On his album "Händel - Mendelssohn", to be released in 2025, violinist Niklas Liepe combines Mendelssohn's famous violin concerto with fascinating, contemporary arrangements of popular works by George Frideric Handel. The new album "Händel - Mendelssohn" by violinist and OPUS Klassik winner Niklas Liepe will be released by Sony Classical on June 13. On it, the musician known for his creative repertoire concepts, supported by the NDR Radiophilharmonie, combines Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's Violin Concerto in E minor with new variations on well-known melodies by George Frideric Handel. Pianist, composer and arranger Tim Allhoff has reworked the well-known aria "Lascia ch'io panga" from the opera "Rinaldo" and the coronation hymn "Zadok, the Priest" for solo violin, piano and orchestra, while violinist and composer Aleksey Igudesman contributes his "Peace-acaglia", a four-movement variation on Handel's "Passacaglia".

With a passel of familiar faces in the cast (ex-James Brown bassist Tim Drummond, pianist Dumpy Rice, harpist Rusty York), the reclusive Mack rocks up some memorable dusties his way – the Falcons' "I Found a Love," and Bobby Bland's "Share Your Love with Me," Little Walter's "My Babe," and Jimmy Reed's chestnut "Baby What You Want Me to Do," along with his own "Gotta Be an Answer".

Bobby Rush got dirty on 2013's Down in Louisiana but with 2014's Decisions, he returns to his slick blues-funk ways, but this doesn't mean it's a rote affair by any means. He has teamed up with the band Blinddog Smokin' and, for the first time in his career, recorded with fellow Louisiana legend Dr. John. Mac Rebennack shows up on the opening "Another Murder in New Orleans," a deeply soulful and searching portrait of the violence that often plagues the Big Easy but, really, that's the only instance when good times aren't on Rush's mind. He leers about being a "Funky Old Man" and winks about what happens on "Bobby Rush's Bus," two songs that set the pace and attitude for much of the rest of Decisions.

Recorded by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and various soloists and ensembles in churches in Tallinn as well as the Estonian Concert Hall, the five compositions heard on Arboles lloran por lluvia (Trees cry for rain) give deeper insight into the unique sound-world of Estonian composer Helena Tulve, into music that is nourished by both contemporary and ancient currents. Tulve draws upon a wide-range of inspirational sources. She explores the raw fabric of sound and the nature of timbre in both analytical and instinctive ways, in compositions that are unmistakably her own, yet her work is inclusive - here incorporating aspects of Gregorian chant, melody from Yemenite Jewish tradition, and texts from Sufi, Sephardic and Christian mystic poetry. Reyah hadas 'ala (The Perfume of the Myrtle Rises) unites the ensemble of the Gregorian chant and the early music instruments. This is the only work in which Tulve has used a pre-existing melody, a song of the Yemenite Jews. Extinction des choses vues (The Extinction of the Things Seen) is an orchestral piece in which the musical ideas are derived from a text by the Jesuit thinker Michel de Certeau called Extase blanche (White Ecstasy).

The introspective scope of DeMent's first two records expands to tackle global topics like religion, sexual abuse and war on the tough-talking The Way I Should Be, a more rock-influenced offering including cameo appearances from Mark Knopfler, Lonnie Mack and Delbert McClinton (who duets on "Trouble").

One of the seminal works of jazz as protest, "We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite", was first released in 1961 by Max Roach in collaboration with Abbey Lincoln and lyricist Oscar Brown, Jr. on Candid Records.

Martin Gester Gester, founder of Le Parlement de Musique, keeps active in a variety of roles, from Baroque music conductor to organist to lied accompanist.

Conceived and compiled by Robert Smith, new remix collection from 2024 album Songs Of A Lost World, featuring remixes from Four Tet, Paul Oakenfold, Orbital, and more. Deluxe edition with additional remixes from Chino Moreno (Deftones), 65daysofstatic, and Mogwai.

