Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel was born in 1750, died in 1817. He first prepared for a service in the church, taking holy orders in 1774. Being musically gifted he was educated on organ and fortepiano and regularly played in the cathedral and at the seminary Stift Neumünster in Würzburg, his native city. When a minister in the service of the Elector of Mainz heard him play he invited him to visit the court in Mainz. Apparently the Elector liked his playing and offered him a permanent position. The political situation was difficult and considerably influenced his career. In 1792 French troops attacked Mainz and the court moved to Aschaffenburg; the chapel was disbanded.

With guitarist/keyboardist Roland Wolf and Cramps/Gun Club veteran Kid Congo Powers on guitar added to the ranks, along with guest appearances from old member Hugo Race, the Seeds reached 1988 with their strongest album yet, the insanely powerful, gripping Tender Prey. Rather than simply redoing what they'd already done, Nick Cave and company took their striking musical fusions to deeper and higher levels all around, with fantastic consequences. The album boldly starts out with an undisputed Cave masterpiece – "The Mercy Seat," a chilling self-portrait of a prisoner about to be executed that compares the electric chair with the throne of God. Queasy strings from a Gini Ball-led trio and Mick Harvey's spectral piano snake through a rising roar of electric sound – a common musical approach from many earlier Seeds songs, but never so gut-wrenching as here. Cave's own performance is the perfect icing on the cake, commanding and powerful, excellently capturing the blend of crazed fear and righteousness in the lyrics.

Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick makes his ECM debut as a leader with this set, which features keyboardist Jon Balke and a guest appearance from Stian Carstensen - usually an accordionist, but here playing that jazz-band rarity, the pedal-steel guitar. Eick (who also plays vibes and guitar) has played with everybody from the pioneering Trygve Seim collective to Chick Corea, psychedelic group Motorpsycho and contemporary jazz-rock band Jaga Jazzist. His silky, unbrasslike sound is ideally suited to this undulating groove-landscape, and pianist Balke's apposite fills and asides help give the music a collective fluency. But there's more angularity in the rough offbeats and low keyboard grunts under Eick's airy lines on the funky Stavanger, the stately Cologne Blues is like a slowed-down Carla Bley piece (with Carstensen's steel guitar shimmering beneath it, and a probing Balke solo), and there's a folk song lilt to the mid-tempo Williamsburg. A lot of it is slow tone-poetry, but Eick's rather mournful, puffs-of-air sound is pretty captivating.

The title is a bit of a ringer, since this isn't a collaborative effort in any way, shape, or form. Muddy & the Wolf contains a half-dozen live Muddy Waters tracks with backing from Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and Otis Spann, the material culled from the Fathers & Sons sessions. The set also features tracks by Howlin' Wolf from his London sessions with Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. File under "just OK."

Ernest Chausson’s death in 1899 in a bicycle accident robbed French music of a major talent. Almost his entire orchestral output fits on this extremely fine CD. Yan Pascal Tortelier’s performance of the richly romantic Symphony is the best since Munch’s Boston Symphony recording. Like Munch, Tortelier knows how to keep the music moving along–he’s only an insignificant two minutes slower than Munch for the whole work–without overindulging the more luscious moments, which in Chausson’s opulent setting really do take care of themselves. Even better, rather than some overplayed encore piece by another composer, the symphony is coupled with two very attractive, rarely heard tone poems and two charming orchestral excerpts from the composer’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The orchestra plays with conviction, Chandos’ sonics are gorgeous, and if you don’t buy this disc, you’re missing out on some marvelous stuff.

Sanborn's '83 release brought a new meaning to late night or midnight music listening ! By no means is this elevator muzak, either ! In fact, Sanborn was on the cutting edge in using drum machines and synthesizer arrangements without stifling his sax playing or throwing the whole project out of whack. Sanborn's playing is very upfront and sharp ! While the recording may sound dated, it is only in a very good positive way to demonstrate what is lacking in some of today's so-called pop-jazz or r & b instrumentalists.

To mark his debut on Deutsche Grammophon with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin pays tribute to his legendary predecessor on the podium, Leopold Stokowski. The transcriptions of Bach's organ music are among Stokowski's most celebrated achievements, and none is more famous than his expansive arrangement of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which was prominently featured in Walt Disney's Fantasia. It's a classic showpiece for the orchestra, as are Stokowski's fulsome orchestrations of the "Little" Fugue in G minor, and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

As the Otis Williams-fronted Temptations learned with Ear-Resistible, the group's surprisingly successful album from a year earlier, it's best to play it safe and stay true to the times. And that's precisely what Williams does on Awesome, an album that models itself after Ear-Resistible. There are mostly ballads here and some innocent concessions to the hip-hop audience. Overall, though, this is the Temptations sounding like the Temptations, albeit a tender yet resilient Temptations.

This recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos is ad hoc in more ways than one. The only name listed on the cover is that of violinist Alexandra Conunova, who, in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, assembled a one-off group of players in Switzerland. There is no shortage of recordings of these concertos, but this one has an unusual feature: Conunova begins not with the Violin Concerto in E major, Op. 8, No. 1 ("Spring"), but in medias res with the "Fall" concerto. No explanation for this is given, although it does result in the placement of the "Summer" finale, arguably the movement that Vivaldi's audiences would have found the most striking, as the final climax of the whole set. Conunova has been touted as a talent to watch, and those interested in her developing career may find this bold release of interest.

Time is the ninth studio album by English rock band Electric Light Orchestra. It topped the UK Albums Chart for two weeks. Time is a concept album written about a man from the 1980s who is taken to the year 2095, where he is confronted by the dichotomy between technological advancement and a longing for past romance. Time is a work of synth-pop that combines elements from 1950s music, new wave, reggae, rockabilly, the Beatles, Phil Spector and the Shadows. The album signalled a departure from the band's sound by emphasising electronics over its usual orchestra.