Sacd

As this is the case with many international stars, Chie Ayado is not a household name in America. In her native Japan, she's a superstar jazz performer with more than 10 millions of recordings sold. She's so in demand, she continues to play over forty large-venue concerts a year. Her label, East House Records, is making a name for itself with Three Blind Mice-style analog recordings of unbelievable accuracy and dimension. Vocals are listening-room immediate and the piano is detailed, full and beautifully balanced. Very little processing is used, so you hear Ayado's unique vocal and piano playing without all the sonic distractions hiding many modern digital recordings.

The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting (lead vocals, bass), Andy Summers (guitar) and Stewart Copeland (drums). The Police became globally popular in the late 1970s and are generally regarded as one of the first New Wave groups to achieve mainstream success, playing a style of rock that was influenced by punk, reggae, and jazz.

To commemorate the 110th birthday anniversary of “Emperor of the Stage” Herbert von Karajan, “Beethoven: Complete Symphonies” recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra from 1975 to 1977 was re-released on May 23, 2018. Karajan completed the Beethoven symphony cycle six times in his lifetime. This work is the second complete cycle recording, with the Berlin Philharmonic performing at their peak. The latest DSD master produced in 2018 at Emil Berliner Studios in Germany from the original analog master of Deutsche Grammophon in Germany was used to prepare this 4-discs boxset.

With his astonishingly accomplished guitar playing, Stevie Ray Vaughan ignited the blues revival of the '80s. Vaughan drew equally from bluesmen like Albert King, Otis Rush and Hubert Sumlin and rock & roll players like Jimi Hendrix and Lonnie Mack, as well as the stray jazz guitarist like Kenny Burrell, developing a uniquely eclectic and fiery style that sounded like no other guitarist, regardless of genre. Vaughan bridged the gap between blues and rock like no other artist had since the late '60s. For about seven years, Stevie Ray Vaughan was the leading light in American blues, consistently selling out concerts while his albums regularly went gold. His tragic death in 1990 only emphasized his influence in blues and American rock & roll. This is classic Stevie Ray Vaughan, meticulously remastered from the analog tapes by New York's Sterling Sound. In each set you'll receive Texas Flood, Couldn't Stand the Weather, Soul to Soul, In Step, plus the posthumous classics Family Style and The Sky Is Crying.

Infinite, a deluxe, limited-edition, audiophile boxed set from Analogue Productions, contains all six legendary albums by The Doors - the self-titled 1967 debut (one of rock's most important), Strange Days, Waiting For The Sun, The Soft Parade, Morrison Hotel and the visceral L.A. Woman. Each album has been remastered in multichannel for hybrid SACD by Doug Sax and The Doors' original engineer Bruce Botnick.

For a brief period at the end of the 1960s and the start of the '70s, Blood, Sweat & Tears, which fused a rock 'n' roll rhythm section to a horn section, held out the promise of a jazz-rock fusion that could storm the pop charts. The band was organized in New York in 1967 out of the remnants of the Blues Project by keyboard player/singer Al Kooper and guitarist Steve Katz of that group, and saxophonist Fred Lipsius. The rhythm section consisted of bassist Jim Fielder and drummer Bobby Colomby, and the horn section was filled out by trumpeters Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss and trombonist Dick Halligan.

Creedence Clearwater Revival (sometimes shortened to Creedence or CCR) was an American rock band that gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a number of successful singles drawn from various albums. The Band's music is still a staple of American and worldwide radio airplay and often figures in various media. The band has sold 26 million albums in the United States alone. Creedence Clearwater Revival was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. They were ranked at 82 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.

Cellist Steven Isserlis once again displays his ingenuity and innovation in programming on this 2010 release combining four works for cello and orchestra that wouldn't even exist without him: all arrangements were made at his personal request, each one by the arranger of his personal choice. The most radical reworking is the opening selection, based on a suite composed for cello and orchestra by a 19-year-old Debussy, which only survived in a version for cello and piano. In her imaginative reconstruction of, or rather replacement for, Debussy's original composition, Sally Beamish uses the piece as the opening movement, going on to construct orchestral arrangements of four other Debussy works from the same period. Isserlis also includes revisions of two Ravel songs, Prokofiev's incomplete Concertino and Ernest Bloch's From Jewish Life, ending with the movement entitled Prayer. Throughout the fascinating programme, Isserlis is backed by the Tapiola Sinfonietta conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy.