Nicolas Masson's acquaintance with his fellow quartet travelers Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret and Lionel Friedli goes back roughly two decades - in this time the players have developed an intimate musical bond, expressed purely and beautifully on Renaissance, the group's second recording for ECM after 2018's Travelers. Comprised exclusively of originals by the Swiss saxophonist and one collective improvisation, the album's spotlight shifts between contrasting moods and shapes, capturing the venturesome leader stretching his compositional muscle in evocative interplay with his colleagues. The band is in a searching spirit on rubato exercises like the expressive "Tremolo" or the ambient "Tumbleweeds", mathematical on the more cerebral cuts like "Renaissance", but always operate with a lyrical disposition at heart, as heard elsewhere on the record and with a particularly gripping melodiousness on "Anemona".

Despite the use of period instruments, including some fine blaring natural horns, this couldn't be called a historically informed performance of Handel's Royal Fireworks Music, HWV 351. The work was not composed for a pleasant onboard afternoon musicale like the Water Music, but instead was part of an event that would have been one of the top items on CNN Headline News for 1749: the celebration of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, brokered by King George II.

The BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds performs Shostakovich’s monumental Eleventh Symphony The Year 1905, which commemorates the St Petersburg uprising.

La Simphonie du Marais is offering you a masterpiece of the Baroque repertoire, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. Hugo Reyne, now as the conductor, now as the recorder player, reveals the extent of Leipzig’s future cantor’s talent in a version «à la française» that allows ample room for the wind instruments.

Nine songs recorded double-quick in one session, with Lowell Fulson on lead guitar on most of it. The rare embellishment on a Hooker release makes for unusually complex and rewarding listening, instrumentally speaking, beneath Hooker's ominous vocals. The textures here are very crisp and vivid, with a crunchiness that should make this an LP of choice for Hooker's rock fans, much more so than, say, the Canned Heat collaborations - Hooker and Fulson make a mean team on "Dazie Mae." Among the other highlights is Hooker's own take on the blues standard "Rollin' and Tumblin'," done here as "Roll and Tumble." The band that shows up on some of these cuts (which, in some instances, may have originated in Paris) is loose enough to follow Hooker, and he and Fulson play like one person.

Métier celebrates the music of Justin Connolly (1933–2020) with a landmark double album. Featuring world premiere recordings of his intricately crafted works, this release shines a long-overdue spotlight on a composer once named by Pierre Boulez among the most compelling British voices of his era. Connolly’s music, characterized by conceptual rigor, lyrical intensity, and flashes of playful invention, has remained largely absent from the public stage in recent decades.

Canadian star pianist Jan Lisiecki’s upcoming album puts the focus on the kaleidoscopic world of the prelude. Composers from multiple eras, whose works are featured, include Bach, Messiaen, Rachmaninoff, Górecki and of course Chopin, who is known for having reinvented the prelude with his iconic 24 Preludes Op. 28.

DOROTHY, like Blondie and DAUGHTRY before them, is a group, not a person. Nevertheless, it's clear that Dorothy Martin is the driving force of the Los Angeles-based quartet: she's not only the namesake, she's the singer and the star around which the other members rotate. Due to landing a contract with Jay-Z's Roc Nation, the modernized blues-rock group – they split the difference between the Black Keys at their most electronica and the full-throated wail of Adele – became a hot pick to click in the mid-2010s, with their 2015 digital EP serving as a teaser for their 2016 full-length ROCKISDEAD. The band continued to hone their sound on subsequent efforts like 2018's 28 Days in the Valley, 2022's transformative Gifts from the Holy Ghost, and 2025's inspirational The Way.

The Overview is a widescreen view of space and humanity's place in it. Written, produced, and played by producer/remixer/Porcupine Tree founder Steven Wilson, it's organized as two suites, and has also been imagined as a film by director Miles Skarin. While there are ominous overtones scattered amongst these ten tracks, Wilson's objective is finding perspective and understanding, and somehow constructing a musical portrait of the vastness of space.

Very comprehensive collection that sounds great. Includes some of their best. This may not have all their hits – everything from the mid-'80s on is missing, for instance – but it's a good cross-section of their earliest recordings, including "Right in the Socket," "The Second Time Around," "A Night to Remember" and "Dead Giveaway."

This album presents first recordings of Seán Doherty’s captivating works for string quartet, enriched by voice and traditional Irish instruments. Two of the pieces are a meditation on death - The Devil's Dream and Paddy's Rambles through the Gravel Walks - and three explore pivotal moments in Irish history: the Easter Rising (Lament for the Poets), the Troubles (No Go) and the Great Famine (Drochshaol).

The 2002 release of Friends/Go for It contained two albums – Friends (1982, originally released on Solar) and Go for It (1981, also originally on Solar) - by Shalamar on one compact disc.

Olmarin Unioni on vuonna 1998 perustettu tamperelainen jazz-yhtye, joka tekee uutta musiikkia tähän päivään, vanhoja perinteitä kunnioittaen. Yhtye julkaisi debyyttialbuminsa Original Finnish Jazz vuonna 2004 ja toisen albumin Peaceful Means vuonna 2005.

Romain de la Haye-Serafini, aka Molecule, is an electronic music composer, DJ and musical adventurer, who has made field-recording his trademark. For several years this Breton has travelled the world, from the tumultuous waters of the North Atlantic or Nazare in Portugal, to a Vendee Globe boat on which he embarked to search for sounds which he then sculpted into their final form. Two years ago, he decided to immerse himself in the heart of a symphony orchestra, a less dangerous but equally fascinating adventure.

A veteran who paid his dues for over a decade before getting his shot at solo stardom, Bobby Womack persevered through tragedy and addiction to emerge as one of soul music's great survivors. Able to shine in the spotlight as a singer or behind the scenes as an instrumentalist and songwriter, Womack never got his due from pop audiences, but during the late '60s and much of the '70s, he was a consistent hitmaker on the R&B charts, with a high standard of quality control. His records were quintessential soul, with a bag of tricks learned from the likes of Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, and Sly Stone, all of whom Womack worked closely with at one time or another. Yet often, they also bore the stamp of Womack's own idiosyncratic personality, whether through a lengthy spoken philosophical monologue or a radical reinterpretation of a pop standard. An underrated guitarist, Womack helped pioneer a lean, minimalist approach similar to that of Curtis Mayfield, and was an early influence on the young Jimi Hendrix. Additionally, his songs have been recorded by numerous artists in the realms of both R&B and rock, and the best of them rank as all-time classics.