"A Pocket Full Of Miracles" (TS306) is a 1970 album by Motown Records R&B group The Miracles,(AKA "Smokey Robinson & The Miracles") issued on its Tamla subsidiary label, one of three albums the group released that year. This album charted at #56 on the Billboard pop albums chart, and reached the top ten of the magazine's R&B albums chart, peaking at #10. It was released on September 30 of that year.
"United" is a studio album by soul musicians Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, released August 29, 1967 on the Motown-subsidiary label Tamla Records. Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol produced all of the tracks on the album, with the exception of "You Got What It Takes" (produced by Motown CEO Berry Gordy, Jr.) and "Oh How I'd Miss You" (produced by Hal Davis). Fuqua and Bristol produced "Hold Me Oh My Darling" and "Two Can Have a Party" as Tammi Terrell solo tracks in 1965 and 1966, and had Gaye overdub his vocals to them in order to create duet versions of the songs. United yielded four Top 100 Billboard chart hits, including the two Top 10 singles "Your Precious Love," "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You," the Top 20 single, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "If This World Were Mine".
"Gold: Recorded Live at the Troubadour" is a live album by singer/songwriter Neil Diamond. While no singles were released in support of the album, the opening track "Lordy" appeared as the B-side of "Cracklin' Rosie". This is the only recording available of this song.
"More Hits by The Supremes" is the sixth studio album by Motown singing group The Supremes, released in 1965. The album includes two number-one hits: "Stop! In the Name of Love" and "Back in My Arms Again", as well as the Top 20 single "Nothing but Heartaches". The album opens up with the b-side "Ask Any Girl" from their "Where Did Our Love Go" album, which ironically ended side 2 of their previous album of new material. It was once planned for single release with this new mix. Barney Ales, then an executive vice-president of Motown Records, reported in the August 14, 1965 issue of Billboard magazine the album had advance orders estimated at 300,000. More Hits by The Supremes peaked at #6 on the U.S. Billboard album chart and remained on that chart for 37 weeks. It reached #2 on Billboard's R&B album chart. To further underscore their popularity, each girl's signature was autographed on the album cover. According to Motown data this album managed to sell over 1,675,000 copies.
This very attractive release from Channel Classics features the terrific British period instrument ensemble Florilegium in performances of three Vivaldi concertos and two sacred vocal works. The group plays without a conductor and the players' shapely unanimity of phrasing and nuanced expressiveness give the performances the character of chamber music. It sidesteps the metric squareness that can plague performances of Vivaldi and let the music breathe and surge organically. The strings have the slight tartness of Baroque instruments and the overall sound of the orchestra has an appealing burnished sheen. This is relatively obscure repertoire and includes a flute concerto that was only discovered in 2010 and is recorded here for the first time, played beautifully by Ashley Solomon, the artistic director of Florilegium.
This is Ivan Fischer’s second Mahler symphony for Channel Classics with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, his first being the Sixth recorded in February 2005. His opening to this Resurrection symphony, its hero’s Funeral Rites, is disciplined with touches of brusqueness in the brass. But as this is supposed to ask ‘Why did you live?’ I’m very aware of Fischer’s empathy for the visionary aspects of the movement, as if to answer ‘To experience all that’s lovely’.
Marquise Knox recently released his third album, Here I Am, once again recorded at the legendary Blue Heaven Studios in Salina, Kansas. It features Marquise and his band, with a little help from Wayne Sharp of Michael Burk’s band sitting in on B-3 and piano. Nine originals, and three reverent covers of Marquise’s favorite Muddy Waters tunes.
There is a recurrent theme running through the program presented by the Dena Piano Duo in this production; all four composers and works have a particular relationship to Edvard Grieg. Both Johannes Brahms and Camille Saint-Saëns were friends of Grieg, and in several of his works the inspiration Grieg gained from his colleagues in Vienna and Paris is easy to hear. In between the works of Brahms and Saint-Saëns the Dena Piano Duo play two Norwegian works they have commissioned from the composers Wolfgang Plagge and Terje Bjørklund with this recording in mind.