Companion album to 2024’s ‘Flight B741’ album and recorded during the same sessions, ‘Phantom Island’ sees King Gizzard expanding their sonic to include a full blown orchestra across its 10 tracks. This album will be supported by a global tour running May - August 2025! Blending their signature psych-rock energy with sweeping orchestral arrangements, King Gizzard take you on a psychological journey into the mind as it creates its own ‘phantom island’ of illusions, fears and chaos. King Gizzard’s prolific nature has led them to release music at a frenetic pace, and their intense desire to seek out new sounds and follow new creative paths means that every one of their multitude of releases sounds different from the last.

Darker Than Blue: Soul From Jamdown, 1973–1980 is a compilation album released in 2001. It consists of soul and R&B-styled songs recorded by Jamaican reggae artists, including a number of covers of contemporary American singles.

An iconoclast with a large, loyal audience and a long, very successful career, Neil Young has explored a impressive range of styles – from acoustic introspection and wistful country rock to blistering hard rock, electronic experimentation, blues, rockabilly, and heartfelt polemics – while sounding entirely like Neil Young at all times, with his engagingly craggy voice, his flinty sincerity, and unique gifts as a songwriter. Young's creative restlessness is a comfortable match for his prolific nature, and he's not averse to dropping his current fascinations for something else on the drop of a dime, which frustrates some fans but also helps keep his music fresh and full of ideas. Even when he's in relatively familiar musical territory (his electric music with Crazy Horse, his rootsy semi-acoustic work, the intimacy of his solo performances, his thematic albums focusing on life experiences and his take on the world around him), there's a spark of unpredictability that fuels his muse and keeps him in the present day despite a career spanning over seven decades.

Spanning the entirety of Luther Vandross' solo career, Lovesongs is stacked full of quiet storm favorites from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. All 17 selections are hits, and like practically everything Vandross ever sang, they're all love songs. Lovesongs is the third in a series of Vandross best-of collections released in the wake of his 2005 passing. The first of those compilations, The Ultimate Luther Vandross (2006), covers his greatest hits chronologically, rounding up 16 songs and then tacking on two previously unreleased ones at the end. Then there's Love, Luther (2007), a 56-track box set filled with previously unreleased material for hardcore fans and completists. Like The Ultimate Luther Vandross before it, Lovesongs is a single-disc collection that goes from the singer's first album, Never Too Much (1981), to his last, Dance with My Father (2003).

Traffic Though it ultimately must be considered an interim vehicle for singer/songwriter/keyboardist/guitarist Steve Winwood, Traffic was a successful group that followed its own individual course through the rock music scene of the late '60s and early '70s. Beginning in the psychedelic year of 1967 and influenced by the Beatles, the band turned out eclectic pop singles in its native Great Britain, though by the end of its first year of existence it had developed a pop/rock hybrid tied to its unusual instrumentation: At a time when electric guitars ruled rock, Traffic emphasized Winwood's organ and the reed instruments played by Chris Wood, especially flute. After Dave Mason, who had provided the band with an alternate folk-pop sound, departed for good, Traffic leaned toward extended songs that gave its players room to improvise in a jazz-like manner, even as the rhythms maintained a rock structure.

Queen ruled the airwaves of the 70's and 80's with their showy pomp-rock, packing out stadiums and storming the charts. Their elaborately-produced records were matched only by the showmanship of legendary frontman Freddie Mercury, whose swagger and vocal gymnastics were perfectly matched by Brian May’s overdubbed guitar. Over their career, Queen achieved six platinum records and eight gold, with hits including “We Are the Champions”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We Will Rock You” and “Under Pressure”. The band’s reign of the charts came to an abrupt end in 1991 with the tragic death of Mercury. The surviving members have since toured the world with a number of guest vocalists, and their place in rock history cemented in 2001 when Queen were indicted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Byrds Although they only attained the huge success of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys for a brief period in the mid-'60s, time has judged the Byrds to be nearly as influential as those groups in the long run. They were not solely responsible for devising folk-rock, but they were certainly more responsible than any other single act (Dylan included) for melding the innovations and energy of the British Invasion with the best lyrical and musical elements of contemporary folk music.