Treasures From American Film Archives (4 Volumes) [12 Dvd9s] (2000 2009)

Levee Town is the 5th studio album by Sonny Landreth. Released on Sugar Hill Records Oct. 17, 2000 and re-released in an Expanded Edition on Landreth’s own LandFall Records April 21, 2009. This is slide guitar wizard Sonny Landreth's most ambitious work, and true to form it comes with no glossy fanfare (even the packaging is sepia tinted), just straight-ahead, well-crafted songs played with his usual intelligent, heartfelt playing. Like the photos that are easily passed over due to the quiet subtly of the sepia tones, the intricacy of his guitar work can easily be overshadowed by the flash that is inherent in the slide guitar. He takes the time here to do a number of acoustic songs and shows that there is more to him than a loud flash.

A superior ballad singer and a talented pianist, Shirley Horn put off potential success until finally becoming a major attraction while in her fifties. She studied piano from the age of four. After attending Howard University, Horn put together her first trio in 1954, and was encouraged in the early '60s by Miles Davis and Quincy Jones. She recorded three albums during 1963-1965 for Mercury and ABC/Paramount, but chose to stick around Washington, D.C., and raise a family instead of pursuing her career. In the early '80s, she began recording for SteepleChase, but Shirley Horn really had her breakthrough in 1987 when she started making records for Verve, an association that continued on records like 1998's I Remember Miles and 2001's You're My Thrill…

Recorded live in concert on July 14, 2000, during the 'Odd Couple Tour' at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, Netherlands.Steve Lukather started as a studio musician before becoming a founding member of 'Toto'. His guitar style and influence can be heard on numerous albums such as Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney. Edgar Winter is the younger brother of Johnny Winter.

Michael Nyman came of age as a classical composer in the radical London of the late '60s. His work embraces multiple vernaculars (jazz, avant garde, conceptual art) and helped cement the foundation of what came to be known as minimalism. Decades into his career, Nyman's score to Jane Campion's film The Piano made him a star. The movie's themes of colonialism and silence (its protagonist, portrayed by Holly Hunter, cannot speak) were perfectly aligned with his longtime interests in world and ambient music. Horn players assist members of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in fleshing out Nyman's stately, hymn-like motifs. On the more heavily orchestrated cues, sentimentality wins out over minimalist restraint; the best tracks feature Nyman on solo piano, playing the rudimentary, faux period repertoire of Hunter's character.