The challenge for any smooth jazz artist over time is appeasing longtime fans with certain stylistic similarities, yet searching for ways to keep things unique and distinctive with each successive album. Guitarists Nick Webb and Greg Carmichael (the principals in Acoustic Alchemy) kept the reference point of their steel and nylon string chemistry intact while always venturing the new agey jazz trappings they became accustomed to. Their fifth album features sojourns into reggae, flamenco, blues, country-rock, samba, and jazz improvisation, adding up to their most styistically diverse outing up till that time.

Hamelin's combination of fleet-fingered delicacy and compelling drive suit Schumann's aesthetic ideally; but best of all is his gleeful sense of storytelling. He brings the masked ball guests in Papillons and Carnaval to life with the deft vividness of an award-winning film director.

Lee Everton - Inner Exile
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 376 MB | Full Artwork: 144 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Victor Ent. # VICP-64192 | Country/Year: Japan 2008
Genre: Reggae | Style: Reggae, Lovers Rock

"He's got the voice, he's got the groove, and he's got the laid-back attitude. He could be Jamaican; he could be an heir to Bob Marley's kingdom. Yet, he's actually from Zurich and Inner Exile is only his debut album. Lee Everton's brand of reggae is in direct continuity with Marley's. (…) Clocking in at just under an hour, it gets a tad long, although Everton's up-close, natural, intimate vocal delivery will probably keep you hooked till the last song fades off."

On 25 July 2010, Emerson, Lake and Palmer played a one-off 40th anniversary concert, headlining the High Voltage Festival event in Victoria Park, London. The entire concert was later released as the double-CD live album "High Voltage".

It is no exaggeration to say that the two performances of Tosca at the Royal Opera House in July 2011 - with Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel as the leads - were opera history in the making and by far the hottest tickets in town.

Passion, loyalty and political conspiracy are the three pillars of Un ballo in maschera (1859), the ‘most operatic of all operas’. Set in XIX century Boston, Mario Martone’s athmospheric production for the Teatro Real in Madrid brings out all the innate theatricality and drama of Verdi’s work. World famous Argentinean tenor Marcelo Álvarez in the role of Riccardo leads a fabulous cast including Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana as his love Amelia and Elena Zaremba playing the witch Ulrica. Jesús López Cobos conducts the Madrid Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a performance that shows the lyricism and grandeur of this beautiful work, which marries grand opera and opera comique features with Verdi's classical Italian opera tradition.