Marusa no Onna A Taxing Woman (1987) [repost]

''Il Gabbiano Jonathan'' is the title of the Italian translation of Richard Bach’s 1970 novel ''Jonathan Livingston the Seagull''. Rodolfo Maltese, the guitarist of Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, recorded this concept album in 1987, prior to forming Indaco…

Roomful of Blues is an American blues and swing revival big band based in Rhode Island. With a recording career that spans over 50 years, they have toured worldwide and recorded many albums. Roomful of Blues, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Swagger, sway and swing with energy and precision". Since 1967, the group’s blend of swing, rock and roll, jump blues, boogie-woogie and soul has earned it five Grammy Award nominations and many other accolades, including seven Blues Music Awards (with a victory as Blues Band Of The Year in 2005). Billboard called the band "a tour de force of horn-fried blues…Roomful is so tight and so right." The Down Beat International Critics Poll has twice selected Roomful of Blues as Best Blues Band.

Greatest Hits is a compilation album of hits by Dr. Hook released in 1980. The album spent 4 weeks at the top of the Australian album charts in 1981. In 1987, an expanded CD version was released by Capitol under the title Greatest Hits (and More). 15 tracks including 'Only Sixteen', 'Sylvia's Mother', 'Sexy Eyes', 'When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman', 'Cover of the Rolling Stone' and more.

Rachmaninov's opus 1, his first piano concerto, deserves to be heard more often. The opening bars have that heroic sound that raises the hair on the back of the neck. Indeed those first moments rank alongside those of the Grieg and Tchaikovsky piano concertos for their ability to thrill. Ashkenazy's breathtaking playing on a superb piano is matched by that of the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Haitink's direction.

This disc has most of the right ingredients for a classic Manon Lescaut. Plácido Domingo and Montserrat Caballé in their prime were two of the loveliest Puccini voices of the late 20th century. Their Spanish temperaments only aid in conveying the passion in this story of a love that survives unpleasant parents, religious vows, and arrest, and ends without a shred of dignity in the swamps of Louisiana. The main drawback here is that conductor Bruno Bartoletti, for all of his experience, could've given a fresher account of the score and, in general, the whole thing sounds a bit studio bound. However, operatic decisions are made on the basis of voices, and this set has them. –David Patrick Stearns