John Meyer

In 1995, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor joined forces on Appalachia Waltz, the first of a series of Sony Classical albums celebrating the varied musical textures of Americana. Over the course of six years, several albums were cut, among them Short Trip Home, Liberty!, Uncommon Ritual, and Midnight on the Water, in addition to the Grammy-winning Appalachia Waltz. Each project may have had its own specific instrumental focus, although the shared theme was clearly to obfuscate the genre lines that separate classical and traditional American music on a 200-year journey from the concert halls of Britain to the Shenandoah Valley.

Mozart?s concerto actually began life as a concerto for basset horn (not basset clarinet) and was written in the key of G. The manuscript ended abruptly after the 191st measure of the first movement. Mozart rethought his plan, decided to recast the concerto in A, and overhauled the solo part for basset clarinet, an instrument developed by his friend Anton Stadler The version that entered the repertoire after Mozart?s death was an adaptation of the original.

If Goldfinger proved that the James Bond franchise was box office dynamite, 1965's Thunderball cemented the British super-spy's international appeal–and further forged a set of pop culture cliches that both inspired and endured even Mike Meyer's modern, multi-chaptered Austin Powers spoofing. While Goldfinger also marked composer John Barry stamping his enduring influence on the series' music, this fourth installment finds his big band and jazz-inspired arrangements pulsing with confidence, stripped down rhythmic tension and exotic elegance. Tom Jones follows up Shirley Bassey's previous larger-than-life title track performance with a worthy rival of his own, its dramatic, Barry-composed melody interpolated throughout the composer's masterful score.