On September 17, 2008, the legendary Levon Helm took his beloved Midnight Ramble on the road to one of America’s treasured venues, Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium. Accompanied by such luminaries as Buddy Miller, John Hiatt, Sheryl Crow, George Receli, Sam Bush and Billy Bob Thornton, the Levon Helm Band created an unforgettable night of stage magic. Ramble At The Ryman – Live CD & DVD (each sold separately) captures the joy, essence and reverence of Helm’s live shows. This collection features the Levon Helm Band in a veritable tour through the American songbook, performing classics from Helm’s tenure with The Band, as well as song’s from his Grammy winning release Dirt Farmer and selections from artists such as Chuck Berry, the Carter Family and more.

Four of Ignaz Pleyel’s Piano Trios are featured on this new release, interpreted by Trio 1790 on period instruments. Trio 1790 have recorded a critically acclaimed series of Haydn’s Piano Trios for Cpo and these trios by Pleyel, a former pupil and friend of Joseph Haydn, provide gallant melodies, dramatic harmonies and many tonal surprises.

This performance is a revelation. Philip Reed, in his authoritative note, points out that, unbeknown to many, Britten and Giulini had a mutual respect for and an admiration of each other’s work. Here they combine to give a performance that is a true Legend, as this BBC series has it. Giulini’s reading is as dramatic and viscerally exciting as any I have heard. The music leaps from the page new-minted in his thoroughgoing, histrionically taut hands, the rhythmic tension at times quite astonishing. For instance, the sixth movement, ‘Libera me’, is simply earth-shattering in its effect, every bar, every word, every instrument sung and played to the hilt – and so it is throughout, with the live occasion added to the peculiar, and in this case peculiarly right, acoustics of the Albert Hall adding its own measure of verite to the inspired occasion.

Originally this compilation was released in 1964 as "The Beatles Featuring Tony Sheridan - The Beatles' First." The title of this compilation has varied many times over the years but they are all based on the original 1964 Polydor release with the same track listing and running order. Most of the tracks feature vocals by Sheridan. The album includes all eight of the Beatles' first pro recordings made in '61 and '62 in Germany as Tony Sheridan's backing band plus four of Tony's tracks with the Beat Brothers!

Carter Burwell's score for Joel & Ethan Coen's cinematic version of Charles Portis' novel True Grit (they consciously decided to ignore the original Oscar-winning film because they considered it a bore) is rooted in the world view of its main character, the outrageously self-righteous Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld). Burwell used classic Protestant hymns as inspirations; in some cases bits from the classic hymns themselves – “Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand” (by Franklin L. Eiland), “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (by Charles Converse), “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” (by Elisha A. Hoffman & Anthony J. Showalter), “Talk About Suffering” (Traditional), and “The Glory-Land Way” (by J.S. Torbett) – for his cues. These pieces in particular, from the opening theme, "The Wicked Flee," "A Methodist and a Son of a Bitch," and "I Will Carry You," all begin simply, lyrically, almost reverentially before giving way to grander pieces of music that reflect the land and history.

After the heavily distorted bass and doomsday church organ of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's debut album, the exhilarating prog rock of epic proportions on Tarkus, and the violent removal of the sacred aura of classical tunes on Pictures at an Exhibition, Trilogy, ELP's fourth album, features the trio settling down in more crowd-pleasing pastures. Actually, the group was gaining in maturity what they lost in raw energy. Every track on this album has been carefully thought, arranged, and performed to perfection, a process that also included some form of sterilization. Greg Lake's acoustic ballad "From the Beginning" put the group on the charts for a second time. The adaptation of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown" also yielded a crowd-pleaser…

By their third long-player (and second since the traumatizing defection of original singer Anders Fridén), The Mind's I, Dark Tranquility were making very positive strides, gaining in confidence, but still playing serious catch-up to In Flames and At the Gates in the battle of the Gothenburg extreme metal bands. Yes, their dated and overly laborious early-'90s Swedish death metal habits had by now largely and wisely been replaced by more economical (read: shorter) songwriting, their melodies were ever more evident within the ruling metallic mayhem, and former guitarist Mikael Stanne had fully come into his own as a lead vocalist, but that didn't mean that speedy new offerings like "Scythe, Rage and Roses" and "Dissolution Factor Red" were inspired enough to fully stand out from the pack…

French Nationality, born in Salon de Provence resides in Italy since 1974. Composer and director, plays the guitar, the piano and electronic keyboard. Author of numerous classical music, score film and pop music. Since 1966 he recorded 28 records.

Following his critically acclaimed interpretation of Bruckner's 7th Symphony, Iván Fischer leads his Budapest Festival Orchestration to the summit of 19th century symphonic music, with this new recording of the monumental, enigmatic, unfinished and deeply religious 9th Symphony of Anton Bruckner.

It is a meaningful sign of the times that Astor Piazzolla is arguably one of the most frequently performed composers on the contemporary musical stage, even though he probably never aimed at writing “classical” music. True, one of the fundamental encounters of his life was with composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, who mentored many of the most important avant-garde musicians of the second half of the twentieth century. And, under her guidance, Piazzolla did attempt to express his personality through the language of Western contemporary music. The results, of course, were very good, since nobody could question Piazzolla’s talent. Yet, when Piazzolla performed one of the tangos he had already written to his professor, she exclaimed: “Astor, all your classical pieces are well written, but the true Piazzolla sound is here, never leave it behind!”. And if the language of Piazzolla’s music does not correspond to that of the coeval European avantgardes, neither does it conform to the standards of the Argentinian tango tradition. It is precisely for his utter originality that Astor Piazzolla rightfully claimed and obtained a place in the pantheon of twentieth-century classical music. But it is also this originality that may puzzle those attempting to classify him within one of the established musical categories.

Navona Records and trombonist Andy Malloy present BEST OF FRIENDS, a collection of personalized pieces for trombone and piano. Featuring works that Malloy commissioned from his colleagues over the years, the album is truly an ode to the relationships formed through musical collaboration. Each piece on the album pushes the musical boundaries to which the trombone is often held through creative uses of tonality and soaring melodies. Rhythmically energetic passages, jazz harmonies, and more speak throughout the album, highlighting the musicianship of Malloy and the compositional dexterity of his colleagues, a musical testament to the power of collaboration.

Avid Jazz here presents four classic Milt Jackson albums, including original LP liner notes on a finely re-mastered double CD.
‘The Jazz Skyline’, ‘Milt Jackson Quartet’, ‘Telefunken Blues’, ‘Plenty Plenty Soul’ plus three tracks with the Thelonious Monk Quartet. ‘The Jazz Skyline’ finds Milt in 1957 in a relaxing blowing session, perhaps a thousand miles away from the more structured and complex music he was making with his other ‘day’ band, John Lewis and The Modern Jazz Quartet. For the ‘Quartet’ sessions two years earlier in 1955 Jackson is joined by Horace Silver, Percy Heath and Connie Kay in a set comprising mostly standard material, but none the less intriguing for that…