Omara Portuonda is the grand old lady of Cuban music. While her early recordings made her a star in Cuba, her participation in the 1996 album and video documentary, The Buena Vista Social Club, brought her to international attention. Her solo album, The Buena Vista Social Club Presents Omara Portuondo, released in 2000, reinforced her status as one of Cuba's greatest musical ambassadors.
A native of Havana, Portuondo was one of three daughters born to a baseball player on the Cuban national team and a woman of Spanish heritage who left the comfort and support of her wealthy family home to marry the man she loved. Her parents' singing provided the soundtrack for her early life. As a youngster, she sang in school choirs and music classes.

RADIANCE is the solo project of Sami Raatikainen, a Finnish musician/producer. THE BURNING SUN is the 2010 debut album. It is a continuous, 49-minute track and is meant to be listened to as a whole. The album is split into seven tracks purely out of practical reasons.Sami Raatikainen is a Finnish guitarist who plays for the German technical death metal band Necrophagist. He joined Necrophagist in 2006 after the departure of Christian Münzner. He also plays guitar in the Finnish technical death metal band, Codeon.

UK '80s aorster JOHN PARR seems focused lately in the American market.His new album "The Mission" is a tribute to the men and women in the Military, released in close conjunction with the Armed Forces related organizations.As heard in the last year CD, Parr's style and sound now is oriented to a more American sound combining rockers with ballads. The Mission" is genuine Parr. There’s no distortion or alteration in his signature songwriting, and his voice is as solid as in the eighties and nineties works.Parr has created each song to tell a story and each story relates to the overall theme of the album, which is life centered around military service. Although on paper this looks boring, each track stands by its own.

This Zimerman recording of the Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1 may have received some critical lambasting when it was originally released. However, despite this, I find that this recording is unjustly underrated because in its own special way it plumbs the depths of Brahms' heart and soul. Zimerman, although he recorded this in his late-twenties, interprets the solo part with insight, and does not go over-the-top with pianistic pyrotechnics, as most other pianists tend to do. Bernstein leads the Viennese musicians in a sympathetic accompaniment that serves as a perfect foil to Zimerman's parts and allows him to integrate into the orchestral texture. And the DG recording, although not entirely clear, is characterised by the atmosphere and bloom of the Vienna Musikverein, despite the extreme forward balance of the piano.

Turina was one of the great musical poets of his native Andalusia, and his music is drenched in its colour, variety and dance. Jardins d’Andalousie illustrates his dazzlingly picturesque absorption of the seguidilla rhythm and an invocation of courtly scenes. Le Quartier de Santa Cruz is one of his longest piano works and depicts a dramatic narrative of love, duel, and drama in Seville, whilst En el cortijo visits the plains for a quartet of rural episodes of rich characterisation and virtuosity. Jordi Masó’s ongoing Turina cycle has received worldwide acclaim.

Formed in 2010, LITROSIS is based in Greece, with some band members in the UK and USA. They describe their style as “extreme epic metal” and rightly so, even though the black metal element is quite evident in their music. “I am Death” features a very special guest appearance by Zak Stevens (SAVATAGE, CIRCLE II CIRCLE) and the stunning cover artwork was created by Andreas Marschall.