After the guest-star-drenched No Reason to Cry failed to make much of an impact commercially, Eric Clapton returned to using his own band for Slowhand. The difference is substantial – where No Reason to Cry struggled hard to find the right tone, Slowhand opens with the relaxed, bluesy shuffle of J.J. Cale's "Cocaine" and sustains it throughout the course of the album. Alternating between straight blues ("Mean Old Frisco"), country ("Lay Down Sally"), mainstream rock ("Cocaine," "The Core"), and pop ("Wonderful Tonight"), Slowhand doesn't sound schizophrenic because of the band's grasp of the material. This is laid-back virtuosity – although Clapton and his band are never flashy, their playing is masterful and assured. That assurance and the album's eclectic material make Slowhand rank with 461 Ocean Boulevard as Eric Clapton's best albums.

Seiji Ozawa - The Complete RCA and Columbia Album Collections [51CD Box Set] (2023)
MP3 320 Kbps | Run Time: 01:21:51:06 | 6.16 Gb
Genre: Classical | Label: Sony Classical

OZAWA around the world Beiju commemorative special project Seiji Ozawa, the maestro who has dominated the world's musical circles, will reach the age of 88 on September 1, 2023.
To commemorate his birthday, Seiji Ozawa has released a box set of all the albums he left for RCA and Columbia Records as a Japanese original project.It is a compilation of many famous performances with famous orchestras around the world, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Saito Kinen Orchestra, and Mito Chamber Orchestra. As a bonus disc, the live concert in Japan with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1986 is released on CD for the first time. We praise the achievements of Maestro OZAWA.

Ray Charles was the musician most responsible for developing soul music. Singers like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson also did a great deal to pioneer the form, but Charles did even more to devise a new form of black pop by merging '50s R&B with gospel-powered vocals, adding plenty of flavor from contemporary jazz, blues, and (in the '60s) country. Then there was his singing; his style was among the most emotional and easily identifiable of any 20th century performer, up there with the likes of Elvis and Billie Holiday. He was also a superb keyboard player, arranger, and bandleader. The brilliance of his 1950s and '60s work, however, can't obscure the fact that he made few classic tracks after the mid-'60s, though he recorded often and performed until the year before his death.

Joshua Bell - Complete Decca Recordings [14CDs Box Set] (2024)
MP3 320 Kbps | Run Time: 00:15:09:09 | 2.04 Gb
Genre: Classical | Label: Decca Eloquence

Un virtuoso del nuevo mundo con musicalidad del viejo mundo: las grabaciones completas de Decca de JOSHUA BELL, capturando la primera década de la carrera del violinista registrada. Decca firmó a Joshua Bell, de diecinueve años, en 1986 sobre la base de cintas de concierto hechas en privado. Bell había tomado un violín por primera vez a la edad de cuatro años, pero había estado tomando el instrumento en serio durante menos de una década. Su musicalidad y aptitud técnica fueron nutridas y entrenadas por Josef Gingold, un alumno de Eugène Ysaÿe.

This set features most of Davis' earliest albums for Columbia (some still recorded when he was with Prestige, but with their permission.) The sound quality is very good, and the albums selected for inclusion are nearly all essential in my opinion.

Old Socks, New Shoes… New Socks, Old Shoes was the final album by the Jazz Crusaders. Immediately thereafter they dropped the word "jazz" from their name, leaving them the Crusaders and most of the rest is history. This killer set was released on the Chisa label in 1970 and distributed by Motown. While the Jazz Crusaders had long made then-current popular songs part of their repertoire, and had moved from their hard bop origins into the soul-jazz groove years before, this disc was a shock, and sounded like a different band - almost. For starters, pianist Joe Sample moved over the Rhodes for the majority for this date (he is still one of the greatest voices on this strange, imprecise instrument), and along with drummer Stix Hooper, saxophonist Wilton Felder, and trombonist Wayne Henderson, guitarists Arthur Adams and Freddie Robinson helped out on bass and guitar, respectively…

Alexander Ivashkin’s bold, confident cello-playing is the thread running through these works; he partners the organist Malcolm Hicks in the 1979 In croce, plays the Ten Preludes for the solo instrument from 1979, and leads a quartet of cellos in the remarkable Quaternion. Though many of Sofia Gubaidulina’s works have a religious dimension, In croce does not, despite its title; ‘On the cross’ refers to the way in which the two instruments exchange roles during the work, the cello beginning with microtones in the lowest register and gradually rising to a high diatonic end, while the organ starts off high in a pure A major and descends to the depths to a cluster that gradually collapses when the instrument’s blower is turned off. Though the Ten Preludes stretch the player’s capabilities to the maximum, they remain more or less within the conventional resources of the instrument. But Quaternion creates a whole new, ethereal, sound-world in which the cellos are tuned in pairs a quarter-tone apart, the players wear thimbles on their fingers in one section, and the music is persistently coloured by harmonics.