Jaco Pastorius is one of the most influential bass players of all time, not only in jazz and fusion, but in all styles of music. Raised in southern Florida, Jaco played bass in local cover RnB bands up until 1974 after which he started playing and recording jazz fusion with guitarist Pat Metheny. In 1976 Jaco recorded an outstanding solo album and joined Weather Report, two moves that propelled him to stardom. After five years with Weather Report Jaco split to lead his own mini big band, The Word of Mouth Orchestra. Over the years Jaco also recorded with many other stellar musicians, most notably Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock and John McLaughlin. Jaco died tragically at the age of 35 after receiving a beating at a nightclub in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Trumpeter Howard McGhee, after spending much of the 1950s only partly active in music (due to drug problems), made a full-fledged comeback in the early '60s only to find his bop-oriented music out of fashion. This Contemporary set was McGhee's finest recording of the period, a quartet outing with brilliant pianist Phineas Newborn, bassist Leroy Vinnegar, and drummer Shelly Manne. Although tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards is not on the date, two of his compositions (his famous "Sunset Eyes" and a tribute to the trumpeter, "Maggie's Back in Town") are fully explored by the quartet. Other titles include three standards plus McGhee's original blues "Demon Chase." This CD is a perfect starting point for listeners not familiar with the underrated (and often overlooked) Howard McGhee.

Suffolk-based rustic psych-rockers The Future Kings Of England offer on their fourth album the soundtrack for a creepy ghost story written in 1904 by MR James, in which a sceptical professor has his certainties rattled when he finds a Bronze Age whistle and with it summons up… who knows what? A ghost? Evil spirit? Teasingly, the written extracts never fully explain, which is all to the good. Save for a few brief lines in two tracks, it's entirely instrumental, the band skilfully blending the bucolic with the eerily industrial into a vivid series of doomscapes. They stray at times into boggy progginess, but at their best ("The Globe Inn", "Convinced Disbeliever") they have the steady, unhurried manner of Pink Floyd en route to some grand epiphany.

Innovative Communication has honored that historic mission with Lunar Landing, a package which includes an official Apollo 11 patch and a special commemorarive CD combining tracks from IC's most distinguished New Age composers and actual radio transmissions between Apollo 11 and NASA Mission Control to recreate the riveting drama and transcendant awe of those heady days in 1969.

Empire is an obscure early '90's progressive rock band from Italy, that featured the duo formation Syndone (drummer Sburlati and keyboard player Rogani) and female singer Rosanna De Luca. They release so far a single album in 1994 at Vinyl Magic named Back to Knowledge. They taken their influences from legendary ELP, the keyboards are sometimes one at one with the british, but always keeping the sound modern, that save them from bing a total clone band. Most of the nine compositions sound fluen and modern with varied keyboards that contain obvious hints from Eddie Jobson and Keith Emerson. If you like bands ELP, Monolith, Cairo, and those who are more in driven keyboards arrangements this is a good listen.

Surf, Soul, Spy, Spaghetti Western - instrumental moods and 1 freaky film theme with vocals. Our third release is a 7-song EP with 4 originals and 3 cover songs, featuring "Midnight Confessions" from Tarantino's "Jackie Brown". The 2 rockin' surf originals are "You're Gonna Lose That Curl" and "(Please Don't) Dead End"- (that title comes from a scene at the end of Tarantino's "Death Proof"). Then there's the epic "Shaken Not Stirred", in 9/8 time no less, with a 4/4 swing interlude. We do a version of Brian Wilson's "Pet Sounds" with a nice guitar solo over the end and our version of Link Wray's "The Shadow Knows" is more moody than comic book style. That's drummer Tony on the big laughs. Finally, we threw in a song we wrote for Michael Carr's mystery film "The Key".

"Sweet or Mean," the new raw blues-rock EP written by the Detroit born renegade 'Eliza Neals'… Enter, producer Ted Horowitz aka "Popa Chubby" the incendiary blues-rocker, together celebrating their true love of rock-blues. For Ted to produce + arrange was natural after meeting him a few times and sitting in with his Smokin band causing a real combustion on stage. Eliza admits that the drama on these tunes is 100% authentic; because truth is strangely more entertaining than fiction. “Sweet or Mean” is rootsy blues-rock bliss with no gimmicks or tricks from the first heavenly note to the last guitar riff. Popa Chubby’s tone is reminiscent of ZZ Top, Santana and other seasoned vintage guitarists who know how to knock audiences out.

In celebration of her 30th anniversary of coming to America, Boston based composer Alla Cohen presents a double album of new works for chamber orchestra and chamber ensembles. A graduate of highest honors of the famed Moscow Conservatory, Cohen emigrated to the United States in 1989, first teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music, and for the last 15 years— as a Professor at Berklee College of Music. Her works have been awarded multiple prizes, are raved about in stellar reviews, and have been performed by acclaimed musicians from around the world.

There are hundreds of references to music in the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s music can be placed into three general categories: Incidental Music: The individual titles of incidental music in Shakespeare’s works are never named but the directions “music here,” “music begins,” “music for dancing,” etc. are provided.

Gounod contemplated a Faust opera as early as his residence in Rome in the 1840s. But almost twenty years were to elapse before one of the most famous works of French Romanticism was premiered at the Théâtre-Lyrique (1859). Its debut at the Opéra in 1869 propelled the work into theatres all over the world, but numerous modifications were the price of achieving that fame.

Sebastian Manz and Sebastian Studnitzky have embarked upon a unique project to mark the great Leonard Bernstein. "A Bernstein Story" is an album situated between jazz and classical that would no doubt have been very much to Lenny’s taste.

Claire Huangci went from being "clearly a pianist to follow" (Gramophone Editor's Choice, September 2015) to the status of internationally established and acclaimed young pianist even before winning the Mozart Prize at the Concours Géza Anda in 2018. Following on from four successful solo albums – from arrangements of Russian ballet music through Scarlatti to Chopin's complete Nocturnes and all of Rachmaninoff's Preludes – she now releases her first orchestral disc with Berlin Classics. Together with the aspiring young South Korean conductor Shiyeon Sung and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken she plays Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 and contrasts it with Paderewski's concerto.

Alpha is reissuing the complete Beethoven quartets by the Belcea Quartet : 'Beethoven's music has been at the center of our life as a quartet from our very first rehearsal together back in 1994.

As director of Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, François Lazarevitch has enabled us to discover numerous treasures stemming from dance and folk music. For the first time on Alpha, he has recorded a solo album, devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Flute Sonatas. His approach to these works benefits from his experience as the conductor of an ensemble, enriched by the particularly varied musical experiments he has carried out.

On an irregular basis in the early '80s, the innovative electric bassist Jaco Pastorius led a big band that he called Word of Mouth. This excellent CD documents Pastorius' 30th birthday party, a concert at which he was joined by the Peter Graves Orchestra (consisting of 14 horns, two steel drums, and two percussionists) plus drummer Peter Erskine, Don Alias on conga, and both Michael Brecker and Bob Mintzer on tenors.