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For Lullaby, Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick draws on the quartet formation in a programme that includes some of his most exploratory and improvisatory qualities, with a cast of ECM familiars Kristjan Randalu and Ole Morten Vagan on piano and bass, and new arrival Hans Hulbaekmo on drums. There's a sense of abandon within these melodic songs, as the musicians flow smoothly between harmonies, collectively building momentum from within the forms. Eick's immediately recognizable and soothing tone is often confronted by Randalu's in turns lyrical and energetic keyboard-flights, soaring above a propulsive, always engaging rhythm section.

Soprano saxophonist Yuval Cohen's debut for ECM is a thrilling offering that captures the brother of long-time ECM traveller Avishai Cohen charting innovative paths through eight originals in graceful interplay with his freshly formed quartet.

Manic Street Preachers return with their most urgent album in years. This is a record of opposites colliding - of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution. While the music has an effervescence and an elegiac uplift, most of the words deal with the cold analysis of the self, the exception being the three lyrics by James (Dean Bradfield) which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs.

Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back, Sly Stone's ninth album for Epic, features a reunited Sly & the Family Stone. Sly's previous album, the funk-filled High on You (1975), had been a solo effort.

Sly & the Family Stone harnessed all of the disparate musical and social trends of the late '60s, creating a wild, brilliant fusion of soul, rock, R&B, psychedelia, and funk that broke boundaries down without a second thought. Led by Sly Stone, the Family Stone was comprised of men and women, and Blacks and whites, making the band the first fully integrated group in rock history. That integration shone through the music, as well as the group's message. Before Stone, very few soul and R&B groups delved into political and social commentary; after him, it became a tradition in soul, funk, and hip-hop. And, along with James Brown, Stone brought hard funk into the mainstream. The Family Stone's arrangements were ingenious, filled with unexpected group vocals, syncopated rhythms, punchy horns, and pop melodies. Their music was joyous, but as the '60s ended, so did the good times.

A new bass player and drummer signaled a toned-down Sly & the Family Stone sound. Partially in keeping with changes in much of popular music in the early '70s, and maybe the result of marriage and a child, Sly became more introspective, quieter, and calmer, even employing a string section on various cuts. A less exhilarating album than earlier efforts, there is still much of merit here, including the Top Ten R&B hit "Time for Livin'."

Fresh expands and brightens the slow grooves of There's a Riot Goin' On, turning them, for the most part, into friendly, welcoming rhythms. There are still traces of the narcotic haze of Riot, particularly on the brilliant, crawling inversion of "Que Sera, Sera," yet this never feels like an invitation into a junkie's lair. Still, this isn't necessarily lighter than Riot – in fact, his social commentary is more explicit, and while the music doesn't telegraph his resignation the way Riot did, it comes from the same source. So, Fresh winds up more varied, musically and lyrically, which may not make it as unified, but it does result in more traditional funk that certainly is appealing in its own right. Besides, this isn't conventional funk – it's eccentric, where even concise catchy tunes like "If You Want Me to Stay" seem as elastic as the opener, "In Time." That's the album's ultimate charm – it finds Sly precisely at the point where he's balancing funk and pop, about to fall into the brink, but creating an utterly individual album that wound up being his last masterwork and one of the great funk albums of its era.

Thelonious Monk war ein Schöpfer im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes. Die aktuelle Aufnahme enthält eines seiner seltenen Alben, das in die Standardformel „Jazzstar 1 trifft Jazzstar 2“ passt.

This album features big-voiced blues pianist and singer Memphis Slim and legendary bassist Willie Dixon, who is credited with having helped create the Chicago blues sound. Several tracks from this album are also included on Smithsonian Folkways' Memphis Slim: The Folkways Years

Sonny Stitt (born Edward Hammond Boatner Jr.; February 2, 1924 – July 22, 1982) was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. Known for his warm tone, he was one of the best-documented saxophonists of his era, recording over 100 albums.

The Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ) was a jazz combo established in 1952 that played music influenced by classical, cool jazz, blues and bebop. The Quartet consisted of John Lewis (piano), Milt Jackson (vibraphone), Percy Heath (double bass), and various drummers, most notably Kenny Clarke (from 1952 to 1955) and Connie Kay (from 1955 to 1994). The group grew out of the rhythm section of Dizzy Gillespie's big band from 1946 to 1948, which consisted of Lewis, Jackson, and Clarke along with bassist Ray Brown.

The veteran songwriter celebrated surviving cancer with 1999’s In Spite of Ourselves, a set of country classics sung as male-female duets that proved righteously popular. Here, he repeats the trick with an impressive parade of young female singers to complement his own leathery tones, the exception being Iris DeMent. Most songs, made famous by the likes of George Jones and Jessi Colter, evoke the “countrypolitan” Nashville of the 50s and 60s, with Prine cast as laconic observer while the women take the lead. Kacey Musgraves is a standout on the divorcee’s lament Mental Cruelty, Lee Ann Womack and Alison Krauss soar gracefully and DeMent proves a reliably salty foil. Joyous, maudlin or gritty, it’s marriage country-style. Delightful.

Symphonic metal. Ask any metal fan (or indeed fan of rock) to think of this genre, and then name a band that exemplifies it and you’ll be hard-pushed to find someone who doesn’t mention Nightwish. The Finnish group have been melding the aggression of metal to the glorious, sweeping majesty of the symphony for twenty years now and, despite some vocal changes over the past decade, have remained steadfast at the cutting-edge of the genre.

Violin Teiko MAEHASHI After her graduation, she moved to New York to study at the Juilliard School under Robert Mann and Dorothy DeLay, and later, to Switzerland to be trained by Joseph Szigeti and Nathan Milstein.

Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony is extraordinary music, but typical of the composer in its blend of lyric and rhythmic elements.