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Dom Flemons is known as “The American Songster.” The talented multi-instrumentalist was a member of the Grammy®-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops from their inception in 2005 through 2013, and has performed with artists including Guy Davis, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Taj Mahal.

We’re an American Band is the beloved 1973 classic by Grand Funk. Their genre-bending blend of funk, heavy rock and boogie led to their emergence as one of music’s most iconic rock bands. The album would be certified Platinum by the RIAA and includes the band’s massive hit singles “We’re an American Band” and “Walk Like a Man”. This album included on the National Association of Recording Merchandisers’ “Definitive 200 Albums of All Time”.

Great American Painting is the rare album that shines a bright light on all that’s wrong in the world but somehow still channels a galvanizing sense of hope. With equal parts nuanced observation and raw outpouring of feeling, the Philadelphia-based band confront a constellation of problems eroding the American ideal (gentrification, gun violence, the crushing weight of late capitalism), ornamenting every track with their explosive yet elegant breed of indie-rock/post-punk.

In the lush tobacco fields of North Carolina where BJ Barham was raised, people work hard. Families stay nearby, toiling and growing together. BJ loves those farms and his tiny Reidsville hometown, but he had to run off and start American Aquarium, a band now beloved by thousands. BJ couldn't stay.

Grammy®-nominated and Emmy Award-winning conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya leading the Norwegian Radio Orchestra introduces his fifth album for the prestigious international label, New South American Discoveries. In addition to his positions as music director with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, the Peruvian-born conductor is also Founder and Artistic Director of Caminos del Inka, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to performing and promoting the music of the Americas.

Don McLean's second album, American Pie, which was his first to gain recognition after the negligible initial sales of 1970's Tapestry, is necessarily dominated by its title track, a lengthy, allegorical history of rock & roll, because it became an unlikely hit, topping the singles chart and putting the LP at number one as well. 'American Pie' has remained as much a cultural touchstone as a song, sung by everyone from Garth Brooks to Madonna, its title borrowed for a pair of smutty teen comedies, while the record itself has earned a registered three-million plays on U.S. radio stations.

'Appalachian Spring' and 'El Salón Mexicó' are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast landscapes, cowboys and pioneer spirit. Yet, in the 20th century perhaps only Stravinsky was as adept in as many styles as Aaron Copland [1900-1990]. His Piano Concerto, first performed by Serge Koussevitsky, is a good example of Copland the modernist but he also wrote chamber music, ballets, operas and film scores, as well as teaching, writing and latterly conducting.

Margate-based US multi-instrumentalist Robert Stillman ruminates on what it is to be an ex-patriot American after 10 years in blighty, set to smoky (and free) jazz-blues piano and new agey chamber styles.