The musical culture that Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763-1814), Empress of the French and Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife, developed with her family and at court kept pace with fashion and even shaped the French musical taste of the period. Joséphine organised weekly concerts at the Château de Malmaison, her preferred residence, that featured many of the most famous musicians in Paris and Europe. Informal musical soirées were also held on an almost daily basis. This recording presents excerpts from operas of the period transcribed for chamber performance, in which the most passionate emotions are expressed alongside nostalgic romances and alternate with instrumental works to recreate the spontaneity of a musical evening in Joséphine’s salon. This original project offers music lovers an immersion in a musical universe that is largely unknown to audiences today.

This release is the world première recording of Estonia’s first major work in art music in its original score and sung in Estonian. Rudolf Tobias (1873–1918) is widely celebrated in Estonia as the ‘father of Estonian music’ and considered as the first Estonian composer to have obtained a degree in composing after completing his studies at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. In this recording the composer’s magnum opus, Joonas (Jonah Oratorio) is performed by a first-class Estonian line up led by the award-winning ensembles Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and conductor Tõnu Kaljuste.

A Note from Peter Knight
This is music inspired by the water and the wind. By the tattoo of the insects’ beating wings and the soughing of the wattle in the sea breeze. By the dull roll of the surf and the rhythm of my breath against the pad of my feet as I walk along the sandy, leaf-littered path through the scrub to the beach. The fingers of the fire-blackened dead banksias clawing the vicious blue. Somewhere, a peal of laughter is torn from its source and flies for a moment on the thermals rising from the baking sand. It is the summer of 2024/25 in Australia as the ideas for this album coalesce from a dozen different threads. I’m camping with my family on Krowathunkooloong land in the south-east corner of the country. The place where I grew up. The same beach where I spent every summer through my childhood.

The Hamburg-born Ferdinand Thieriot (1838–1919) not only shared a teacher – Eduard Marxsen – with Brahms; both composers, who remained friends in later years, use a similar musical language, one which is richly melodic and effortlessly contrapuntal. The musicologist Wilhelm Altmann wrote that ‘Thieriot’s chamber music is without exception noble and pure. He writes with perfect command of form and expression’ – as the works on this fourth Toccata Classics volume prove, in their exquisite balance of depth and beauty, of Brahmsian richness and Schubertian spontaneity.

Recorded by KGLW sound crew: Sam Joseph, Joe Santarpia, Grace Reader, Gaspard De Meulemeester. King Gizzard are: Amby Kenny-Smith, Mickey Cavanagh, Cookie Craig, Joey Walker, Lukey Harwood and Stu Mackenzie Photos by Maclay Heriot @maclayheriot.

GRAMMY-winning Icelandic-Chinese artist, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Laufey brings her annual holiday series.

HONEST JON'S RECORDS. When the Empire Windrush, an old troop-carrier, arrived at Tilbury on June 21, 1948, and inaugurated modern Caribbean immigration to Britain, it also supplied calypso with its best-known image — on Pathe newsreel, Lord Kitchener singing his new composition London Is The Place For Me. Kitch had boarded with Lord Beginner at Kingston docks, Jamaica, on Empire Day, May 24. In London they joined a milieu of fine band musicians familiar with Caribbean musical forms, and already represented on numerous recordings crucial to the development of British swing and jazz music. Travelling with their own core audience, the Trinidadian calypsonians brought with them the vocal music of Carnival. Traditionally this ranges from social satire to sexual double-entendre, from voodoo to the most pressing issues of the day, from sporting events to competitive insult. The experiences of Britain’s growing Caribbean population were to be fabulously rich in raw material.

Alongside Alessandro Scarlatti, many composers contributed to the flourishing of Neapolitan opera in the 18th century. Most have since been forgotten, their works lying dormant in the archives of the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella.
Harpsichordist Ignacio Prego conducts Xavier Sabata, Alicia Amo, and his ensemble Tiento Nuovo in bringing back to life some of the finest, never-before-recorded arias by Sarri, Vinci, and Vignola. Composed at the height of Neapolitan opera, these works combine dazzling virtuosity with unbridled expressiveness — a powerful testament to the art of the affetti cultivated by these Neapolitan masters, here rediscovered with renewed wonder.

Contains the complete stereo and quadraphonic mixes of "Azteca" KC/CQ 31776 (1972) and the complete stereo mix of "Pyramid of the Moon" KC 32451 (1973). n 1984, music critic Dave Marsh put forward the bold thesis that all rock'n'roll had a Latin American coloration. Even today, rock history is still told as a largely black and white story, although the Latin American influence is evident: from the Afro-Cuban precursors of the Bo Diddley beat to the Eastside and Tex-Mex pioneers of garage rock and the Chicano influences on punk, disco and hip-hop. After Santana's earthquake-like debut at Woodstock in 1969, a wave of Latin rock rolled out of California, sweeping up everyone from Marvin Gaye to the Rolling Stones. Columbia soon relied on a visionary 16-piece orchestra led by former Santana drummer Thomas "Coke" Escovedo: Azteca.

