In full neoclassic mode as in the opening bars of 'Les Biches,' Francis Poulenc sounds quite a bit like Igor Stravinsky. (It's the predominance of wind instruments and the careful attention to instrumental voicing.) He shifts modes easily, and the shadow of Stravinsky disappears as smoothly as it came. Poulenc has often been taken to be a composer of trifles, of light music. His elegance and wit came at a time when music had to be profound and atonal to be taken seriously. Yet in Paris between the wars, Poulenc's music fared well. Each of his works is an evocative, tuneful jewel, unabashedly tonal yet filled with inventive chromatic turns.

Since her dense, varied, postmodernist eponymous second album illustrated that Sheryl Crow was no one-album wonder, she wasn't left with as much to prove the third time around. Having created an original variation on roots rock with Sheryl Crow, she was left with the dilemma of how to remain loyal to that sound without repeating herself on her third album, The Globe Sessions. To her credit, she never plays lazy, not when she's turning out Stonesy rockers ("There Goes the Neighborhood") or when she's covering Dylan (the remarkable "Mississippi," an outtake from Time Out of Mind).

Rockin' R&B laced with Chicago blues. An early lineup of the rock-and-soul Dynatones backs up veteran bluesman Charlie Musselwhite in a live set at the Belly Up Tavern in Solano Beach, California from 1982. Curtain Call Cocktails album by Charlie Musselwhite was released Feb 09, 1999 on the Westside label. Original 1982 live album, inc. 4 never before released cuts.

Trine Rein is an American-Norwegian singer, who belongs to the exclusive group of Norwegian artists whose album sales have exceeded more than a million records. Trine Rein released her first solo album in 1993, Finders, Keepers. It peaked at the top of the Norwegian album chart for no less than five weeks. But as she was almost unknown before the release, it took her 14 weeks - more than three months - to finally have the most popular album in Norway. And due to the extensive foreign press coverage of the Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer February 1994, her album was soon a hit in Japan as well. At one time she topped 16 different Japanese radio station charts simultaneously. Due to this immense popularity and interest on the Japanese isles, almost two thirds of the more than 600,000 albums sold of her first album were bought by Japanese fans.

Basia never had too many hits, racking up only three charting singles on the Top 100 ("Time and Tide," "New Day for You," "Cruising for Bruising"), but Clear Horizon: The Best of Basia remains an engaging listen nevertheless, because it balances those hits with strong album tracks and forgotten singles. Unlike many artists with a handful of hits, Basia made fully realized albums, but since none of them were drastically dissimilar in style, this compilation works very well. Not only is it the ideal choice for the curious and casual fan, it is truly entertaining for the hardcore fan, since it rounds up all the best cuts on one disc.

The tune known as 'La Folia' has fascinated many composers since the seventeenth century. Portuguese in origin, the word means 'mad' or 'empty-headed' and until the 1670s it indicated a fast and noisy dance in which the participants seemed to be 'out of their minds'. By the end of the century a new, slower form had developed which threw the accent from the first beat on to the second every other bar and slightly adjusted the harmonic structure to form the perfect symmetry which inspired Corelli to use it in the twelfth of his Violin Sonatas, Op 5. That famous work further inspired Vivaldi, C P E Bach, Alessandro Scarlatti and other composers to write variations on 'La Folia'—including even Rachmaninov (though his 'Variations on a theme of Corelli' seem to indicate that he thought the tune was by that composer).

Gliding ambient serenity with hypnotic hand drumming. Max Corbacho's first CD drifts over the listener like soft sand and silk, weightless wafts and gossamer veils of synthetic tone rising and falling in delicate harmony. The tone is light and dreamy, floatational and airy - atmospheric rather than oceanic, skybound rather than subterranean. The percussive content is confined to the first four pieces - here gentle loops comprised of organic beats with an ethnic flavour roll round evenly, trance-inducing, repeating until a part of the fabric of the environment. As the album progresses the introspective nature of the music increases - the beautiful Erosion lulling and spacious leading into the final three beatless tracks. The shadows pull in somewhat toward the end, Vestiges opening with a twilight moodiness that seems to open into a clear night - the listener a solitary presence in a vast panorama.

Formed in 1969 by Gerry Beckley (guitar, piano, vocals), Dewey Bunnell (guitar, vocals) and Dan Peek (guitar, keyboards, vocals) who were all sons of US Servicemen stationed in England. They achieved success with their debut single "A Horse With No Name" which showcased their pop rock vocal harmony style. Further appearances in the singles charts followed with "Ventura Highway" and "Tin Man" along with album hits. The band has seen various reincarnations as anything from a duo to a 7 piece outfit, with Dan Peek leaving in 1977 (although he did rejoin for a few live appearances). America are still touring and releasing live and studio albums and consists nowadays, in their 16th personnel line-up, of the core duo of Beckley & Bunnell with Willie Leacox (drums/percussion), Mike Woods (guitar/vocals) and Richard Campbell (bass/vocals).

Biber’s reputation as an outstanding musician led the prince-archbishop of Salzburg to poach him from the Count Liechtenstein-Castelcorn in 1670. Six years later, the composer published his Sonatae tam aris quam aulis servientes, paying tribute to the sacred and secular activities of his Salzburg patron. Under Manfredo Kraemer’s leadership, the Rare Fruits Council gives a superb account of this music. The ensemble is deftly controlled throughout and trumpets add a brilliant gloss.

The New Chamber Opera Ensemble made an impact upon me a year ago with its first recording for ASV of Charpentier’s Le mariage forcé and Les fous divertissements. Now it follows that release with a two-disc set of Rameau’s complete cantatas – seven of them, with two versions of Aquilon et Orithie – and it is another fine effort that puts them at the very forefront of the youngest generation of practitioners of period-style performance.

The King’s Singers join forces with percussion Evelyn Glennie on this disc, with commissions from composers based in Johannesburg and the Western Cape alongside Steve Martland’s Street Songs, diverse settings of English children’s rhymes. The recording of the disc was accompanied by a major international tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the ensemble.

In 1612, the Venetian editor Giacomo Vincenti accepted for publication the only work by Fergusio that is known to survive, the Motetti e Dialogi per concertar a una fino à novi voci, con il suo Basso continuo per l'Organo. Apparently he thirty-year-old Fergusio intended this publication to be the prelude to a promising artistic and editorial career. Instead, his musical career was cut short. Painful arthritis "spreading to the joints in his hands" rendered him "unable to play the organ" and "took away his will to compose and to listen to music."

… Niquet casts the three surviving grands motets from strength, with the likes of Stephan Imbodem and Véronique Gens among his other soloists. His conducting is alert, rhythmically buoyant, and attentive to both musical and word values, as the multi-tempo hurdles of “Converte, Domine” show. Details are never lost, but neither is momentum. The choral and orchestral work of Le Concert Spirituel is first-rate, with a precision that doesn’t rule out a refined color palette.