The first album by the '70s (i.e. Annie Haslam) version of Renaissance is a transitional work, rooted in more standard hard rock sounds (including psychedelia) than what followed. One can spot the difference, which may please some listeners and put others off, in the fairly heavy guitar sound of "Prologue," Rob Hendry's electric instrument playing both lead and rhythm parts prominently at various times behind Annie Haslam's soaring vocals and adjacent to John Tout's piano. "Kiev" may also startle some longtime fans, since Haslam doesn't handle the lead vocals, the male members' singing being much more prominent.

BOB MARLEY - CATCH A FIRE WITH ZIPPO CASE - Japanese OBI MINI REPLICA LP TITLES making a 11 CD Box Set- Japanese OBI MINI REPLICA BOX SET Japanese re-mastered Mini LP replica Limited Edition Collection Recorded from the finest Original Masters available. Each title Comes with anti-static sleeves similar to Vinyl LPs, Cardboard packaging exact to the original LP, Re-sealable plastic wrap cases for protection of each collectible and include extensive Liner Notes Booklet. Actual miniaturized version of the 12" LP in 4" CD version.

DELIRIUM is an important band in the history of Italian progressive rock music, having been active since 1970. They originally formed in Genoa during the late 1960s as I SAGITTARI and their line-up consisted of Ettore Vigo (keyboards), Peppino Di Santo (drums, vocals), Mimmo Di Martino (acoustic guitar) and Marcello Reale (bass). The later arrival of Ivano Fossati (vocals, keyboards, flute) completed the band, whose early musical style was a mix of the so-called Italian melodic tradition and UK progressive influences, in particular KING CRIMSON and COLOSSEUM. Their first album, the rough-hewn ''Dolce Acqua'' (1971), was one of the earliest Italian progressive albums and is a conceptual suite with each of its eight movements being based on different human emotions. The album is mainly acoustic in nature and is dominated by Ivano Fossati, the prominence of whose flute has drawn comparisons with Ian Anderson.

Anton Rubinstein was a towering figure of Russian musical life, and one of the 19th century’s most charismatic musical figures. Rivalled at the keyboard only by Liszt, he was near the last in line of pianist-composers that reached a climax with Liszt, Busoni, and Rachmaninov. Like them Rubinstein’s reputation as a composer in his day was more controversial than his reputation as a performer, but unlike them, his vast compositional output, much of it containing music of beauty and originality, still remains relatively unexplored territory. Rubinstein wrote his eight works for piano and orchestra over the last 44 years of his life, with the five concertos dating from 1850–1874.

If, as Joseph Banowetz claims in his lively and informed notes, Rubinstein was ''the last in a line of pianist-composers that climaxed with Liszt, Busoni and Rachmaninov'', it is surely necessary to add that he was hardly a composer in the same league. And while I am more than grateful to have two such rarely heard concertos on record, powerfully and persuasively performed, it is difficult to warm to their often facile and derivative quality. Rubinstein may have been an anarchic and elemental virtuoso but he could be a sadly conventional composer. Clearly, he knew the finale of Beethoven's E flat Piano Sonata, Op. 31 No. 3, all too well, and in the First Concerto its propulsive tarantella combines uneasily with a Mendelssohnian mix of earnestness and sugar-sweet facility.

Curved Air's fourth album featured a very different lineup and is considered by many a weaker effort. Of course, it does not have the bombast of Phantasmagoria (Francis Monkman's classical touch is cruelly missed), but it still has its share of strong moments. By 1973, only singer Sonja Kristina remained of the original members, but her voice suffices to keep the flame burning. She and bassist Mike Wedgewood, introduced with the previous LP, are joined by drummer Jim Russell, guitarist Gregory Kirby, and an 18-year-old violinist/keyboardist by the name of Eddie Jobson. "The Purple Speed Queen," a decent light psychedelic rock song, became one of the group's best-known tracks, and the ten-minute "Metamorphosis" still ranks high among the classic tracks of British progressive rock (here Jobson comes very close to Monkman's virtuosity at the piano).