The new album of saxophonist Asya Fateyeva tells the tales of the winter and Christmas season in a brand-new arrangement of the Tchaikovsky classic The Nutcracker by composer Wolf Kerschek. This piece for saxophone and orchestra, where Fateyeva is joined by the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz is complemented by other Christmas favourites for saxophone and vocal ensemble that were recorded together with Niniwe-Vocal Art. Part of the album are for example: Carol of the Bells, Corpus Christi Charol, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and Rosu Dejte.

What exactly is Spiritual Soul anyway? At the confluence of congas and Fender Rhodes, the Civil Rights Movement and vegetarianism, jazz-funk and gospel-soul, a Black-to-the-land movement in song sprung forth in the 1970s. Where Rotary Connection, Alice Coltrane, and Roy Ayers dared to fly, others flapped their free love wings, transcending the trappings of Top 40, sexuality, and capitalism at once. On Eccentric Spiritual Soul, Numero digs deep into the private annals of the Black music diaspora, unearthing ten heavenly grooves for the tranquility bound listener. From Kalima's existential boogie banger "Where Is The Sunshine" to Fathers Children's proto-dub workout "Linda Movement," Lenny White's Bitches Brew comedown "Sweet Dreamer" to Spunk's Balaeric rainstick R&B "La Bimini," Eccentric Spiritual Soul has everything you need for your next incorporeal awakening. Flute not included, but encouraged.

EARLY SHOWS IN EUROPE FROM ELP’s BRAIN SALAD SURGERY TOUR In early 1973, the Emerson, Lake & Palmer formed their own record label, Manticore Records, and purchased an abandoned cinema as their own rehearsal hall in the London area of Fulham. In June 1973, the group began recording Brain Salad Surgery in London at Advision and Olympic Studios which lasted until September that year. Their regular Engineer, Eddy Offord was not present for the recording sessions as he was working with Yes, leaving engineering and mixing duties to Chris Kimsey and Geoff Young. Lake wrote the album's lyrics with Peter Sinfield and its sleeve was designed by H. R. Giger and includes the band's new logo. Formed of five tracks, the record includes a new rendition of ‘Jerusalem’ which features the debut of the Moog Apollo, a prototype polyphonic synthesizer. ‘Toccata’ is a cover of the fourth movement of Piano Concerto No. 1 by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera and contains synthesised percussion in the form of an acoustic drum kit fitted with pick-ups that triggered electronic sounds.

Rhino Handmade is proud to present FUNKY MIDNIGHT MOVER – THE ATLANTIC STUDIO RECORDINGS (1962-1978), legendary soul shaker Wilson Pickett's exclusive rhino.com 6-CD collection. The first comprehensive compilation of Pickett’s Atlantic material, FUNKY MIDNIGHT MOVER includes all his originally issued recordings for the label, as well as early pre-Atlantic sides, his 1978 album for the Atlantic-distributed Big Tree imprint, and a full CD’s worth of rare or previously unreleased recordings.The impressive set’s 154 tracks encompass all 35 of the singer’s R&B smashes – including five #1 hits – from “In The Midnight Hour,” his first hit for Atlantic Records, to 1973’s “International Playboy,” his last chart entry for the label. The earliest unreleased track on this set, an undubbed alternate of “Hello Sunshine,” dates from the 1967 American sessions for the album I’m In Love and prominently features Bobby Womack’s lead guitar. The collection concludes with “Superstar,” a full-blown disco track from 1978 unearthed in the vaults during research for this set. The set, presented in an elaborate 92-page, linen-wrapped book with many rare and unseen photos, also features comprehensive liner notes, including intros by Jerry Wexler and Steve Cropper, an essay by Chris Morris, and an extensive track-by-track by Bill Dahl.

The First Symphony was largely inspired by the composer’s tempestuous love affair with the widowed Baroness Imma von Doernberg, whom Walton met in 1929 and with whom he was living on the Continent in the early 1930s. Although the work was long in gestation, with a particular delay in the composition of the finale, the result was universally acclaimed as an outstanding success, with John Ireland commenting “unlike any other English symphony, this is in the real line of symphonic tradition. It is simply colossal, grand, original, and moving to the emotions to the most extreme degree… It has established you as the most vital and original genius in Europe”.

Fascinato’s independent singles were ultimately collected on Arranges Things, issued by Norman Forgue’s Evanston, Illinois-based Stepheny label in 1957. Fran Allison’s liner notes boasted that “confirmed hi-fi fans will adjust their woofers and tweeters so that when they hear the bells in ‘Abada,’ they’ll practically be able to see a camel train coming down the street.” Despite intense pandering, the LP managed to completely miss hi-fi enthusiasts and was quietly remaindered when Stepheny closed its doors at the decade’s end.