Amin Al Aiedy Shams

Al Di Meola assembled a thoroughly excellent group of musicians for this review of the highlights of a career spanning almost three decades!

Al Thompson,Jr. is a southern Connecticut-based composer and pianist. He holds several degrees in music from th University of Bridgeport. City Mainstream is his first CD. He is devoted to Jazz. All pretenders, beware.

Inspiration comes from many sources. For legendary drummer Al Foster, it stems from the two groups of people who are closest to him: the jazz giants he’s been honored to play with (and who, though he’d be the last to admit it, have been blessed to work with him); and, first and foremost, his family. On his latest album, Inspirations & Dedications, Foster pays back his loved ones and collaborators with a set of songs written or interpreted in their honor.

Seven years in the making, the official retrospective of one of Somalia's most famous and beloved private bands, Iftin. Digitized from cassettes recorded between 1982 and 1987 at the legendary Al-Uruba hotel's secret studio and the jams for the masses performed in the basement of Somalia's national theater. Banaadiri rhythms from Somalia's south, Mogadishu's finest vocalists, Dhaanto reggae-like guitar licks, and smoldering brass blend seamlessly with the sounds of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to form one of rawest, most cosmopolitan eras of music anywhere. Iftin's Mogadishu is where the world's sounds begin and end.

The charismatic, cosmopolitan cellist Giovanni Sollima joins the instrumentalists of Il Pomo d’Oro for Al-Bunduqiyya – The Lost Concerto.

Soul Survivor is the 21st studio album by Al Green, released in 1987.

Cover albums are a tricky business.

Cover albums are a tricky business.

Friday Night In San Francisco is a 1981 live album by Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia. It was described by jazz author and critic Walter Kolosky as "a musical event that could be compared to the Benny Goodman Band's performance at Carnegie Hall in 1938…(it) may be considered the most influential of all live acoustic guitar albums. All the tracks except "Guardian Angel" were recorded live at The Warfield Theatre on December 5, 1980 in San Francisco.

Vivaldi's concerti con molti stromenti are true precursors of the symphony in their amplitude and audacity. In these pieces, the 'Red-haired Priest', a creator of boundless imagination, amused himself by devising literally unheard-of combinations of timbres. In the famous concerto Il Mondo al rovescio (The world upside down), he invited flutes, oboes and harpsichord to double violin and cello in a colourfl whirlwind of parallel octaves. This recording by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti provides an opportunity to discover these incredibly modern compositions.