On the inaugural episode of Elvis Costello’s talk show Spectacle in 2008, Elton John – who just happened to be a producer on the show – rhapsodized at length about Leon Russell, hauling out a note-perfect impression of Russell’s piano style and Oklahoma drawl. It was enough of a tease to whet the appetite for more but nothing suggested something like The Union, a full-fledged duet album with Russell designed to raise the profile of the rock & roll maverick…

On July 1, 1991 Miles Davis played the opening night of the annual Jazz à Vienne Festival in southeastern France. His lineup included saxophonist Kenny Garrett, keyboardist Deron Johnson, drummer Ricky Wellman, bassist Richard Patterson, and "lead bassist" Foley (Joseph McCreary, Jr.). The latter was so designated because the former Mint Condition bassist tuned his custom-made instrument an octave higher, allowing him to emulate a lead guitarist. While Davis' final recordings for Warner Bros. have been subject to debate, this previously unissued performance places his final musical thinking in proper context. Performed less than 90 days before his death, the concert showcases a seasoned band playing an expertly hybridized meld of jazz, funk, and R&B.

Saxon are an English heavy metal band formed in 1977, in South Yorkshire. As one of the leaders of the new wave of British heavy metal, they had eight UK Top 40 albums in the 1980s including four UK Top 10 albums and two Top 5 albums…

Airy, transparent, light as a feather - if any composer’s music answers to these attributes, then it is that of Maurice Ravel, including his Piano Trio, even if this work too has its more serious moments. On its newest Super Audio CD the Vienna Piano Trio brings together this marvellously unique achievement and a very differently gripping trio by Ernest Chausson - a fascinating contrast and one most beautifully celebrated by our Vienna threesome.

Louise Farrenc was renowned in her lifetime as a pianist, composer and teacher, but it is only recently that her compositions have emerged from many years of neglect. Symphony No. 1 in C minor—cast in the German tradition—is an exceptionally accomplished work, finely orchestrated, lyrical and fiery, and a substantial contribution to the canon. The Grand Variations on a Theme by Count Gallenberg is a showcase for virtuosic elegance, and the two overtures demonstrate real theatrical drama—Overture No. 2 was admired by no less a figure than Hector Berlioz.

Composed in 1824 by Hector Berlioz at the age of twenty-one and premiered at the church of Saint-Roch in Paris in 1825, the Messe solennelle has come down to us following an eventful history. After Berlioz declared that he had destroyed the score, the mass was considered lost until it was rediscovered in Antwerp in 1992. This remarkable work helps us both to appreciate the development of Berlioz’s style – already revolutionary in his early years – and to understand what he owed to his contemporaries, notably Cherubini, whose monumental Requiem Hervé Niquet has already recorded (Alpha 251).

Listening to this selection of music from East and West so ingeniously put together by Jordi Savall is no ordinary experience. In addition to the aesthetic emotion, we feel another that is even more intense – a sense of magical communion with reconciled humanity.
One can’t help feeling that, with the simultaneous demise of both Sepharad and Al-Andalus in the second half of the 15th century, only forty years after the fall of Byzantium, some part of the human soul was also lost. Those events led to the destruction of intellectual and spiritual bridges between East and West that have never since been repaired. Once the fertile hub of our cultural universe, the Mediterranean became a battlefield and a barrier between peoples.

RCA/BMG released their first CD-era comprehensive Hall & Oates collection, The Very Best of Daryl Hall & John Oates, in 2001. It was a single-disc, 18-track collection that contained all of the duo's big hits from the '70s and '80s apart from "She's Gone," which they recorded for Atlantic in the first half of the '70s. Even though that was a major omission, the collection was the best place to get the bulk of the hits until BMG Heritage released Ultimate Daryl Hall + John Oates three years later…

Out of the ashes of the disbanded Dawn of Disease, a furious death metal steamroller is about to embark! German-based formation HIRAES - featuring Lukas Kerk, Oliver Kirchner, Christian Wösten, Mathias Blässe and the powerful Britta Görtz (Critical Mess, ex-Cripper) on vocal duties - will release their stunning debut full-length, Solitary, on June 25, 2021 via Napalm Records! With their very first offering, HIRAES create an exciting new melodic death emergence. The five-piece already established its own remarkable identity built upon a smashing femme vocal attack, intense melodies and charging guitars, led by guitarist Lukas Kerk as main songwriter. This massive melodic death metal assault leaves no scope for weakness and serves an exciting take on the genre with hymnlike melodies, enthralling drums and guitar riffing as well as breathtaking hooklines. Topped with the distinctive and versatile performance of Britta Görtz, this powerful new formation and its debut is a must have for fans of bands like Insomnium, At The Gates, Arch Enemy and Amon Amarth

Norwegian viking pagan black metal brigade NIFROST is set to release their new, long-awaited, full length album to the masses on June 25, 2021 via Dusktone. NIFROST already established its own remarkable identity built upon cold and ferocious sounds attack, intense melodies and charging guitars. Combining unrelenting black metal atmosphere and vision from varying extreme metal genres with a apocalyptic twist of inspiration, careful listeners may just be able to identify themes from some of their stories, concepts and more… The concept of their third album began with the title “Orkja”, which is the name of a mountain infamous for landslides that turned into murderous floods in the olden days of Jølster, on the wild and beautiful western coast of Norway. Through these old stories, they found a spark of inspiration in approaching apocalyptic themes in a bigger or on smaller more personal-level picture, both physically and metaphorically. When the band wrote the album “Orkja” in late 2018, they never knew how fitting these doomsday-themes would come to be in current times. The seven songs that comprise “Orkja”, each have its own connection to the end of things, and to the possibility of new beginnings.