the young ensemble Il Groviglio with verve.

This debut album of the young Trio Contrasti takes us on a journey through time with a mosaic of sounds in which epochs and cultures enter into dialogue. Romanticism gave the art world a new paradigm of thought, when music took the leading position among the arts and the freedom of formal design, initiated by the content, unfolded. The quest for national self-identification and the rapid development of national styles in art began. Romanticism opened the way for a dialogue between epochs and cultures that continued into the 20th century. Three works that have no direct connection to each other nevertheless share a common context. When viewed through the prism of a Romantic paradigm, they can be seen as milestones on the path through epochs and cultures.

Another recording of The Four Seasons? A year after ‘Concerti per una vita’, the orchestra of Le Consort, in the course of its exploration of Vivaldi, reveals the many facets of this inexhaustible cycle. To achieve this, Théotime Langlois de Swarte has held up a subtle mirror to other works by the ‘red-haired priest’. All of them perpetuate the seasons in their own way, through shared memories and impressions; in the background Lambranzi's Venetian dances complement this musical picture awash with colours!

Pianist Kate Liu rose to international prominence after winning the Bronze Medal and Best Mazurka Prize at the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition in Warsaw, along with the audience prize from the Polish public. Since then, Liu has performed on prestigious stages worldwide including Carnegie's Weill Hall and the Kennedy Center, collaborating with renowned orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal. Born in Singapore, Kate Liu began her piano studies at the age of four and moved to the U.S. at eight, eventually earning degrees from the Curtis Institute and The Juilliard School. Her latest recording spans two pianistic masterpieces, Beethoven's Sonata No. 31, and the 3rd Sonata of Brahms.

Unreleased album recorded between November 1974 and November 1976

U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin, formed in 1976. They began their legacy rooting their music in the political turmoil that was all around them.After having Steve Lillywhite produce their first three albums, U2 looked for a more sophisticated and experimental sound. They hired Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno to produce "The Unforgettable Fire" and "The Joshua Tree" albums, which both put them onto the charts all over the world.

Despite its hardscrabble title – a sentiment mirrored by the deeply etched black & white cover art – 2016's Blues of Desperation is very much a continuation of the bright, varied blues-rock heard on Different Shades of Blue. On that 2014 album, Joe Bonamassa made a conscious decision to pair with a bunch of Nashville songsmiths to help sharpen his original material, and he brings most of them back for Blues of Desperation, too. The tenor of the tunes is somewhat heavy – there are lonesome trains, low valleys, no places for the lonely – and the production also carries a ballast, something that comes into sharp relief on the Zep-flavored title track but can be heard throughout the record.

The age of ever-increasing connectedness carries with it a troubling dichotomy: the easier it becomes to communicate the increasingly isolated we feel.

The first ever live performance and recording by Marc Moulin's sought-after jazz-funk band Placebo, captured at Casino Kursaal during the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1971 and never released before.