Special duet featuring Japanese vocalist Minako Yoshida and jazz/fusion guitarist Kazumi Watanabe. Kazumi Watanabe has for the past 20 years been one of the top guitarists in fusion, a rock-oriented player whose furious power does not mask a creative imagination. Watanabe studied guitar at Tokyo's Yamaha Music School and he was a recording artist while still a teenager. In 1979, he formed the group Kylyn and, in 1983, he put together the Mobo band. Several of his recordings have been made available by Gramavision and they show that he ranks up with Al DiMeola (when he is electrified) and Scott Henderson among the pacesetters in the idiom.

Toronto-based singer-songwriter and keyboard player Michelle Willis has worked with everyone from Iggy Pop to Snarky Puppy and now embarks on her own with this debut solo album, funded by her fans via crowdsourcing. The culmination of six years of writing, Willis says each song deals with attempting to get to the other side of whatever she was in. Often that meant making a decision or speaking up, or just holding tight and not being afraid to stay the course.

Hackney Diamonds is the 24th British and 26th American studio album by British rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 20 October 2023 on Polydor.

After Songs of Solitude (BIS2553), a project designed by Hiyoli Togawa at a time when Covid forced people across the world into isolation (released in March 2021), the Japanese-Australian violist now presents another themed album focusing on the situation of children. During the pandemic, she kept thinking of the many children who do not have a loving home and were forced to stay at home, and so were exposed helplessly to violence, hunger and poverty. As with her previous disc, she commissioned works on the theme of childhood from composers around the world. Thirteen of them, from Europe, Asia, North America and Australia, answered the call and embarked on a journey into childhood.

Known primarily as a composer of choral music, Lorenzo Perosi was also a priest and much admired by Puccini. Stellar Italian pianist Matteo Bevilacqua is joined once again by members of the Roma Tre Orchestra in these 20th-century Italian chamber music discoveries. Includes world premiere recordings.

For their fourth release with BIS, the United Strings of Europe with their director Julian Azkoul present another innovative programme, dedicated this time to the night, a source of wonder and fascination, rich with metaphorical associations. The ensemble’s varied, tailor-made programme features counterpoint, aching dissonance and chromaticism from across a range of styles spanning nearly 500 years, from the Renaissance to the present day.

Azimuth, the trio of pianist John Taylor, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and singer Norma Winstone, already sounded like a fully-fledged ensemble when this, the group’s first album was released in 1977. Expanding and roaming beyond the spectrum the vocal jazz genre was usually limited to, Azimuth proved of a progressive spirit from the start. Upon the debut’s release, Melody Maker remarked that “this album may (…) be the first sign of [John Taylor’s] evolution into a genuinely important composer: behind its graceful flowing beauty lies a spirit of inquiry which will surely lead further.”

Heinrich Marschner, the leading German composer of Romantic opera between Weber and Wagner, was a progressive innovator, bringing to his music a new dimension – the supernatural anti-hero enmeshed in horror, such as the protagonist of Der Vampyr (1828). Before his psychological operas, however, Marschner composed a series of overtures and stage works exploring more conventional material. Dario Salvi continues his exploration of Marschner’s overtures and stage music in this second volume featuring a programme of all world premiere recordings. Salvi conducts the Hradec Kralove Philharmonic Orchestra in its first recording on the Naxos label.

Ida Presti was a remarkable musician whose extraordinary talent and virtuosity on the guitar left an indelible mark on the world of classical music. Born 31 May 1924 in Suresnes, France, Presti began a journey as a guitarist at a young age that would ultimately shape her life and career.

"This beautiful new release by IKP is a wonderful triangulation of sounds, cultures and seasoned musical wizards. The production on this record is impeccable, melding into a wondrous new sound that only these three musicians could make. It's the perfect filmscore, and who cares about the film!" –Friendly Rich, host, Industry Tactics podcast

Mahler’s Breakdown is the extraordinary arrangement of the band’s chief composer, Leonhard Kuhn, and turns the symphony upside down: 110 years later, Mahler’s departure towards a new musical language is skilfully continued, just as his wish to fill the parts with soloists. In the 50-minute techno version of the ‘Sinfonia Maledetta’, as an Italian copyist expressed it, Jazzrausch Bigband unleashes its instrumental versatility and sheer momentum. Through their energetic improvisations, the 15 musicians take Mahler’s and Kuhn’s music into the here and now. A rave to enjoy listening to, a symphony to dance to.

‘Elements‘ is the label debut by emerging German composer & producer Linus Alberg. The eight tracks were recorded in fall 2022/winter 2023 in his home studio in Augsburg with trumpet by Matthias Lindermayr. The pieces were initially inspired by the changing of the seasons, created through extended improvisations and experimentations on a Yamaha Upright Piano. As melodies and structures emerged, stories grew for each of the tracks around objects, places and moments he'd collected during the writing process. With these stories, Alberg's soundworld grew richer and the piano was joined by tastefully layered synths, harmonium and trumpet. The result is a collection of reflective yet upbeat instrumental tracks with a sonic universe that is entirely his own.

Japanese Jazz legend Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's new album, A Shade Of Blue, undoubtedly reflects his love of the piano trio, a group configuration that in jazz history began in the 1940s with Nat King Cole and then was developed in the 50s by innovators like Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, and Bill Evans. Yamamoto's highly experienced trio - which has a combined age of 215 years - features bassist Hiroshi Kagawa and drummer Toshio Osumi. A Shade Of Blue reveals the three musicians' incredible musical chemistry; listening to the ten tracks they've recorded together, it's as if they breathe, think, and feel as one person; such is the musical empathy between them.

When I started work on Geyser last autumn I had decided I was done composing music that reflected the pain of the pandemic. This new piece was to be instead a celebration – of music, its welcome return and that unique atmosphere created by musicians when they meet to perform. Its mood was to be predominantly joyful and optimistic, while its title was a metaphor for the music’s underlying rhythmic energy, unleashed intermittently in ecstatic outbursts – like explosions of water and steam from a pressurised geothermal spring. (This idea of tension, boiling under the surface, is a theme I return to in a lot in my music.)

Nils Landgren's "Christmas With My Friends" is a faithful companion at Christmas time and the repertoire is almost inexhaustible. The eighth edition also presents a varied selection of international, Swedish, traditional and modern Christmas songs as well as atmospheric secular popular songs in the familiar quiet and intimate mood.