To Lefty From Willie is an affectionate and thoroughly enjoyable salute to Lefty Frizzell, featuring stellar versions of a number of Lefty's best-known songs – including "Always Late (With Your Kisses)," "She's Gone, Gone, Gone," "I Never Go Around Mirrors," and "That's the Way Love Goes" – plus revealing takes on a number of obscurities from the influential vocalist's catalog. Nelson is respectful without being overly reverential, giving his own spin to each song without abandoning their honky tonk roots.
© Stephen Thomas Erlewine.

John Hartford - Backroads, Rivers & Memories-The Rare & Unreleased - If all John Hartford had done was to write "Gentle on My Mind", his legend would be sealed as a songwriting giant. But his talent as a singer and instrumentalist catapulted him to fame not only as the banjo-playing sidekick on the Glen Campbell Good Time Hour TV show of the late sixties, but also as an in-demand studio sideman (the Byrds' fabled Sweetheart of the Rodeo, James Taylor's Mud Slide Slim, and countless others). In the midst of this, he formed the band that made Aereo Plain, the 1971 record that defined newgrass before the progressive new style had a name. Or any other practitioners.

Limited edition 40th anniversary version of the band’s second and final studio album, pressed on 180g crystal clear vinyl.
Originally released in July 1980 on Factory Records, the album reached number 6 in the UK Charts. In the same year, the album was voted number 1 in NME’s 1980 Albums of the Year poll. Closer was recorded in March 1980 at Britannia Row Studios in Islington, London. It was produced by the highly praised Martin Hannett whose distinctive production style utilised unorthodox sound recording and technology.

Hiroshi Fukumura is a Japanese jazz trombonist. He played with Sadao Watanabe for much of the 1970s, excepting a period where he studied in the United States at the New England Conservatory of Music. Fukumura led his own quintet, which included Shigeharu Mukai as a sideman, for this studio recording and a live release in 1973. He also was a member of Native Son and also worked with Takehiro Honda, Gil Evans, Hidefumi Toki, and others.

Thriller is the sixth studio album by American singer Michael Jackson. Jackson was inspired to create an album where "every song was a killer". With the ongoing backlash against disco, Jackson moved in a new musical direction, incorporating pop, post-disco, rock and funk. Thriller foreshadows the contradictory themes of Jackson's personal life, as he began using a motif of paranoia and darker themes. Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time, with sales of 66 million copies worldwide.

"Body Wishes" is the GRAMMY winner and two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee’s 1983 effort. This disco-inspired work features the thrilling standouts “Baby Jane” and “What Am I Gonna Do (I'm So In Love With You)”. The album finds the legendary singer-songwriter in peak form.

It took Blue Note 15 years to release this 1965 session from Wayne Shorter, his fifth album for the label. The critical consensus of the day agreed the album was well worth waiting for, however. Featuring Herbie Hancock on piano, Joe Chambers on drums and Cecil McBee on bass, the album is another showcase for Shorter's songwriting talent with four originals and a cover of the Gil Evans song "Barracudas".

Originally recorded in 1965, "Soothsayer" might be one of those underrated classics that you only know about. Recorded with a superb line up and featuring powerful and emotional interplay between Shorter and the rest of sextet, "Soothsayer" is a magical session not to be missed. “Angola” and the title track feature some bombastic sections from Shorter, Williams and Hubbard. While “Lady Day” is a lovely and romantic tribute to Billie Holiday executed with sublime musicianship. "Soothsayer" was one of a series of albums Shorter had recorded during a highly prolific period in the mid-sixties. Along with Shorter playing in Miles Davis’ group and various other factors, The album's official release didn't happen until the late '70s. But it is still considered an excellent document of Wayne Shorter immense vision and creativity.

"Sundown" is Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot's 10th studio album, originally released in 1974. The record made it to the number one spot in the US, his only record to make it to the top spot.

In a quick follow-up to her masterful album "Lions", Russian-born and now North Carolina-based pianist Yelena Eckemoff offers up Everblue, the most "ECM Records-sounding" set not on that deservedly esteemed label. It is, rather, released on her own L&H Productions. The names of the sidemen on the date explain in part the ECM-like sound: saxophonist Tore Brunborg, bassist Arild Andersen, and drummer Jon Christensen, the Norwegian contingent, are all long time ECM Records artists, as leaders and hired guns for other players, and their long term contributions have been instrumental in shaping the ECM aesthetic of subtlety, intricacy, and fluid motion.

For Yelena Eckemoff, finding the nexus where training and an early successful career in the classical sphere meet with the Moscow-born, North Carolina-resident pianist/composer's more recent predilection for jazz and improvised music has been a wholly natural pursuit. A meeting place where the whole is invariably greater than the sum of its parts, with "Lions" - her eighth jazz album in nine years - Eckemoff once again raises the bar on a very personal approach to bringing detailed composition and freewheeling extemporization together with the idea of music as real narrative.

Brooklyn-based artist Jonah Parzen-Johnson returns with the new album You're Never Really Alone, out on We Jazz Records, March 8. If you look at the label on the LP containing eight intimate compositions for baritone sax & flute, you will find the words, “we made this together”. At first thought, this simple phrase may seem out of place on a solo record, but just like the compositions on this album, it was carefully crafted to cut to the core of what this music is all about.

Scottish alt/post/progressive-rock outfit Midas Fall release their Fifth studio album, ‘Cold Waves Divide Us’ on March 8th, 2024 worldwide on Monotreme Records. Michael Hamilton joins founding members Elizabeth Heaton and Rowan Burn for the follow-up to their 2018 Prog Magazine Awards ‘Limelight Award’ winning album, ‘Evaporate’. ‘Cold Waves Divide Us’ sees Midas Fall at their most confidently visceral, each song moving beautifully between quiet and loud, gentle and crushing.

Murders, drinking songs, Cinderella stories, virtuosic cantatas, European tours, serene polyphony and candlelit rituals all feature in the evocative and story driven programmes of Apollo’s Cabinet. Winners of the Göttingen Händel Competition and the Maurizio Pratola competition in 2022, the group bring a signature mix of acting, dancing, poetry and silliness to bring historical performance to modern audiences. They have furthermore won the Brian Nisbet Prize for their fusion of Music and Poetry and most recently the F. J. Aumann Prize of the International Biber Competition for innovation and new discoveries in Baroque music.

Available on Centaur Records and all major streaming platforms on March 8, 2024. Classical piano music influenced by blues, folk, jazz, musical theater, samba, tango, techno and other contemporary genres. Works by Samuel Barber, Mary Ellen Childs, Gabriela Lena Frank, Fred Hersch, Dana Suesse and Karen Tanaka.