James Cotton's third solo release on Telarc, Baby, Don't You Tear My Clothes picks up where 35th Anniversary Jam of the James Cotton Blues Band left off. The strongest of these 13 tracks find Cotton and associates digging back to the '30s for inspiration: Doc & Merle Watson assist on Leroy Carr's "How Long Blues," "Stealin' Stealin'" with Dave Alvin, "Key to the Highway" featuring Odetta, and a bluesy take on the Jimmie Rodgers country standard "Muleskinner Blues." This is mainly a mid-tempo, laid-back session with plenty of Cotton's harp virtuosity, which shines brightest on the instrumentals "Coach's Better Days," "Blues for Jacklyn," and "Friends." Also making contributions to the album are Peter Rowan, C.J. Chenier, Rory Block, Jim Lauderdale, and Marcia Ball…

Heaven & Earth is the first Yes album featuring new singer Jon Davison along with bassist Chris Squire, guitarist Steve Howe, drummer Alan White, and keyboardist Geoff Downes and follows on the heels of the successful and acclaimed 2011 release, Fly From Here. This album was produced by Roy Thomas Baker (Queen, The Who, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Cars, Foreigner, Journey, Cheap Trick etc.)

The ensemble's latest recording of Mozart string quartets left critics agog: "I doubt that these particular works have ever been recorded with such astonishing command as by the Hagen Quartett. The players' corporate intonation is almost impossibly true . . . A disc whose rare brand of perfectionism is rather special." (CD review by Julian Haylock, The Strad)

Liszts Études represent a peak in the history of piano writing. Beyond the tremendous technical difficulties, Liszts Études are poetic works, études tableaux, suggesting programme music influenced by literature, painting, and folklore as can be identified by titles such as Mazeppa, Wilde Jagd, Gnomenreigen or Feux follets. Similar to Schumann, Liszt added those lyrical appellations as an afterthought to stimulate the fantasy of both the listener and the performer, thus paving the path to modern piano playing as we know it today.

The long life of Don Pietro Gnocchi remains largely a mystery. We know the precise periods during which he worked at the Cathedral in Brescia, first as Maestro di Cappella, from 16th June 1723, and then as organist, from 10th April 1762 until his death; but apart from this, biographers seem to have simply passed back and forth what little information they possessed without reference to its source. As such, may aspects of his musical life are still to be determined: his early musical education in Alfianello and Bresica, the subsequent move to Venice and the Basilica of St. Marks, pupil of a Maestro di Cappella, and the exhausting travelling to the courts of Europe where he was very highly acclaimed, together with his "trusty companion, excellent player upon the violin.”

From This Place is lush, airy, elegant, and graceful, framed by adventurous harmonics, dark drama, and illuminating melodic invention.
This record features ten compositions by Pat Metheny, who is joined by long-time drummer, Antonio Sanchez, Malaysian/Australian bassist Linda May Han Oh, and British pianist Gwilym Simcock as well as the Hollywood Studio Symphony conducted by Joel McNeely. Meshell Ndegeocello (vocals), Gregoire Maret (harmonica), and Luis Conte (percussion) are special guests on From This Place, Metheny’s first album of new material since 2014’s Kin…

The '90s found Chicago's lineup minus drummer Daniel Seraphine, but with guitarist Dawayne Bailey, who had been a sideman, a full-fledged member. It also found the group at the closest thing to a career crisis in a decade. This album sold poorly and spun off only one Top 40 hit, "Chasin' the Wind," despite containing some typical, if not outstanding, material in tunes like "You Come to My Senses" (which belatedly scaled the adult contemporary chart) and "Explain It to My Heart." Clearly, a new approach was in order.

The film scores of Iranian-born/U.S.-educated Nima Fakhrara (Exists, Gatchaman, The Courier) are known for their experimental bent, the product of a composer informed not only by Persian classical music but university studies in anthropology and ethnomusicology. To score William Eubank’s thought-provoking sci-fi movie, Fakhrara says he "wanted to achieve a certain sense of mystery and tension throughout the film. Our characters are being pulled and pushed in many directions, so the music had to feel the same. We also wanted keep the audience guessing throughout the film by scoring scenes in unconventional ways.” Fakhrara’s expansive sensibilities also drive him to craft new instruments from industrial scraps. Here he built "three instruments that became the signature sounds of the project: the Pagoda (forged from a high-tension insulator), the Transmission, and the Steel Marimba…