Among the other aspects of his genius, Thelonious Monk was a brilliant solo pianist, as he proved on two classic unaccompanied recitals for Riverside. This sequel to the acclaimed Thelonious Himself was recorded in 1959 and found Monk in a relaxed mood that led to some of his most thoughtful and moving playing. The program maintains a winning balance among Monk's classic ballad creations, his blunt blues lines (with debut performances of "Bluehawk" and "Round Lights"), and a selection of pop tunes from his youth including the obscure "There's Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie". It was recorded in Fugazi Hall, San Francisco, California on October 21 and 22, 1959, but without an audience present.

This 1964 session from Oscar Peterson, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen is loaded with standards and pop hits, from Barbra Streisand's signature People to The Girl From Ipanema. The set concludes with a Peterson original entitled Goodbye J.D.

Lindqvist was born in Stockholm. In the late 1950s, as Rock-Boris, he gained fame as one of Sweden's first rock and roll performers.

"This is the party music many of us most closely associate with New Orleans and you are invited to crank the shit out of it because the louder you play this one the better it sounds." –Analog Planet.

Fritz Busch studierte bei Fritz Steinbach in Köln. Mit 19 Jahren wurde er Kapellmeister in Riga, anschließend in Bad Pyrmont und in Gotha.

In 1727, having just become a naturalised British subject, Handel was commissioned to write a set of anthems for the coronation of George II. Since he could hardly have expected ever to see a more majestic occasion, the composer took full advantage of it to put on a musical firework display of unprecedented splendour. The RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin give thrilling accounts of these flamboyant works – some of which are still used today at each new coronation!

This album was first released in March 2007. Following a benchmark Rameau album, Alexandre Tharaud continued in 2007 his exploration of French Baroque music with a programme focusing on the idea of play: ‘Taking Le Tic-Toc-Choc, a colourful piece I often use as an encore, as the centrepiece, I gathered together Couperin’s most “pianistic” pieces, concentrating on the playful aspect of some of them.’ This sensitive, inspired interpretation has in its turn become a landmark in the catalogue.

Charles-Joseph Van Helmont played a leading role in music in Brussels during the Baroque period. In 1737 he followed in the footsteps of Joseph-Hector Fiocco and composed a cycle of nine Leçons de ténèbres for solo voice and continuo.

Giorgi Gigashvili is only twenty-two, but he is already hitting the headlines: now a pupil of Nelson Goerner, he is a protégé of Martha Argerich, who gave him the urge to play the piano alongside his first love, pop singing - at the age of thirteen, he won the television talent show ‘The Voice’ in his homeland, Georgia.

Venice was surely the capital of music and the arts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and one of the most coveted positions in the city was that of maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica.

The Baroque dream team of Rachel Podger and Kristian Bezuidenhout interpret the astonishing music of C.P.E. Bach’s Violin Sonatas in C Minor, B Minor, D Major and G Minor. The two early sonatas here from the 1730s resemble the older style of his father. Listening to these works, you can imagine J.S. Bach glancing over Emanuel's shoulders while he wrote them as a teenager at home in Leipzig. The later sonatas, written 30 to 50 years later, reveal an emancipated composer whose developed musical language embodies the 'Empfindsamer Stil', the directly emotional and rhetorical style characteristic of northern-german music of the time.

National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master and Grammy-winning legend George Benson brings his guitar to the forefront in "Guitar Man". The 12-song collection includes a mix of jazz and pop standards – some in a combo setting and some solo, but all of them tied together seamlessly by Benson’s soulful and exploratory signature sound. The album includes masterful takes on such classics as Coltrane’s “Naima”, “Tequila”, The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” and more.

First off, forget everything you thought you knew about Wilco. Forget the cheery country rock tunes like "Casino Queen" and "Box Full of Letters" you loved so much on their debut, "A.M.". But most of all, forget for the seventy-three minutes it will take you to get through this double-shot that Tweedy was in a band called Uncle Tupelo, because, apparently, he has. If "A.M." was Wilco's "Hard Day's Night", about what you'd expect considering the track record, then "Being There" is their "Revolver", chock full of unexpected sounds and styles, giddily tossing right and left hairpin turns at an audience who will likely not know what hit them.

At the risk of getting doxxed by my musician colleagues, I'm going to divulge a dark truth about classical music: it's never as captivating or molecule-altering for anyone as it is for us on stage. Which is why I often find classical records, especially those of the orchestral persuasion, so underwhelming.

Constellation has been in existence since 2013 and yet, 10 years later, this is our first album to be released. Part of that was simply our longstanding focus on “Music & Brotherhood” that began with Saturday morning rehearsals followed by a “cheers!” in Evanston, IL. Another part of that has been the uphill battle to create, sustain, and grow an arts organization in America today.