BEAT ME DADDY: THE SINGLES COLLECTION 1939-47

Vinyl LP pressing. There are perhaps few characters in the history of popular music who were as mysterious, as they were brazen than Aleck Ford, AKA Sonny Boy Williamson II. The true story of Sonny Boy Williamson II remains shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, and it seems this was Ford's intention, but to what ends, nobody can say. One thing is certain though - he was one of the all-time greats of the harmonica, a bone fide bluesman, talented and charismatic in equal measure. His influence cannot be overstated. The first incarnation of the band that would become the Rolling Stones was named after him: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys; B.B King described him as "the King of the harmonica"; and maybe there would have been no Howlin' Wolf, or Elmore James without Williamson's mentorship and support. The British Blues explosion of the late 1960s certainly owed much to Williamson and his compatriots. This carefully curated collection of this colourful and charismatic performer's work showcases just why he was one of the true legends of blues music. Interestingly, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, the same year as Sonny Boy Williamson I. It seems fitting that even in death and in honours they were inextricably linked. This collection hones in on his work that took the world by storm during his tenure with Trumpet and Checker in the 1950's and early 60's from his iconic "Eyesight For The Blind" through to "One Way Out". It is a true celebration of one of the most mysterious characters in music.

Recorded in Salzburg with the city's Mozarteumorchester and conductor Howard Griffiths, Bartlett performs Bach's Keyboard Concerto No 1 in D minor, Mozart's 'Jeunehomme' Piano Concerto and Britten's Young Apollo, which is scored for piano, string quartet and string orchestra. "When I began shaping this album, I started with Benjamin Britten," explains Bartlett. "He was a brilliant pianist, remarkable for his purity of intention, clarity of touch, and emotional honesty... When programming his own Aldeburgh Festival, Britten would often give the works of Bach and Mozart special attention. He also showed his deep admiration in the way he allowed them to influence his own compositions."

Gondwana Records is pleased to announce 'Interlude', the second album from Estonian-born, London-based composer and pianist Hanakiv. Showcasing an expanded sound, the compositions trace a journey of overcoming the past, unfolding into a seductively unconventional style imbued with hope and a therapeutic quality.

SHAKE THAT BOOGIE: LIVE IN BREMEN 1989

When grunge was mainstream, a blonde teenager from Louisiana upended the music industry by charting top 10 singles on the rock charts with his blues rock debut album Ledbetter Heights. Kenny Wayne Shepherd released Ledbetter Heights 30 years ago and he has been redefining the genre ever since. "This is the album that put me on the map," Shepherd says. "My goal has always been to make music that is unfiltered and straight from the heart and Ledbetter Heights is an album I'm very proud of." Thirty years later Shepherd is releasing a re-recorded version of that debut album, Ledbetter Heights: The 30th Anniversary Sessions. With the maturity of a seasoned musician and producer, as well as vocals featuring his longtime singer Noah Hunt, the 30th Anniversary Sessions are sure to please both old and new fans. "Revisiting this album put me back in touch with the wonder and excitement of those days. I didn't know what lay ahead at the time," he reflects, "But I'm very grateful for what came from it.

STANDARD QUESTIONS

Elsa Barraine, a notable and politically intrepid figure in her lifetime (1910-1999), is a composer whose distinctive voice is being heard again. Under it's music director Cristian Macelaru, the Orchestre national de France performs four works by Barraine: the Symphony No 1, completed in Italy in 1931; the compact, but powerful Symphony No 2, composed in 1938 and ominously subtitled 'Vo�na', the French transliteration of the Russian word for 'war'; Song-Ko� (Le Fleuve rouge) - an eight-movement evocation of the Red River which flows through Vietnam, composed in 1945, the year Vietnam declared it's independence from France, and, dating from 1959, Les Tziganes, which, as it's name implies, takes inspiration from gypsy culture. Rooted in tonality, Barraine's music is confidently and soberly crafted, it's orchestral palette both clearly defined and subtly shaded as it reflects it's times and the composer's philosophical and spiritual concerns.

Sensitive and talented, Marc Andr� is one of the few classical musicians to have chosen the double bass as a solo instrument, bringing it out of the orchestral ranks and into the spotlight. Playing a modified double bass - with a sound closer to that of a cello - for this debut album, Marc has chosen an eclectic program spanning eras and styles. From well-known melodies by Gluck to Piazzolla, with Tchaikovsky in between, the repertoire showcases the instruments full expressive range in arrangements for piano and double bass. Marc is also accompanied on two tracks by the guitarist Gabriel Bianco.

3ELEMENTS: CONVERSATIONS OF HOPE

With his powerful voice and unmistakable stage presence, Anthony Clark Evans presents a dazzling panorama of the great 19th-century baritone repertoire on this recording. The program ranges from the passionate drama of Italian verismo to the elegance of French opera and the exalted sound world of Richard Wagner. Evans opens with Leoncavallo's famous Prologue from Pagliacci, a programmatic manifesto of verismo, and continues with Giordano's searing denunciation "Nemico della patria" from Andrea Ch�nier and Puccini's dark scene from Il Tabarro. Donizetti and Offenbach provide melodic refinement and brilliant color from the Italian and French traditions, while Thomas's drinking song from Hamlet adds charm and lightness. Particular highlights are the Wagner arias - the intimate "Song to the Evening Star" from Tannh�user and the great scene of the Dutchman - where Evans's voice reveals both lyrical depth and dramatic radiance. The program concludes with central Verdi roles, from Rigoletto to Il Trovatore and Luisa Miller, showcasing the full range of Italian bel canto drama.

