Robert Low

A movie spun out of equal parts folk tale, fable and real-life legend about the mysterious, 1930s Tennessee hermit who famously threw his own rollicking funeral party… while he was still alive. "Get Low" is very stylized. Set in the 1930s, the director and cinematographer paid attention to the lighting, casting shadows where they wanted them, providing a dark atmosphere when needed to echo the times of the depression-era. Humour is also stylized, it's dry, and it can take you a minute to make sure you got it right.

A grand opera that dominated the stages of Europe for most of the 19th century, Robert le diable is a masterpiece. Director Laurent Pelly breathes new life into Giacomo Meyerbeer's great spectacle and audaciously entertaining moral fable, in this colourful new staging for The Royal Opera. The wonderful score includes brilliant arias, dramatic ensembles, rousing choruses and a ballet of ghostly nuns, and with the wavering hero of the title sung by Bryan Hymel, acclaimed for his role as Énée in Les Troyens for The Royal Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, this is an unmissable experience.

These 14 tracks, cut in 1996 when Lockwood was 81 years old, are among the most accessible music that he has ever laid down. Had this record – with its mix of spare, raw solos and duets juxtaposed with full band pieces that thunder quietly or roar loud and clear – come out in the late '60s, it might have been as big and important a record as anything cut by Muddy Waters (maybe more, since Waters didn't get to make albums as strong and straightforward as this until the 1970s)……

Continuing his revived collaboration with producer Steve Jordan – the pair first worked together on 1999's Take Your Shoes Off, then reunited on 2014's In My Soul – Robert Cray headed to Memphis to cut his 18th studio set with members of the legendary Hi Rhythm Section. Setting up shop at Royal Studios, Cray got to work on a handful of originals and a collection of covers, not all of them strictly related to Memphis. In particular, Cray pushes swamp rocker Tony Joe White and "5" Royales leader Lowman Pauling, cutting two songs from each writer.