Joël Robuchon Küche

Billy Joel’s legendary 1990 concert at Yankee Stadium stands as one of the greatest concert films of all time. Shot in 16mm color film, the original concert has now been meticulously re-mixed and re-edited. The newly edited version includes a never-before-released performance of “Uptown Girl” along with interviews from Billy and behind-the-scenes footage from the event’s production. The set list consists of re-edited versions of songs from the original film including “Piano Man,” “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” “New York State Of Mind,” “Shout” and more - all live from the ionic stadium in The Bronx. The 2-CD contains 22 performances from Billy Joel’s historic two-day run at The House That Ruth Built! Recorded June 22 & 23, 1990 are newly mixed from the original multi-tracks. Features 11 completely unreleased performances, including “Uptown Girl,” “Only The Good Die Young,” “Allentown” and more.

What these sound recordings attempt to do is to bring you face-to-face — or, perhaps more appropriately, sound to-heart — with actual works of the troubadours and, occasionally, of others in their circle of influence. The task is daunting for so many reasons: songs got written down decades, even centuries, after their dates of creation; only about ten percent of the original melodies survive; and most direct knowledge of how performers worked out their interpretations at the time has been lost. We know nothing whatsoever about the singing style, or about the techniques of instrumental accompaniment that may have been employed. These performances, therefore, of necessity, reflect a confluence of musicological and philological knowledge with performers' instincts and intuitions, as all of these tendencies interacted with each other at a specific moment in history, the late twentieth century.

From the mid-seventeenth century to the first two decades of the eighteenth century, Rome experienced one of the most brilliant musical periods in its history. In this recording, the Ensemble Jacques Moderne works composed for a Vespers service, one of the principal moments of the Liturgy of the Hours, which consisted of a sequence of psalms and antiphons concluding with a Magnificat.

As one of the biggest-selling artists of all time, perhaps it was only a matter of time before Billy Joel was subjected to a romantically themed collection, and so came She's Got a Way: Love Songs, released just in time for Valentine's Day 2013. This 18-track collection reveals an odd truth about Joel: he didn't write all that many love songs. A few of his biggest hits are love songs but only a few: the early song "She's Got a Way," which wasn't a hit until its Songs in the Attic incarnation in the early '80s; "Just the Way You Are," an unabashedly romantic soft rock staple that helped make him a star in the mid-'70s; "This Is the Time," a gently nostalgic song from The Bridge; "The Night Is Still Young," an added cut to 1986's Greatest Hits, Vols. 1 & 2.

Latest from guitarist Joel Hoekstra's (Whitesnake, Trans-Siberian Orchestra) solo project Joel Hoekstra's 13. "Crash Of Life" introduces a new talent into the fold as Girish Pradhan (Girish And The Chronicles, The End Machine) takes on lead vocal duties on the album. As with the previous two albums, the all-star cast of bassist Tony Franklin (Blue Murder, The Firm), drummer Vinny Appice (Last In Line, ex-Dio, Black Sabbath), and keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Sons Of Apollo, Black Country Communion) contribute their immense musical talents. And as he did on the last record, vocalist Jeff Scott Soto also lends a helping hand with background vocals.Hoekstra once again handled the bulk of the creative process, overseeing production, songwriting, and arranging (music and lyrics) for this stunning hard rock record.

Recording The Nylon Curtain exhausted Billy Joel, and even though it had a pair of major hits, it didn't rival its predecessors in terms of sales. Since he labored so hard at the record, he decided it was time for a break – it was time to record an album just for fun. And that's how his homage to pre-Beatles pop, An Innocent Man, was conceived: it was designed as a breezy romp through the music of his childhood. Joel's grasp on history isn't remarkably astute – the opener "Easy Money" is a slice of Stax/Volt pop-soul, via the Blues Brothers (quite possibly the inspiration for the album), and the label didn't break the pop charts until well after the British Invasion – but he's in top form as a craftsman throughout the record.