Arlo Guthrie celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the events that snowballed into the Alice's Restaurant Massacree, his iconic talking blues narrative that has become an established part of the Thanksgiving tradition, with an unprecedented show.

Generally speaking, a souvenir is a token of remembrance, a symbol of a past that is meaningful to its creator, dedicatees, addressees, and the whole community for which it is created. A souvenir may quote, recall, evoke, imply, et al., and the realization of these potentialities is always strictly connected with the what, the how, and the why of its existence, structure, and creative/manufacturing process. As such, along the centuries and throughout the cultures of the world, the souvenir has been actualized, experienced, shared, and interpreted as a personal keepsake, a moral memento, a commercial reminder, a socio-political narrative, and so on.

‘The fantastic thing about art and music is that one can pose questions and conjure up visions at the same time.’ The words are those of the Swedish composer Jesper Nordin, who does exactly that in Emerging from Currents and Waves. A large-scale work for orchestra, clarinet soloist, conductor and live electronics, Emerging… is a collaboration between Nordin, Martin Fröst and Esa-Pekka Salonen. All three are interested in how new technology can – and will – influence art and artistic expression, and in exploring the intersection of mankind, music and technology.

360° Hugo Wolf. The title says it all. Daniel Johannsen and Andreas Fröschl present an exquisite selection of art songs from Wolf’s extensive oeuvre. Combined with the sound of the contemporary grand piano by Carl Rönisch (1872), these songs are distilled into a unique, fascinating essence of the art of Lied of the late Romantic period.

After parting ways with Transatlantic Records and signing on with Pye subsidiary Dawn in 1975, English heavy prog veterans Stray briefly expanded from a quartet to a five-piece with the addition of rhythm guitarist Pete Dyer – a move which had been intended to allow vocalist Steve Gadd the chance to focus on his frontman duties, but wound up driving the already disgruntled singer out of the band for good, instead. Into the breach stepped the already present Dyer, who proceeded to share vocals with lead guitarist and longtime band architect Del Bromham on the band's sixth long player – and Pye debut – Stand Up and Be Counted. Ironically, the album was composed predominantly of tracks originally slated for Bromham's first solo record, but when faced with Gadd's departure, he decided to re-purpose them for what proved to be a typically eclectic, if slightly chaotic-sounding LP.

The Danish piano auteur Carsten Dahland the dynamic American trumpetist Tim Hagans meet the acclaimed Swedish double bass player Johnny Åman and the Finnish master drummer Jukkis Uotilaon the new album A Beautiful Blue Moment, now available on Storyville Records. Actually, this rare quartet had never played together, before they gathered at the scene of the historic jazz club Montmartre in Copenhagen and played the music of the moment at three sold out evenings in August 2021.

Beethoven's trios for violin, viola, and cello remain among his least-played works. They seem to point back to the occasional chamber music of the Classical period, and if they're not given the proper attention, that's exactly what they do. But Beethoven himself thought enough even of the very early String Trio in E flat major, Op. 3 (1794), to supervise a keyboard arrangement of the work in the 1810s, and the Op. 9 set heard here, composed in 1798, is almost as ambitious as the group of Op. 18 string quartets that followed it by about a year, and for which it can be seen as a kind of study. The hard, weighty performances by the Trio Zimmermann command attention for these works. Hear the way it sculpts out the jagged opening melodic material of the climactic String Trio in C minor, Op. 9/3, or lay into the quasi-orchestral finale of the first trio of the set. There's a good deal of motivic work here that forecasts the density of Beethoven's mature chamber music language.

The second of two sets that document a Paris concert by trumpeter Donald Byrd, Parisian Thoroughfare features Bobby Jaspar on tenor and flute, pianist Walter Davis, Jr., bassist Doug Watkins, and drummer Art Taylor. Other than Byrd's "At This Time" and Davis' "Formidable," the quintet sticks to bop standards, many of which are quite concise and clock in at around three minutes. Longer versions of the title track (a high point) and "52nd Street Theme" are exceptions. This spirited, bop-oriented music is the equal of the first volume.