The final volume in this very worthy series is a comparatively relaxed affair, a quartet set with tenor saxophonist Ben Webster. Webster lets Tatum fill the background with an infinite number of notes while emphasizing his warm tenor in the forefront on a variety of melodic ballads and standards. The combination works very well.

The Mars Volta's 2003 debut was a dense, experimental run-on sentence of science fiction and musical exploration. But though it ultimately rewarded patience with stretches of unbuckled rock & roll genius, De-Loused in the Comatorium was also a maze-like and obtuse migraine dealer that made people frustrated and crazy. For 2005's Frances the Mute, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala worked principally with their touring band, but "joining the band for selected moments" are strings, horns, electronic programming, pals Flea and John Frusciante, and the coqui frogs of Puerto Rico. There are no song breaks, making the track listing more of an outline. But Mute's printed lyrics are a helpful guide, a map of Mars that's meant to both direct and fascinate…

Apollo is Banco's first new studio album in 7 years and brings together heavy dub beats, powerful vocal arrays, and lilting melodies, drawing inspiration from both old and new schools of sonic artistry, and in doing so blending the subtle flavours of the act's historical sound with modern day techniques and ideas.
Apollo opens with the powerful and evocative Lamentations, featuring the ethereal vocals of Zhenia Mahdi-Nau, before slipping into Wimble Toot, whose initially stuttering drums and bass build into a relentless rhythm, peppered with reggae style horns and saxophone, nicely setting the scene for the foot stomping, dust raising, dancefloor rousing Eternal Sunshine…

Total of 95 tracks, approximately 7 hours and 26 minutes of recording time.
Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 - Prelude (Mork), Saint-Saëns: The Swan (du Pré), Piazzolla: Oblivion (Gautier-Capuçon), Tchaikovsky: Rococo Theme and Night Variations - Theme, Variation 1 (Isserlis, Gardiner), Vaughan Williams: Six Etudes on English Folk Songs - No. 2 (Eileen Croxford), and more.

Kurt Masur’s achievement is defined above all by his relationships with two orchestras exemplifying vastly different traditions. Having spent some 20 years as Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, which traces its roots to the 15th century, he became the transformational music director of the New York Philharmonic, an embodiment of the New World. Through all this, his musical integrity remained consistent. As the New York Times wrote: “He brought to the podium the ardent conviction that music-making was a moral act that could heal the world.”

Itzhak Perlman was born in Tel Aviv on 31st August 1945 to a family of Polish origin. He was drawn to the violin from the age of three, but when he was four he contracted polio, losing the use of his legs. Despite his handicap, he began learning the violin a year later, and his first teacher was a café violinist. Very soon, he joined the Tel Aviv Music Academy where he studied for eight years with Rivka Goldgart, a teacher of Russian origin.

On 15 August, we will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, an atypical figure in British music who was one of the first Afro-descendants to achieve success as a composer. Supported and encouraged by the greatest musicians of his time (Elgar, Stanford, who was his teacher, Sullivan), he rose to fame in 1898 with the premiere of his cantata Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, based on Longfellow's epic poem inspired by the traditions of the Ojibwe indigenous people. This work would be performed regularly for years to come and even brought him fame in America! One of his latest pieces, the rhapsodic dance The Bamboula, is also inspired by non-European traditions, in this case the rhythms and instruments imported to the Caribbean by African slaves.