Few young singer/songwriters have quite so quickly won the sort of acclaim that Idaho-born Josh Ritter gained with his first self-released album, which won rave reviews, earned him slots opening for Bob Dylan, and made him a minor celebrity in Ireland, where he's already headlined several tours. Ritter's second disc (and first nationally released album), Golden Age of Radio, makes it clear that his sudden success is well deserved, and based on genuine talent. Ritter's moody, evocative songs seem to reside in a middle ground between Richard Buckner and Ryan Adams, but without suggesting he's lifted anything from either of those performers.

You know what lays ahead whenever you embark on listening to a new Kreator studio album, and 2009's Hordes of Chaos is certainly no different. And that isn't meant as a knock on the band - heck, Kreator should be commended for sticking to their guns and continuing on in the same "thrash-happy" style since pretty much their inception (without bowing down to musical trends). So, that said, you can make up your own "Kreator checklist": growled vocals and intense riffing (the album-opening title track), lightning-fast tempos ("Warcurse"), tasty dual-guitar work ("Destroy What Destroys You") - it's all represented here, folks. It's been nearly four long years since Mille Petrozza and friends issued an all-new studio album, and Hordes of Chaos should most definitely meet the needs of Kreator diehards worldwide.

Eric Woolfson sings The Alan Parsons Project That Never Was is an album by the progressive rock musician Eric Woolfson, co-creator with Alan Parsons of The Alan Parsons Project, as well as main songwriter and manager of the band. Released in 2009, this was Woolfson's final album before he died of cancer in December of that year. The album includes songs that remained unreleased since the Project time for various reasons; however, as Woolfson himself remarks in the booklet, Parsons' dislike for some of Woolfson's compositions would have often caused them to be excluded from a Project album in its very early stages - such as, for example, "Steal Your Heart Away", an "unashamedly commercial" song with a conventionally sentimental lyric, which Parsons, in Woolfson's words, would have absolutely detested…

If you prefer Bach on the piano served up in heaping Romantic portions, accompanied by dollops of creamy tone, tapered phrases and languishing tenutos, Edna Stern's ravishing pianism will turn your ears to jelly. …a disc that will cause unrepentant pianophiles to jump for joy while historically informed performance mavens duck for cover.

5CD Box Set The Anniversary Edition by James Last was released in 2009 by Universal Music GmbH. James Last was a German composer and big band leader of the James Last Orchestra. Initially a jazz bassist, his trademark "happy music" made his numerous albums best-sellers in Germany and the United Kingdom, with 65 of his albums reaching the charts in the UK alone. Last is reported to have sold an estimated 200 million albums worldwide in his lifetime, of which 80 million were sold by 1973 - and won numerous awards including 200 gold and 14 platinum discs in Germany, the International MIDEM Prize at MIDEM in 1969, and West Germany's highest civilian award, the Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1978. Last's trademark sound employed big band arrangements of well-known tunes with a jaunty dance beat, often heavy on bass and brass.

James Bowman must surely be the finest vocal interpreter of Purcell today. His grasp of sentiment, his sense of timing, and his enunciation, are unsurpassed…

Anyone who has followed Abbey Lincoln’s career with any regularity understands that she has followed a fiercely individual path and has paid the cost for those choices. Through the Years is a cross-licensed, three-disc retrospective expertly compiled and assembled by the artist and her longtime producer, Jean-Philippe Allard. Covering more than 50 years in her storied career, it establishes from the outset that Lincoln was always a true jazz singer and unique stylist. Though it contains no unreleased material, it does offer the first true picture of he range of expression. Her accompanists include former husband Max Roach, Benny Carter, Kenny Dorham, Charlie Haden, Sonny Rollins, Wynton Kelly, Benny Golson, J.J. Johnson, Art Farmer, Stan Getz, and Hank Jones, to name scant few…

Blues has always been a music of comebacks, and Chick Willis is making strong, resurgent moves with this independently released album containing many of his original songs. Into his 53rd year playing music professionally, the guitarist and vocalist stays true to urban blues while making a contemporary pathway doused with soul and a little bit of a dirty-minded attitude. The music is horn-driven, fun for listening or dancing, and has all of the savvy and street smarts any veteran of this music should have. It seems his voice has not diminished one iota, while his songs suggest he's still enjoying life to the fullest. Of the six tracks written by Willis, the rocking shuffle "Houdini Blues" refers to "freakin'" things, but is more on track with a partner who tends to disappear, much to his chagrin…

Caroline Boissier-Butini’s 6th concerto for piano and flûte obligée, which she herself entitled La Suisse, was inspired by folksongs; the sources do not allow us to date the concerto precisely, but we can assume that it was composed before 1818. A return to folk melodies was entirely in keeping with the times; Beethoven, for example, used such themes, as did Carl Maria von Weber, who was born in the same year as Boissier-Butini. Her innovation, however, is to quote the “ranz des vaches”, the musical themes that would have awakened in her contemporaries an archetypal sense of Switzerland.