Roger Waters is Pink Floyd's grand conceptualist, the driving force behind such albums as Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. In the wake of Syd Barrett's departure, Waters emerged as a formidable songwriter, but it's this stretch of '70s albums – each one nearly symphonic in its reach – that established him as a distinctive, idiosyncratic voice within rock, one with a sober morality and sardonic sense of humor. Waters left Pink Floyd after 1983's The Final Cut, after which he recorded a triptych of concept albums – The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, Radio K.A.O.S., and Amused to Death – addressing personal and political struggles in the modern world.

LEGENDARY RECORDINGS FROM FLEETWOOD MAC S EARLIEST DAYS Formed in London in 1967 by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, with bassist John McVie completing the line-up for their self-titled debut album, Fleetwood Mac began as a very different beast to the one they would become by the mid-1970s. Danny Kirwan joined as third guitarist in 1968 and keyboardist Christine Perfect, who contributed as a session musician from the second album, married John McVie and joined in 1970. Primarily a British blues band initially, they scored a UK number one with Albatross , and had lesser hits with the singles Oh Well and Black Magic Woman , the latter successfully covered by Santana. All three guitarists left in succession during the early 1970s, changing the sound of the group quite dramatically. This triple disc set celebrates the early days of Fleetwood Mac, focussing as it does on the group s live recordings and radio sessions. Featuring, on disc one, their superb San Francisco gig at the Carousel Ballroom in 1968 in its entirety (previously only released in part), disc two contains Fleetwood Mac s complete BBC Radio Sessions from 1968 recorded for shows such as Top Gear and Saturday Club. The set is completed on disc there with their legendary concert performed in New Orleans at The Warehouse venue, in January 1970.

By the mid-'70s, Fleetwood Mac had relocated to California, where they added the soft rock duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to their lineup. Obsessed with the meticulously arranged pop of the Beach Boys and the Beatles, Buckingham helped the band become one of the most popular groups of the late '70s. Combining soft rock with the confessional introspection of singer/songwriters, Fleetwood Mac created a slick but emotional sound that helped 1977's Rumours become one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. The band retained their popularity through the early '80s, when Buckingham, Nicks, and Christine McVie all began pursuing solo careers. The group reunited for 1987's Tango in the Night, but Buckingham left the band and Fleetwood Mac entered a period where they slowly lost their frontmen, culminating in the group officially calling it a day after Time faded upon its 1995 release.

Fleetwood Mac While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few of them experienced a more radical stylistic evolution than Fleetwood Mac. Initially conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late '60s, the band gradually evolved into an incredibly popular and influential pop/rock act over the course of a decade. Originally, guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer provided the group with their gutsy psychedelic blues-rock sound, then the band moved toward pop/rock with the addition of keyboardist/songwriter Christine McVie. By the mid-'70s, Fleetwood Mac relocated to California, where they added the duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to their lineup; the latter pair's writing and vocals helped the band become one of the most popular groups of the late '70s.

The six-CD box set Keith Jarrett at the Blue Note fully documents three nights (six complete sets from June 3-5, 1994) by his trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Never mind that this same group has already had ten separate releases since 1983; this box is still well worth getting. The repertoire emphasizes (but is not exclusively) standards, with such songs as "In Your Own Sweet Way," "Now's the Time," "Oleo," "Days of Wine and Roses," and "My Romance" given colorful and at times surprising explorations.

In August 1978 Fleetwood Mac were riding the extraordinary commercial and critical wave of Rumours–one of the biggest-selling albums ever. Homespun brings you Fleetwood Mac's WLBP-FM radio broadcast performance live from the LSU Tiger Stadium, Louisiana. Their emotional chemistry had frayed backstage, but onstage that tension translated into powerful performances. The Baton Rouge show featured a tight set of Rumours-era classics like "Monday Morning," "The Chain," "Dreams," "Rhiannon," "Gold Dust Woman," "Songbird" and several others–delivering both radio hits and deeper cuts in a near-flawless sequence.

Legendary bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell was one of the most important rural guitarists and songwriters to come out of the 1960s blues revival. He was discovered in 1959 (at age 55), when he was first taped by music historian and folk researcher, Alan Lomax (with assistance from a young Shirley Collins). This newly remastered CD includes those mythical recordings that would launch McDowell’s career as a professional musician, and announce him to a new legion of fans. In addition, this collector’s release contains a bonus track – a live recording of McDowell’s classic number, “You Gotta Move” (later famously covered by The Rolling Stones).

