2014 two CD holiday release. CHRISTMAS AT DOWNTON ABBEY is the official festive collection from the much loved, award-winning television series, Downton Abbey. Transport yourself back to a simpler time and enjoy this two CD collection of well-known carols and hymns, which have been carefully curated to evoke the CHRISTMAS AT DOWNTON ABBEY spirit. CHRISTMAS AT DOWNTON ABBEY brings together the ultimate classic carols & hymns collection plus exclusive new recordings of traditional carols from Downton Abbey cast members Elizabeth McGovern (Lady Cora) and Julian Ovenden (Charles Blake) plus a special, spoken word Christmas story read by Jim Carter (Mr. Carson). Added to this, Downton Abbey composer John Lunn has written a new and exclusive extended seasonal suite version of the Downton Abbey theme music, part 1 & part 2 open each disc.

Bessie Smith was not only the first significant female blues singer to emerge during the early electric recording era, but her influence and reputation is such that she is still rightly hailed as the most important and greatest female blues artist in the annals of the genre, rightly given the title "The Empress Of The Blues". Her recording career was compressed into the decade covered by this collection, her career being blighted by the Depression, although she was actively performing and expanding her audience when she was killed in a car crash in 1937. This excellent value 48-track 2-CD set is selected from the 160 recordings she made for Columbia, and does not duplicate any titles which appear on the Fabulous label's existing Bessie Smith 2-CD set "Bessie Smith Greatest Hits" (FADCD2004), and so the two together will give collectors around half of her entire recorded output, including some lesser known material alongside the famous classics. During her career, she recorded with eminent musicians of the day accompanying her and most of them are featured in this collection, including Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Clarence Williams, Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden and Don Redman.

GROUND BENEATH OUR FEET

Cornettist Red Nichols led one of the most successful of white jazz ensembles during the late 20s and early 30s with his 'Five Pennies', a marvellous band that featured such top jazzmen as Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Miff Mole, Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti! Fabulous. 2003.

This continues the strand of R&B and country collections associated with Acrobat's highly popular "America's Greatest Hits" series, this one focusing on the top R&B records in the US Billboard charts during 1960. This great value 115-track 4-CD anthology includes, with the exception of certain records which are unavailable for inclusion due to copyright restrictions, just about every record which peaked in the Billboard R&B Top 15 during that year. By this time, the R&B scene had evolved considerably as the rock 'n roll scene had matured and Tin Pan Alley had marketed it's teen-oriented offshoots, and there was an exciting feel to the charts, with substantial crossover of pop artists into the R&B chart and vice versa, with artists like Jackie Wilson, The Drifters, Ray Charles and Sam Cooke. The big chart winner of the year was Brook Benton, with three No. 1s and 23 weeks at the top, fourteen of those with Dinah Washington. With the blurring of the boundaries between the genres, the more traditional blues and R&B artists whose music had helped lay the groundwork for rock found it harder to reach the top positions. However, there was still a solid representation of old school blues artists like B.B. King and Jimmy Reed, and top class R&B singers like Etta James, Bobby Bland and James Brown formed the core of the chart, as well as the first chart incursions from the Motown stable by Barrett Strong and Marv Johnson. As with all these collections, it provides a window onto a dynamic and exciting musical environment, and includes a number of unfamiliar names and recordings of which even enthusiasts of the genre may not be too aware, and which will be welcome additions to their collections. It contains a 12,000+ word booklet featuring background notes on every record.

As the 1950s drew to a close, Monk's relationship with Riverside was beginning to sour over disagreements concerning royalty payments. He would not record another studio album for Riverside after 5 by Monk by 5, and a significant number of live albums followed, which showcased a variety of legendary performances across the USA, France and Italy. In 1962, Monk signed to Columbia Records. Working with producer Teo Macero on his debut for the label, the sessions in the first week of November had a stable line-up that had been with him for two years, Monk's Dream, was released in 1963. Columbia's resources allowed Monk to be promoted more heavily than earlier in his career. The album would become the best-selling LP of his lifetime, and on February 28, 1964, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, being featured in the article "The Loneliest Monk". He continued to record studio albums, including Criss Cross, also from 1963, and Underground, from 1968. Monk had disappeared from the scene by the mid-1970s, and made only a small number of appearances during the final decade of his life. His last studio recordings as a leader were made in November 1971 for the English Black Lion label, near the end of a worldwide tour with the Giants of Jazz, a group which included Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon and Art Blakey. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was established in 1986 by the Monk family and Maria Fisher. It's mission to offer public school-based jazz education programs for young people around the globe, helping students develop imaginative thinking, creativity, curiosity, a positive self-image, and a respect for their own and others' cultural heritage. In addition to hosting an annual International Jazz Competition since 1987, the Institute also recently helped, through it's partnership with UNESCO, designate April 30, 2012, as the first annual International Jazz Day. Monk was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

BAROQUE DIVAS / VARIOUS

Two CD set. Die Zauberfl�te is the sixth installment in DG's Grammy-nominated Mozart opera series. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised Villaz�n's "comic talent" in his first Papageno, "achieving 'heights of emotion' with the captivating Regula M�hlemann's Papagena," as well as the "magical tenor" of Klaus Florian Vogt as Tamino, Christiane Karg's "lyrically perfect Pamina" and the "imposing" Franz-Josef Selig's Sarastro, all under the baton of "genuine Mozartian" Yannick N�zet-S�guin.

2011 six CD release, the second box in the Maurizio Pollini Collection. From the outset of his recording career, Maurizio Pollini has championed modern music - in benchmark accounts of Bart�k, Boulez, Manzoni, Nono, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Webern, to which can be added his later recordings of Debussy and Berg. Here are his complete recordings of 20th-century music, brought together on a six CD set for the first time. His benchmark survey of 20th-century music, from Debussy to Boulez.

GRAND CONCERT OF MUSICK: ARCHIV PRODUKTION COMPACT

CANTATAS

SYMPHONY 4 & 7 / SWAN OF TUONELA / TAPIOLA

AH MIO COR: HANDEL ARIAS

AGE OF PUCCINI

Mozart's don Giovanni opera in 2 acts. Sung in Italian; libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte on 3 compact discs. Program notes by Stefan Kunze and synopsis by Brigit Brocks, both in German with English and French translations, and Italian libretto with English, French and German translations (317 p. : ill., fascisms.) included. Recorded Oct. 1988 in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.