Besides cool playing and his uniquely smoky singing, Mose has great taste in material. "Hey Good Lookin'" fits right in with revisited versions of "I Love the Life I Live," "I Ain't Got Nobody" and "Baby Please Don't Go," complete with what the singer himself calls his distinctive "involuntary groan" during the piano solo. Teo Macero's intimate production makes it feel like you're right there in the studio.

The second full-length from sacred steel genius Robert Randolph & the Family Band delivers, from the studio, the same promise, grit, grease, and sweat that Live at the Wetlands did. Randolph pulls out the stops in the studio, using his own band, without any of the hotshot guest stars who he's appeared with in the last two years. Unclassified features a road-tested, studio-savvy band using all of its collected gifts with producer Jim Scott to make a record that is as much about soul, funk, hard rock, folk, and jam band intensity as it is about the gospel music that first inspired the unit.

The setting by Alphonse D’Eve (1666-1727)‚ born in Brussels and Kapellmeister at the church of Our Lady in Antwerp‚ of the motet for the dead‚ O acerbi‚ is not without its moments. The plangent opening is striking‚ as is the use of high voices at the beginning of the final chorus‚ presumably to represent the heavenly hosts referred to in the text. If the music‚ thoroughly Italianate in style and often reminiscent of Vivaldi‚ is somewhat predictable – the cadences are rather formulaic and the sequential patterns overused – it is certainly worth dusting down: it represents the kind of work that must have been heard in so many of the larger musical institutions all over Europe in the early part of the 18th century.

Eero Heinonen has long been a champion of the composers neglected output for piano. With this recording he continues to make the case for music that does not easily give up its secrets but, in the right hands, sings with Sibeliuss unique voice. Sibelius was not himself an accomplished pianist, but he wrote for the instrument at which he composed throughout his career, and maintained that, while often overlooked, its time would come. In recent years his prophecy has come true, especially with the Op.75 suite of five pieces which he composed in 1914 and titled The Trees.