"Winter Jazz Selection" by The Eddie Higgins Trio is a wonderful collection of jazzy Christmas and winter classics, released in 2024, via Venus Record, Inc. With a total playing time of 38 minutes, this album offers a relaxed and festive atmosphere, perfect for enjoying those cold winter days and nights.

Bjorn Yttling (Peter Bjorn and John, Lykke Li) steps up as a band leader, enlisting some of the finest jazz musicians in Scandinavia for a stylish, noir-inflected album.

Reiner's music exudes a joy of experimentation, virtuosity, and expressiveness. Even as a young man, he combined dance rhythms, jazzy overtones, and modal tonal language with avant-garde ideas, influenced by his teachers Alois Hába and Josef Suk. His three piano sonatas, from the athematic-atonal No. 1 (1931) to the expressive "Victory" No. 2 (1940) to the politically committed No. 3 (1961), represent milestones of Czech modernism. In between, he composed humorous miniatures such as Minda-Minda, demanding cycles such as the Three compositions (1965) and late pieces such as the radically modern germs (1974).

The first recording by soprano Parveen Savart celebrates the genre of the mélodie in its most contrasting manifestations. From its emergence in the late 19th century to the polymorphous resonances it adopts with contemporary composers such as Arthur Lavandier, the French mélodie has always stood at the intersection of the arts and the aesthetic currents of its time. This genre, indeed, establishes itself as a musical work expressing the union of two languages: that of the poet and that of the musician. Conceived in deliberate reaction to the Germanic hegemony of the Lied, the genre crystallises around an art ‘specifically French’: new relationships are forged between composers and poets to celebrate the French language together. «Here is how I would define the French mélodie: it is at once a space and a song celebrating the cultivated refinement of the French language,» wrote Roland Barthes. The piano–voice partnership is inseparable, the images are suggested, the emotions merely outlined. It is precisely at this point in the evolution of the genre that the present programme is situated.

Luxembourgish vibraphonist Pascal Schumacher has deeply engaged with one of today's most successful composers for his album "Glass Two" – Philip Glass. He is accompanied by the German-Greek pianist Danae Dörken. Together, they present works from various phases of Philip Glass's life, juxtaposing them with Pascal Schumacher's compositions. The vibraphone and the piano are instruments with a wealth of harmonic and rhythmic possibilities. Yet, the duo opted for a minimalist style. Despite their simplicity, the pieces played reveal an incredible richness of tonal colors, impressively highlighting the variety and depth of their interpretations.

Today marks the release of "GLASS ONE," the first installment of my Philip Glass Hommage Triptych. This solo EP was recorded with the talented Terence Goodchild at Funkhaus Berlin during the summer of 2023. The collaboration with Terence and his team has been an incredibly enriching journey, allowing us to explore new musical horizons and bring this vision to life. The stunning artwork, once again crafted by the incomparable Michel Welfringer, perfectly complements the music and captures the essence of the project. I am thrilled to share this with you and look forward to the next steps in this homage to Philip Glass.

Elvis Presley’s 1973 Honolulu concert was broadcast by satellite around the world and the resulting live album was called Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite. This was reissued as 2CD set back in 2013 for its 40th anniversary, but a decade later Sony are expanding it even more and are offering a 3CD+blu-ray box set edition.

The popular vinyl series of Steely Dan reissues continues with the 1980 masterpiece "Gaucho", their last album before a lengthy 20-year album hiatus. The album also marked the end of a number of truly unrivalled years in music with classic album after classic album from one of the most exquisite sounding bands in music history. Like all vinyl reissues in the series, the album has been remastered by Bernie Grundman from an analogue tape copy.

Emerging from the pandemic like a bubble of oxygen from the ocean depths, this recording project is built around two ideas that lie at the heart of the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth. On one hand it perfectly embodies the ideal of a continuing relationship between masters and artists in residence by bringing together three generations of musicians with Miguel da Silva, Lorenzo Gatto and the young artists currently in residence at the Chapel, providing an opportunity for the former to pass on their mastery and knowledge to the latter.

The pure polyphonic quality of J.S. Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias cannot be overstated – simple yet bursting with ideas, they offer an agile introduction to late-baroque musical forms and imitative writing in general, while retaining a cantabile feel. These exquisite miniatures, transcendent of the didactic purpose to which they were relegated for too long, provide an orderly and at once concise and comprehensive survey of Bach’s soundscape. The purity and density of their musical substance, distilled in a sort of abstract and universal language, has naturally encouraged numerous arrangements from the 19th century onwards for vast array of other instruments.

Sophie Dervaux' new album "Vivaldi Bassoon Concertos" is part of her larger project to record all of 39 of Vivaldis bassoon concerts. This album presents the first 6 concertos of this journey; RV 474, RV 497, RV 481, RV 501, RV 484 and RV 473. Apart from the violin, Vivaldi wrote as many concertos for no other instrument than the bassoon, knowing expertly how to write for this instrument to highlight its unique qualities.

The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam embarks on a traversal of three String Quartets by Tchaikovsky. This is the first of two volumes containing String Quartet’s 1 & 2.

For an optimal and immersive experience, headphones are recommended. One can give a great number of explanations that might seem contradictory, according to whether one endeavors to present one facet rather than another. The difficulty is the choice of the facet, because they all are bound together by an overall organization. Overall I can say that this work was born from a juxtaposition of conditions having no other relation between them than the moment in which they were proposed; the friction of these so-called disparate conditions and of the shock of their heterogeneity. So I can also say that I believe in encounters and that I deny the chance that seems to instigate them. A certain number of problems were approached in this work – which does not mean that they were solved. The encounter between indefinite idea and schema, between schema and score, score and material, material and structure can only ever be a troublesome one. Or it instead explains the desire that one has to adjust things until they enter in relation with one another. I could almost say that there was a kind of expression born from these encounters that suggests the beginning of the undefined idea – and be content with this happy outcome.

The two long-form pieces presented as Portals and Spirals were created in 2025, inspired by over two years of live performances across the US. These studio-created pieces capture the current evolution of Steve’s passion, obsession, and dedication to the multidimensional sonic inner-weaves emanating from the Timehouse ridgetop studio. The phrase “judging a book (CD or LP) by its cover” applies here. The LP and long-box trifold CD with die-cut portal digipak (DVD size) is stunning—a testament to physical objects that hold energy within themselves. In this case, the music contained within these packages is honored by this magnificent presentation for your collection, reminding us why the physical medium is very much alive and remains a piece of beauty to behold while traveling through the Portals and Spirals.

The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions is a four compact disc box set of recordings by the Miles Davis Quintet released in 2006 by the Concord Music Group.