Rene Brown

Despite this track record, most likely the reason that the majority of genre fans didn’t know her is because mainstream smooth jazz radio has been flute-resistant for years. They say it doesn’t test well in their demographic research, but anyone who saw Rene electrify the crowd could attest that this is wrongheaded thinking. Given the chance, considering her formidable composing and playing skills, charismatic presence and dynamite looks, she could be a star on the level of Mindi Abair and Candy Dulfer, who makes a memorable guest appearance on one of “No Restrictions” coolest and most melodic midtempo tracks, “Ladies Night Out.

Henry Purcell's oft-recorded opera, "Dido and Aeneas", is in fact the only one he ever composed, and renowned Baroque specialist René Jacobs turns out to be an ideal interpreter of this seminal 17th-century musical allegory. Not even an hour in length, the opera is an ideal introduction to this period of classical music, as Purcell melds a tragic love story with Shakespearean-level theatricality and surprising comedy elements. This 2006 reissue of a 1998 performance doesn't have quite the dramatic vibrancy of Emmanuelle Haïm's 2004 six-instrument ensemble, but it compensates with scope and polish…

What a DVD of a 1984 Clarence "Gatemouth Brown concert proves is how timeless, ageless, and transcendent both this artist and his craft are. Brown's final recordings, mere months before his death from lung cancer in September 2005, sound no less fresh, vital, and beyond categorization than the music of this performance of more than twenty years ago. Tempted at first to discuss The Blues of Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown as the archival footage of an American music master plying his trade at the peak of his powers, I must first point out that Brown himself was an archive.