Calendar Year Blocks

On his first jazz date as a leader since 1992, Czechoslovakian bassist and composer Miroslav Vitous comes out of the gate with a host of heavyweights on one of the more lyrically swinging dates in modern jazz. Vitous' engaged, pulsing, and deeply woody tone is featured in the company of John McLaughlin, Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, and Jack DeJohnette. While the crystalline sound of Manfred Eicher's ECM is everywhere here, as is the open-ended speculative jazz that the label is renowned – and ridiculed for – Vitous offers some startlingly beautiful twists and turns with his ensemble. This is one of those recordings that feels familiar in tone, but is timeless in concept and execution. Universal Syncopations is one of the most gorgeous sounding and toughly played dates of the calendar year.

Michio Kurihara's sublime solo debut is an impressionist concept record that refracts the golden radiance of the magic hour, its nine songs drawing inspiration from nine different sunsets spanning across the calendar year. A largely instrumental effort, Sunset Notes is foremost a showcase for Kurihara's remarkable guitar work - his leads soar like exotic birds in flight, brilliantly evoking the moods and colors of the solitary moments in time the songs capture.

Neil Sedaka (born March 13, 1939) is an American pop singer, pianist, composer and record producer. Since his music career began in 1957, he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and others, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard Greenfield and Phil Cody.

At one level, one would have to be a collector, an Anglophile, or a 1960s pop culture enthusiast to consider this 14-CD set a good deal. In the U.K., the EP ("extended play" single), which contains more tracks than an ordinary single and fewer than an album, has always been a far more popular format than it is in the U.S. During their heyday, the Beatles regularly released EPs in Great Britain, a total of 13 of them, in fact, between June 1963 and December of 1967, and they're all assembled in this box, complete with original art and sleeves in miniature…

2016 3-CD set. The 60s Summer Album features 60 summertime sounds of the sixties in a sleek and summery digipak design. Featuring Fleetwood Mac, Nina Simone, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds, Santana, The Lovin' Spoonful, Andy Williams, Neil Sedaka, The Fifth Dimension, Sly & The Family Stone, Harry Nilsson, The Box Tops, Johnny Nash and many others.