Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest is a newly unearthed studio session from the iconic pianist Bill Evans featuring bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Recorded on June 20, 1968, nearly 10 years after the legendary Kind of Blue sessions with Miles Davis and a mere five days after the trio's incredible Grammy award-winning performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, this is truly a landmark discovery for jazz listeners worldwide. Available in deluxe 2-CD and limited edition 2-LP sets, and containing over 90 minutes of music, this is the only studio album in existence of the Bill Evans trio with Gomez and DeJohnette. Some Other Time was recorded by the legendary MPS Records founder and producer Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer along with writer/producer Joachim-Ernst Berendt at the MPS studios in the Black Forest (Villingen, Germany).
Decades after its release, Tales from Topographic Oceans is still the most controversial record in Yes' output. This was the place where Yes either fulfilled all of the promise shown on their previous five albums or slid off the rails in a fit of artistic hubris, especially on the part of lead singer Jon Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe, who dominated the composition credits here…
This album with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and its artistic director, Neeme Jarvi, features two mature works by Martinu, recorded in the splendid acoustic of the Estonia Concert Hall in Tallinn. One of the most wide-ranging composers of music for the stage, Martinu was also enthusiastic about the theatrical possibilities of including new media in his operas.
Assembled from various shows from various tours from around the world, 2016's Live: Greatest Hits from Around the World is billed as ZZ Top's first "full-length live album" – a matter of dispute considering how Eagle Rock released three CD/DVD/Blu-ray combo sets between 2008 and 2014. There is no visual component to Live: Greatest Hits from Around the World, which may be how it skates around the first live album distinction – if there's no video, this is a pure album – but the record mines a similar musical vein, collecting highlights from latter-day ZZ Top tours. During the 2000s and 2010s, ZZ Top released an excellent studio album called La Futura, but that's ignored here in favor for all the songs that are classic rock staples.
Unknown Italian sacred and instrumental music of the 18th century from Naples: The Abchordis Ensemble interprets the Lectio VIII Defunctorum (for soprano, two violins and basso continuo) by Gennaro Manna (1715-1779), and the symphony by Aniello Santangelo (18th century) in F (for two violins, viola and basso continuo) and the Stabat Mater (for four voices, with violins, violetta and basso continuo) by Giacomo Sellitto (1701-1763). An equally melodious and virtuoso music, sometimes attractively chromatically charged. Musical examples of the incredible cultural diversity in Naples in the 18th century. The Abchordis Ensemble was founded in 2011 by ten musicians of various nationalities, with the aim of rediscovering and bringing to light today unpublished or under-performed music. The vocal and instrumental ensemble dedicated themselves above all to church music in 17th and 18th century Italy.
Australia is not the first place you think of as a crate-digger's paradise. But these 20 slices from the country's early-Seventies season in commercial R&B and pop-jazz fusion are a lively lesson in the ingenious adaption of imported trends over an extreme distance. This is overwhelmingly white funk: "Back on the Street Again," an Etta James cover by Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, and the ID's "Feel Awlright" are examples of hot shots from Australia's Sixties-beat and heavy-rock scenes finding their dance-floor feet; a track by the progressive-rock band Tamam Shud comes from the soundtrack to a 1971 surfing documentary. But it is all robust fun with intriguing sampling prospects.
Séga is the traditional music of Mauritius (a small island off the coast of Madagascar) and is known as the “blues” of the Indian Ocean. The music was born during the 17th to 19th centuries by African slaves seeking relief from harsh conditions in sugar cane fields and on colonial land by dancing to improvised music incorporating rhythms from their homelands in West Africa, Mozambique, Zanzibar or Madagascar. From these diverse African influences sprang a new, insular dance and music, the séga.