Ginger Baker will forever be best known for his influential drum work as part of British blues-rockers Cream. But as most serious admirers of the drummer know, Baker subsequently tackled countless other styles. Case in point, African Force. Joining Baker is a supporting cast of percussionists with a tribal drumming background, and expectedly, this style is reflected throughout the album. In fact, it sounds very comparable to David Byrne's solo albums and also Paul Simon circa his Graceland period, especially on such tracks as "Brain Damage" and "Sokoto," while the over-epic twelve-minute album-closing title track adds some funk bass to the mix.

Even though Bill Laswell was already immersed in numerous projects since the end of the '70s, including leading his loose ensemble Material, he didn't release a solo record until 1983, and Baselines was quite a strange album. On the one hand, there's "Upright Man," one of the most infectious grooves Laswell has ever conceived, boasting ace bass playing and a weird taped sermon as sort-of lead vocals. Then there's "Work Song," which is funky and catchy and features Phillip Wilson's somewhat off-beat drumming (pun intended).

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion is, along with the St Matthew Passion, without doubt one of the most important works he ever composed. It established a new tradition for Good Friday vespers in Leipzig, and with sublime skill Bach managed to retain a spirit of church worship while creating an almost operatic narrative that movingly depicts Christ’s trial, death, and ultimate apotheosis. Bach’s numerous revisions always demand a certain amount of scholarly decision-making, and this recording of the St John Passion uses the final 1749 version that not only draws on and reinforces the best of Bach’s original concept, but incorporates the additional movements of the 1725 version.

Homecoming: The Live Album (stylized as HΘMΣCΘMING: THE LIVE ALBUM) is the fifth live album by American singer Beyoncé, which was released on April 17, 2019. Recorded on April 14 and 21, 2018, at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California, just over one year prior to the album's premiere, the set features the entirety of Beyoncé's performance at the music festival which has since been deemed as "historic" by a number of music critics and media outlets. Two studio tracks – a cover of Maze's song "Before I Let Go" (which was previously covered by Destiny's Child in the late nineties but never officially released) and "I Been On" – follow the live recording, bringing the album's length to just short of two hours. The album's release coincided with the release of Homecoming, a documentary about the Coachella set that premiered on the streaming platform Netflix on April 17, 2019.

Don’t try and box Dawn Richard in: The shape-shifting singer is probably the only name in R&B who’s made futuristic bops with Diddy and has a creative partnership with Adult Swim. In her previous solo work, Richard has imagined dystopian battlegrounds and rendered herself as something of an Afrofuturist Joan of Arc, but new breed opens with something closer to home: “She’s just a girl from the Nine.” That would be the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, where Richard descended from a local tribe identifying as sovereign black Native Americans (the Washitaw Nation), and where Hurricane Katrina once destroyed her family’s home. new breed is a celebration of her city’s cultural legacy, suffused with warmth and underdog resilience: “I know that we ain’t polished, but that don’t mean we ain’t diamonds,” goes the bluesy closing statement “we, diamonds.” But Richard’s experimentalism still shines through: The tough future-funk of “shades” feels like a spiritual follow-up to Diddy-Dirty Money’s Last Train to Paris.

A decade after minimal wave seemed to reach its peak, the Massachusetts duo proves the style’s continued vitality.

For over ten years Dorothee Oberlinger (recorder) has been one of the most successful soloists on her instrument. Last year she received her second Echo Klassik award for her CD "Flauto Veneziano" which she recorded together with the Ensemble Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca. Enjoy the program featured on their award-winning recording with works by Mainerio, Verdelot, Castello, Paspuini, Marcello, Vivaldi, and Corelli at the Philharmonie Berlin.

Dinu Lipatti- the Master Pianist plays Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, Grieg, Schumann, Bartok and Schubert on this seven CD set. Dinu Lipatti (1917- 1950) was a Romanian classical pianist and composer whose career was tragically cut short by his death from Hodgkin's disease at age 33. Despite his short career and a relatively small recorded legacy, Lipatti is considered one of the finest pianists of the 20th century.

This disc is the first ever to offer the complete Shostakovich score to the 1964 Grigori Kozintsev film Hamlet. Actually, it contains a bit more: track 6 for example, "The Ball," presents music not heard in the film, music the composer wrote apparently because he wanted to reach a logical ending, even if in the film the music just fades away. There are 23 numbers in all, with a total timing of over 62 minutes. Stylistically, the music is related to the Eleventh (1957) and Thirteenth (1962) symphonies, but is of course less developmental and more programmatic, coming across as a sort of tone poem made up of many short movements.