Ferus Mustasfov was named “the Balkan king of swing” by the largest German newspaper “FAZ – Frankfurter Alegemaine Zeitung”. Here he tries his hand in classic jazz (yeah, believe it or not, there are couple of songs that could have been made by some of the best jazz musicians), but in most songs he doesn’t want to run away from the Balkan ethno sound that rains all over the CD, mixing jazz with folk and folk dance songs.

Nino Rota - Grand Collection (2003)
MP3 256 kbps | No Covers | 141MB
Genre: Instrumental | 22 Tracks

Nino Rota is the Italian composer responsible for the well known film scores for The Godfather series, though the breadth of his work extends to opera, ballet and concertos.He was born into a musical family and studied in Italy before moving to America in the early 1930s. By the 40s he was writing film scores and soon developed a long standing creative partnership with the respected and influential film director Frederico Fellini.

While drummer/bandleader Shelly Manne's initial 1959 outing, dedicated to Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn TV scores, was more than just a novelty, this follow-up disc stretches the concept to the absolute limit. Recorded only five months after the release of Shelly Manne & His Men Play Peter Gunn, Son of Gunn!! sounds exactly like what it is: jazz musicians taking ostensibly generic background music for a television show and trying to make something more out of it. Apparently, even Mancini was aware of the challenge these musicians were facing, and encouraged them to apply free interpretations on these ten cuts and not to worry about maintaining a "Mancini feeling." Besides the lack of interesting material, Manne was also working with a brand-new front lineup, as trumpeter Conte Candoli and alto saxophonist Herb Geller were replaced by trumpeter Joe Gordon and tenor man Richie Kamuca. In retrospect, this isn't a horrible set, just one that should have focused less on concept and more on vision.

C.C.Catch - Ultimate C.C.Catch (2CD) (2007)
MP3 320 kbps / 44,1kHz / Stereo | Covers | 398.3 Mb
Pop| Tracks: 40

Caroline Catharina Müller (born 31 July 1964), known as C. C. Catch, is a Dutch-German pop singer–songwriter.

Rarely do we feel the presence of Bach so vividly on a recording as we do here with this set of Trio Sonata arrangements, performed by violins, viola da gamba, and harpsichord. What a perfect combination, thanks to Richard Boothby's settings and to the wonderfully synergistic interaction among these very experienced early music players--violinists Catherine Mackintosh (in her best recorded performance in a while) and Catherine Weiss, gambist Boothby, and harpsichordist Robert Woolley. There's certainly nothing wrong with arranging Bach's music like this--and indeed, Boothby does "mix things up" by transposing keys and instrumental lines--as Bach himself reused, rearranged, and transposed his own and others' music. In these string versions of pieces normally performed on the organ we hear occasional enticing hints of the violin concertos and, because of the instruments' different registers and colors, the lines emerge in new and surprising ways. This disc makes a nice companion to Bernard Labadie's arrangement of the Goldberg Variations for strings and continuo, recorded with Les Violons du Roy on Dorian (see reviews and features): both are distinguished for their learned, totally faithful, yet refreshingly entertaining and enlightening recastings of music that's not only timeless but seemingly limitless in its revelatory capacity. The sound is demonstration quality--this is one of those recordings that when you turn it up to just the right level, the instruments come to stunningly real, three-dimensional life, no fancy surround-sound or other high end equipment needed.

ClassicsToday - David Vernier