APHORISMEN

BEST LAID PLANS

THAT WHICH IS PLACED UPON THE ALTAR

Venezuelan trumpet virtuoso Pacho Florez wowed the packed Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms concert given by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under their chief conductor Domingo Hindoyan last year. Pacho and Domingo have a real chemistry on stage, they are old friends going back to their time in the Simon Bolivar Orchestra. This album showcases Pacho as composer as well as soloist - his own brilliant concerto Albares is vibrant, rhythmic and wonderfully written for the instrument. It, like the two other concertos on the album by Sierra and Ortiz have more than their fair share of ear worm tunes, and you won't be able to resist smiling and swaying to the infectious music.

MEMENTO

If music... showcases star countertenor Jakub J�zef Orlinski in 17 songs and arias by three composers of the Baroque era: Purcell, Handel and Fux. Perhaps unexpectedly, he is partnered not by an ensemble of period instruments but by a pianist - his long-standing colleague Michal Biel. "On this album we have combined arias and songs that inspire and speak to us, " says Jakub J�zef Orlinski. "I love thinking of albums as pages out of my diary. They are a statement of where I am as an artist." As Michal Biel, who draws on all the possibilities of a Steinway grand piano, freely admits: "If music... is not an answer to the question of how to perform these masterpieces with historical authenticity." He sees each aria or song as "a carefully considered transcription that reveals it's appeal transcending instrumentation".

Every new release from Quinsin Nachoff is a headline event, a radical combining and recombining of sonic and conceptual innovations, ever-evolving textures, powerful melodies and rhythms, that always open up new vistas for exploration while clearly marking the way back to what has come before. The album Patterns from Nature is an unashamedly ambitious showcase for his remarkable abilities as a composer and orchestrator, working within the space where the heartfelt collaborative improvisation of jazz meets the adventurous rigor of contemporary music and the depth and complexity of conceptual art. As composer, Nachoff created the closely written, intricately detailed scores for a pair of large-ensemble pieces. As bandleader, he oversaw the realisation of those scores by a hand-picked team of remarkable genre-crossing musicians, including pianist Matt Mitchell, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, bassist Carlo de Rosa, clarinetist Francois Houle, trombonist Ryan Keberle, and the internationally renowned Molinari String Quartet, supported by a large chamber ensemble conducted by JC Sanford. As interdisciplinary collaborator, he worked with physicist Dr. Stephen Morris, whose research into emergent patterns in nature informed the project's structural concepts, and four filmmakers - Tina de Groot, Lee Hutzulak, Gita Blak, and Udo Prinsen - originally conceived alongside them for a multimedia version of the work, resulting in the titular Patterns from Nature suite of four contrasting movements that engage the listener at every level.

Shye Ben Tzur/Jonny Greenwood/The Rajasthan Express -"Ranjha" / Ranjha is the collaboration between award-winning composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, celebrated composer/musician Shye Ben-Tzur, and the Indian ensemble, the Rajasthan Express. The album is a follow-up to their acclaimed 2015 debut, Junun. While Junun was recorded in a makeshift studio within the 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort in Rajasthan, India, Ranjha was created in a more intimate setting - Jonny Greenwood's studio in Oxford, England. The album features 11 new tracks, blending the group's signature cross-cultural sound with a contemporary edge. CD in 4-panel Digisleeve with photo/lyric booklet included.

SOLAR

TEMPUS

The Soul Stirrers - Never Turn Back: The Singles Collection 1940-49 / The Soul Stirrers were one of the most noted gospel groups of the post-war decades, although they were formed as long ago as the 1930s, becoming one of the innovative groups during the 1940s who moved from the traditional "flatfooted" highly arranged quartet style towards the freer "hard gospel" style of the new era. They are perhaps most famous for the period during the 1950s when the future soul legend Sam Cooke was with the group and got a hugely significant grounding the business, but among cognoscenti they are equally renowned for this period, when their lead singer was Rebert "R.H." Harris, who introduced the "swing lead" style as two singers exchanged lead vocals to build emotional intensity. This 48-track 2-CD collection comprises releases on the Bronze, Down Beat, Harlem and 20th Century labels during this era followed by most of their substantial body of recordings made for the Aladdin label from 1947 to 1949 before they joined the Specialty label, and were joined by Sam Cooke. They were one of the most influential gospel groups of the day and this collection offers, we hope, a substantial, inspiring and uplifting showcase for their bold and distinctive approach to gospel music during what was a golden era for the genre.

SOUL KING OF BESSEMER, AL

Parnassus is proud to present a new collection of first commercial releases of spectacular live performances from pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Taken from recordings made by audience members and live broadcast sources, and now remastered and restored by Gene Gaudette of Urlicht Audiovisual, Richter Supreme is a must-have collection for Richter fans. Devotees of Richter know that even he had those supreme moments in which he exceeded his extremely high standards. When producer Leslie Gerber listened to the centerpiece of this recording, a recital at Hunter College, New York in 1965, he was convinced that this performance qualified as "Richter Supreme". Throughout the performance of works by Schubert, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Prokofieff, and Rachmaninoff, the listener experiences Richter at the very height of his powers, technical prowess allied to the most penetrating musical interpretation. This concert may not introduce any new Richter repertoire, but gives us the opportunity to listen in on a master musician at the height of his powers. Completing the set are two further rarities: a 1988 Tokyo performance of Hindemith's ferocious Suite '1922', which shows Richter bringing out all the music's challenging qualities, and building the finale to an apocalyptic frenzy unlike his earlier studio recordings, and an early 1958 Budapest broadcast of the Bart�k Second Piano Concerto with the Hungarian State Orchestra under J�nos Ferencsik. A treasurable document of greatness.

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