The violinist and composer Pieter Van Maldere was once the most famous musicians in the Low Countries and can be considered among the most important creators of the classical symphony. He uses lively and original melodic language, idiomatic to the violin.

It's truly a marvel the impact that travel, locale, and hallucinogenic drugs can have on talented young musicians. The Navarros were a band from the sleepy town of Medford, Oregon, specializing in R&B and surf material, who decided to pay a visit to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. While they only planned to hang out for a few days, they ended up diving head first into the local hippie scene, and leader Rick Bolz started a new band with a handful of local players who shared his new taste for psychedelia. He called the band Neighb'rhood Childr'n, and their sole album, released in 1968, suggests a mid-point between classic San Francisco psychedelic rock and the poppier constructs of acts like the Turtles and the Beau Brummels…

Jethro Tull are a British rock band formed in Blackpool, Lancashire in 1967. Initially playing blues rock, the band developed its sound to incorporate elements of hard rock to forge a progressive rock signature. The band is led by vocalist/flautist/guitarist Ian Anderson, and featured a revolving door of lineups through the years including significant members such as longtime guitarist Martin Barre, keyboardist John Evan, drummers Clive Bunker, Barriemore Barlow, and Doane Perry, and bassists Glenn Cornick, Jeffrey Hammond, and Dave Pegg….

Darkly beautiful and hypnotic music that is beyond Celtic and outside of time. ~ Frank Hart

Rory Gallagher‘s eponymous 1971 debut solo album is being re-released for its 50th anniversary and is getting the ‘full fat’ reissue treatment across a number of formats, including a 4CD+DVD box set. A new stereo mix of the album features across all formats while the box set includes 30 previously unreleased outtakes and alternate takes, a six-song 1971 BBC Radio John Peel Sunday concert, four BBC Radio session tracks, and a previously unreleased 50-minute DVD of Rory’s first-ever solo concert which was filmed in Paris for the Pop Deux television show.

This Special Edition three-CD set features the three 1972 concert recordings from which the classic Made in Japan album was selected, remixed, and remastered. It's almost complete - a few encores and two songs from Made in Japan had to be left off, as the remaining tracks clock in at over 230 minutes. Deep Purple played almost exactly the same set each night, so there's a lot of duplication here, but they're in fantastic form throughout most of the performances. The second show, over half of which did make it onto Made in Japan, burns brilliantly and white hot from start to finish, and there are other new highlights as well, including the wailing encore "Black Night." Only you can decide if you need three 20-minute versions of "Space Truckin'," but for fans this is a valuable set - not only for comparative listening (Jon Lord never plays the intro to "Child in Time" the same way twice)…

This flamingly multicolored, unashamedly grand-scaled symphony receives a performance here so sonically beautiful that it's practically visible. The work is programmatic and tells of the heroic deeds of a medieval knight-strongman, (translated as) "Il 'ya from the town of Murom." Given the orchestration–quadruple woodwinds, four trumpets, eight horns, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, celeste, and strings–he comes across as a combination of Superman, Batman, Robin Hood, and Wagner's Siegfried. Leon Botstein brings out great warmth in the London Symphony's string section, the flute bird-curlicues in the second movement are luscious, and, in general, his leadership has nice forward propulsion in a work that can easily sound bloated. If this sort of huge, Romantic palette is your cup of tea–and it is sort of irresistible–then look no further. This realization is ravishing, and Telarc's sound is an audiophile's dream.

Originally released in 2004, features Danilo Rea (piano) & Remi Vignolo (bass).
Although born in Italy, Aldo Romano moved to France with his family at a young age. He was already playing guitar and drums professionally in Paris in the '50s when he heard Donald Byrd's group with drummer Arthur Taylor. Since then, he has dedicated himself to the drums and contemporary jazz. In Paris jazz clubs like le Chat Qui Pêche and the Caméléon, Romano has accompanied visiting Americans like Jackie McLean, Bud Powell, Lucky Thompson, J.J. Johnson, and Woody Shaw while also exploring free music with Don Cherry and Gato Barbieri, Frank Wright and Bobby Few, Michel Portal, François Tusques, Jean-Louis Chautemps, and Steve Lacy…