Bob Kindred

Undoubtedly the most versatile of all instruments, the guitar’s unrivalled cross-cultural popularity has made it synonymous with musical genres far and wide. From Congolese soukous to Calcutta slide guitar, this collection features kindred creative spirits who have harnessed its limitless expressive potential.

Serenade to a Soul Sister is the happy marriage of jazz's funkiest pianist (Horace Silver) with its most soulful saxman (Stanley Turrentine). Throw in a fabulously underrated trumpeter with a big fat tone (Charles Tolliver) and you've got one of the best soul-jazz classics of the 1960s. Serenade features six original compositions by Silver, and every one is a gem. One, however, is shinier than the rest. The album's opener, "Psychedelic Sally," is one of the catchiest, most joyful jazz tunes ever recorded.

That old discussion has broken out again: What is jazz? Who does it belong to? Where does it begin? The latter of these questions is at least not an issue for the Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala: "Johann Sebastian Bach and his music came into my life when I was six." So it comes as no surprise that Bach ties up his new ACT album "my history of jazz" - Rantala's personal history of the music that captivated him when he was 13 is embedded in the classically rendered aria: "Ever since then I always wanted to become an improviser, composer, stage performer and bandleader". A universal concept shown on the five greatly varied improvisations on the Goldberg Variations, upon which Rantala threads the album like a string of pearls.

Bruce Springsteen’s fifth album gushes forth with the fury of a burst dam, delivering torrents of despair, inspiration, heartbreak, and joy. The Ties That Bind: The River Collection expands the original 20-song double album to a 4xCD set.