Bobby Hutcherson (January 27, 1941 - August 15, 2016) has been an endless source of inspiration for Brian Blade and the LIFECYCLES band members. In honor of Bobby, LIFECYCLES has chosen to record his NOW! album in its entirety, two songs from Bobby’s collaborative history with Jackie McLean and Grachan Moncur III and five original compositions by this stunning septet.

The music of Robert Schumann and the artistry of Sviatoslav Richter are a natural match. Schumann was loathe to use flashy, purely virtuosic elements in his compositions, a fact brilliantly illustrated in the vast majority of his works for solo piano. Rather, Schumann was much more likely to tell a story, paint a picture, or read a poem through his music, although his works were not overtly programmatic. Richter possessed a technique virtually unrivaled during his career and was able to definitively toss off even the most technically demanding works. At his heart, however, Richter was a poet and an artist with profound musical insights and introspections.

Two factors should disqualify this disc immediately. First, the pieces are incomplete and out of order. Second, and arguably more crucially, the pianist misses handfuls of notes in nearly every selection and bucketfuls of notes in some. But some listeners won't care about these things because of the miracle of Sviatoslav Richter. What in another pianist would be grounds for dismissal is here cause for celebration. Check out Richter's Shostakovich: the mysterious colors of his F minor Prelude and Fugue, the fleet virtuosity of his A minor Prelude and Fugue, or the intensity of his E minor Prelude and Fugue.

Few other composers’ music enjoys such enormous popularity and is as frequently performed on stages worldwide and recorded as that of Antonín Dvořák. And it is the symphonic works that are connected with his name most often. The new Supraphon eight-disc box features several complete sets and encompasses Dvořák’s most significant symphonic pieces. Alongside the Symphonic Poems and Concert Overtures, Supraphon is releasing for the first time on CD Václav Neumann’s sensitively remastered 1972-74 analogue recordings of the complete symphonies (until now, only the digital recordings from the 1980s had been released on CD). Václav Neumann linked up to the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra’s bold Dvořák tradition in the wake of his illustrious predecessors Václav Talich and Karel Ančerl and developed it in sonic colourfulness and romantic sweep.

Anne Murray's time with Capitol Records was running out when she recorded "Croonin." Her singles were no long charting and her album sales had dropped off significantly. The public was no longer buying the pop-rock-country formula that had served her so well for twenty-five years. What to do? Record an album of American standards. Why not? "Old Cape Cod," "Secret Love," Hey There," "The Wayward Wind" "Teach Me Tonight" – these were the tunes she listened to on the radio while growing up in Nova Scotia. They fit her middle-register voice like a glove. They were in her DNA. In a way, "Croonin" is the answer to "Where Do You Go When You Dream" (the title of an earlier an album). You sing the songs you truly love. And sings them she does, with all the dignity, sincerity, polish, and professionalism that distinguished her long career. Anne Murray was always a class act.