This edition contains Joe Pass’ earliest live recordings in their entireties. Taped at the Encore Theatre in Los Angeles, the guitarist is showcased in a quartet format playing a set of standards, including wonderful renditions of Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring” and Charlie Parker’s “Relaxin’ at Camarillo”. Three rarely heard studio tunes from the same period featuring a similar formation have been added here as a bonus.

Guitarist Jukka Hauru's 2nd and last album appeared on Love Records in 1975. After this album Hauru concentrated on the more politically inclined group Punainen Lanka and eventually abandoned playing music by the end of the 70s. Episode is not as schizophrenic as Hauru’ s debut album Information (Finnlevy, 1972). One major difference in the instrumentation compared to Information is that Juhani Poutanen doesn’t play the violin. Instead, the synthesizer has a big role in the overall instrumentation which was very common on Finnish rock albums in the mid 70s. Esa Kotilainen had recently acquired a synthesizer and the word spread around quickly of this new instrument. In the mid 70s he played synthesizer on many recordings including Wigwam’s Nuclear Nightclub (1975). Therefore it is no surprise that he played it on Episode as well. It’s worth mentioning as well that Pekka Pohjola plays the bass on the first two tracks.

Jukka Hauru is hardly a household name, but in Finland he's a noted producer and journalist, and in the 1970s he released two albums featuring his wild guitar excursions. It's a basic psychedelic jazz avantgarde power-trio outing, featuring Jukka's ace six-string blasts, but is also joined by sax and violin, giving it a broader, more expansive sound. There is also a sense of humor prevalent on the album, as if Hauru didn't take himself so seriously - read titles like "Jam Session The Finnish Yes Federation's Skinheaded Board" and "Waltz for the Straight Relatives" (a piece heavily reminiscent of Flying Teapot-period Gong). But Information is not all about trio jams, although there are plenty here.

"Golden Best" is a compilation album by Japanese guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka, specifically focusing on his work with EMI Records, and released in 2004.

To the Rising Moon is Stephan Micus’ 26th solo album for ECM. It features instruments from Colombia, India, Xinjiang (China), Bavaria, Cambodia, Egypt and Borneo, but taking centre stage is the Colombian tiple, slightly smaller than an acoustic guitar. The sunny plucked sound of the tiples alternates with darker bowed strings which bring a more meditative mood. It’s only in the final track, "To the Rising Moon", that the two worlds of the plucked tiples and bowed strings finally come together. It’s like a hymn to something that is eternally up there in the night sky, something consistent while there is so much turbulence in the world below. Once again, Stephan Micus takes us on a unique musical journey to places unknown that couldn’t have been created or played by anyone else.

Sun Ra’s Nuits de la Fondation Maeght recordings are legendary within his extensive canon. Across two nights in August 1970, these were the first concerts Ra and the Arkestra had performed outside North America and formed part of a stellar festival line-up alongside Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela.

Amy Macdonald has achieved huge international success while resolutely doing things her own way. World tours in front of 5 million people, over a billion streams, five Top 5 studio albums Europe-wide, including two #1s in the UK and three in Germany, six million album sales and the landmark hit "This Is The Life," which topped the charts in ten countries and had a TikTok viral resurgence in 2023 with hundreds of thousands of creations bringing her to a new audience. She has cemented her reputation as a female Springsteen with cross generational and international appeal.

This disc most definitely has a recital feel about it. I say that not solely because it was recorded live at the Smetana Hall in Prague, where thankfully the audience was silent throughout until breaking into wild applause at the end of each item. The chief cause for the recital feel is structural – groups of arias interspersed by three intermezzi – two Italian, one French – thus providing a good framework for the whole. Having composers similarly grouped and arias given in sequence within each opera is also beneficial to the listener.

The ""Messe de Requiem"" is one of André Campras (16601744) best-known works and was performed especially during the 18th century at important funerals and memorial services. Despite the serious subject, the tenor is neither bleak nor filled with pain but solemnly sublime. Also in the grand motet ""De profundis"" Campra, by means of ever newer pictorial-musical representations, leads us step by step from grief to eternal bliss, thus demonstrating his theatrical abilities. ensemble3 which grew out of the Internationale Chorakademie im Dreiländereck has, under the musical direction of Hans Michael Beuerle, recorded two of the most important works of the French Baroque.

This CD contains sacred music Ippolito Ghezzi, an Augustinian friar who lived between the seventeenth century and the eighteenth. A fresh, inspired writing and a sober, but not austere style are the mainstays of the composer's approach to the great Biblical episodes: the intention of this music is to reach the listeners' understanding in a direct (and sometimes also dramatic) way, unfailingly guiding them towards a conversion to faith. The Cappella Musicale di San Giacomo Maggiore in. Bologna, which has chosen the safeguard of the sacred-music heritage (particularly the Augustinian one) as its most cherished hallmark, deserves our praise for the rediscovery of such an excellent musician.

Composed in 1879, the Piano Quintet in F minor by César Franck belongs to the fruitful final period of his creative life. It heralded the start of an impressive sequence of late orchestral and chamber pieces which set the seal upon his career. The Piano Quintet was premiered in Paris on 17 January 1880 by the Marsick Quartet with Saint-Saëns at the piano. During the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 1920s, it was Gabriel Fauré who made the most substantial and lasting contribution to French chamber music. Faurés Piano Quintet no.1 renews the powerful concentration of his earlier Piano Quartets in its outer movements, while also looking forward to the composers later works in the sophisticated phrasing and chromaticism of its extended Adagio. Vibrant and spirited, it may be counted among the composers finest creations.