One has to admit, the German psychedelic rock reissue label Garden of Delights puts a lot of care in its sampler albums. They are generous - occasionally to the detriment of an album - and packaged with informative and lavish 16-page booklets. For every tenth release of their catalogue they pick a track from each of the nine previous releases and compile them under a volume of this series. All catalogue numbers are an integer multiple of ten. The tracks chosen for these samplers comprise recordings from the field of progressive rock music in all its different shades, ranging from psychedelic to symphonic, fusion and blues-rock, provided that there are progressive elements in it.

Every five years since 1986, the corporate custodians of Impulse! have served up batches of Coltrane reissues and unreleased tapes to commemorate a birthday ending in "0" or "5." In the year 2001, which would have been Coltrane's 75th birthday, current label owner Vivendi Universal delivered four single CDs, three of which serve tourists who want to get on the 'Trane for the first time. Standards is probably the least eventful of the lot, offering no unreleased material or particularly enticing packaging. But you won't get shortchanged by the music, which takes us from the first galvanic Impulse! album Africa/Brass ("Greensleeves") through the run of projects by Coltrane's classic quartet of the first half of the '60s (McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones)…

This is one of Heldon's most impressive recordings. It offers the continuity of a group sound throughout, with Pinhas' keyboards and guitars supported by Francois Auger playing drums and percussion on most tracks, and additional assistance from Patrick Gauthier on moog synthesizers and either Didier Batard or Janick Top on bass. Stylistically, it's a great leap forward from previous Heldon releases, and much closer to the fusion jazz of Mahavishnu Orchestra, than to conventional psychedelic or prog-rock. The five pieces (one in both a live and a studio version) have no real melodies or themes; rather, they use simple patterns and chord sequences as guidelines, and let the musicians improvise around them. The opening "Marie Virginie C." almost sounds like late Coltrane free jazz, or perhaps like Hendrix at his most frenzied, with guitars and synthesizers howling, and Auger thrashing wildly in the background…

Lark in the Morning: The Early Years is a mid-priced, two-disc rendering of the band's first three records. Remastered for the first time, Hark! the Village Wait, Please to See the King, and Ten Man Mop are featured in their entirety, and in their original sequence, making this an absolute necessity for fans, and a perfect entry point for the uninitiated. Steeleye Span are masters of arrangement, and nowhere is that more evident than on their debut. Though familial tension ran high during its recording, Hark! the Village Wait yielded some of the most agreeable tunes the band ever laid to tape. Beginning with the a cappella "A Calling-On Song," the group established itself as peerless singers, utilizing the dual lead vocals of sirens Gay Woods and Maddy Prior to a tee, particularly on "My Johnny Was a Shoemaker" and "Dark Eyed Sailor." The lineup is legendary, rivaling only Fairport Convention in their Sandy Denny/Richard Thompson heyday. Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Tim Hart, future Pogue Terry Woods, and Gay and Maddy produced a landmark album that continues to inspire countless musicians and fans alike.

These two ballets reveal a specific facet of Stravinsky's genius, his skill in pastiche. Having used music from eighteenth-century Naples for Pulcinella, he turned to Tchaikovsky for Le Baiser de la fée. On both occasions, he succeeded in transforming the exercise of homage into a highly personal work. Stravinsky had a special artistic affinity with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which amply repays the debt in this new recording!

23 live tracks taken from the acclaimed Luck and Strange Tour on 2 CDs. Produced by Charlie Andrew and David Gilmour. Luck and Strange was a concert series by English musician David Gilmour to support his fifth solo album, Luck and Strange (2024). The tour was Gilmour's shortest solo tour, at only 21 concerts, held in Rome, London, Los Angeles, and New York.

If the Piano Concertos nos. 19 and 23 are among the most famous in the corpus, it is of course because of their sublime middle movements, but also because they reach the very heights of Mozartian subtlety in terms of orchestration, thematic development and dramatic instinct. The historically informed performances presented here take the same interpretative approach as earlier volumes in the series, underpinned by an utterly luminous musical discourse!

Hot on the heels of two successful albums (as leading member of Sonar w. David Torn), Swiss composer and guitarist Stephan Thelen presents his first named RareNoise release, World Dialogue. World Dialogue casts a light on Stephan Thelen's work as a contemporary classical composer. It features four works for String Quartet, composed over the last decade,performed by the Kronos Quartet and the Al Pari Quartet.'World Dialogue', 'Silesia' and 'Chaconne', composed between 2006 and 2018, were performed and recorded by the Al Pari Quartet in Berlin earlier this year. 'Circular Lines' was commissioned then performed in 2017 by the Kronos Quartet as part of their '50 For The Future: The KronosLearning Repertoire' series of commissions.

Throughout his life, from his very beginnings right up to the end, Telemann wrote for the basse de viole (as the French called it) and especially in chamber music. Of course, the viola da gamba also plays an important role in works intended for larger formations, such as concertos and orchestral suites, church cantatas and, lastly, oratorios. According to the custom of the time, Telemann also used the viol in funeral cantatas. Furthermore, he wrote for it as a solo instrument: for example, the Sonata in D major, TWV 40:1, recorded here, or sonatas for two viols or for viol and basso continuo. The present recording brings together various works with solo viol, selected from different periods of the masters output. Here one will find a double concerto for recorder, viol, strings and continuo, two solos with basso continuo, a sonata for solo viol and two quartets.