Sir Rod Stewart’s rekindled love of songwriting grows even stronger on his brand-new studio album, The Tears of Hercules. This is Stewart’s fourth new album of original songs since 2013 – and his 31st album to date - and for this latest collection, Stewart wrote nine of the 12 songs, including the first single, “One More Time.” In addition to the new tracks, The Tears of Hercules includes covers of Marc Jordan, Johnny Cash, and more. This is a project close to Rod Stewart’s heart, especially the song “Touchline,” which he dedicated to his father, who taught him and his brothers to love football, a tradition Sir Rod has passed down to his sons. Rod Stewart is one of the best-selling artists in the history of recorded music, with an estimated 250 million records and singles sold worldwide. His signature voice, style, and songwriting have transcended popular music genres, from rock, folk, soul, R&B, and even the Great American Songbook; making him one of the few stars to enjoy chart-topping albums throughout every decade of his career.

Jewels in the Treasure Box: The 1953 Chicago Blue Note Jazz Club Recordings is a previously unissued 3-LP collection of recordings from jazz icon and virtuosic pianist, Art Tatum, captured live at the Blue Note jazz club in Chicago in March of 1953 with guitarist Everett Barksdale and bassist Slam Stewart. These recordings were transferred from the original tape reels and mastered for LP and CD by engineer Matthew Lutthans (who also worked on Resonance’s Grammy-nominated 2019 Nat King Cole release Hittin’ the Ramp). Containing a whopping nearly 3 hours of never-before-heard Art Tatum captured in an intimate setting at the height of his powers with his longtime trio, the deluxe, limited-edition 180-gram 3-LP gatefold set (and 3-CD set) includes rare photos and memorabilia from Herman Leonard, Bob Parent and the Holzfeind family archives (owners of the Blue Note jazz club in Chicago); plus liner notes from Columbia University professor and author, Brent Hayes Edwards; as well as statements from Ahmad Jamal, Sonny Rollins, Monty Alexander, ELEW, Spike Wilner, Johnny O’Neal, Michael Weiss and Terry Gibbs.

Antonín Reichenauer (c. 1694–1730) – a few years ago a name virtually unknown, today mentioned by Baroque music lovers in the same breath as the greatest Czech Baroque masters, not to mention Antonio Vivaldi himself. Reichenauer assumed after Johann Friedrich Fasch the post of court composer in the service of Count Morzin, whose chapel Vivaldi called a “virtuosissima orchestra” and for which he wrote a number of concertos.

The Virgin Mary surrounded by Saint Catherine, Saint Dorothy, Saint Barbara and Saint Margaret. This frequent medieval representation bears witness to the great reverence paid to the Virgin Mary and her companions which strongly influenced the mysticism of the late Middle Ages. The repertoire of the recording recalls the thorny lives of these female martyrs and the veneration of them, as preserved in the 13th- and 14th-century manuscripts of the Benedictine Convent of St George at Prague Castle. The choral repertoire is supplemented by polyphonic Marian motets from the most significant polyphony manuscripts of this period..

Released in 1970, Van Morrison's Moondance was a hit commercially and critically. Encouraged by his manager, Morrison and a sextet – including three players from the Moondance sessions – hit the studio and delivered His Band & the Street Choir in time for that year's holiday season. Morrison responded to the pressure by relaxing into it. The feel here is loose, often celebratory. He digs deep into his long-held fascination with the New Orleans R&B tradition for inspiration. "Domino" is his highest charting single. The funky guitar lick, left-hand piano rumbling, driving, Memphis-style horns, and pumping bassline kick things off in grand party style.

"If the voice don't say it, the guitar will play it," raps Saffron on "Pork-U-Pine," the third track on Jeff Beck's minimally titled Jeff. And he does. Beck teams with producer Andy Wright, the man responsible for his more complete immersion into electronic backdrops on his last outing, You Had It Coming. This time the transition is complete. Beck used electronica first on Who Else!, moved a little more into the fire on You Had It Coming, and here merges his full-on Beck-Ola guitar heaviness with the sounds of contemporary spazz-out big beats and noise.

It is well known that Bach was a keen recycler – always borrowing old musical ideas and refashioning them for different expressive purposes. The Oster Oratorium is no exception in that its origins can be traced back to a secular cantata written in 1725 to celebrate the birthday of Duke Christian of Saxony-Weissenfels. Little over a month later the cantata was performed again, this time with an amended text and new recitatives to suit the celebration of Easter Sunday, but it was not until 1735 that the composer, having made further alterations to the work’s structure and scoring, chose to give it the revised title ‘oratorio’.

First performed at the Paris Opéra in 1802, Sémiramis by Charles-Simon Catel is an example of the revival at that time of the tragédie lyrique inherited from Gluck. A work with a touch of exoticism (Babylon), expressing the pathos of isolation, but also with pomp in its ambitious finales, the work bade farewell to the ‘Louis-XVI style’ and announced, in a neo-Classical style, the grand opéra of the Romantic period. But it came at a time of polemics between supporters and detractors of the new Paris Conservatoire, where Catel, at that time professor of harmony there, had made so many enemies that the audience pit at the Opera was bristling with vengeful hostility when the curtain rose on the first act…