As an improviser of unsurpassed lyricism and technique Fred Hersch is at his most intimate and revealing in a solo setting. With 'Solo', the pianist kicks off a creatively fecund yearlong celebration of his 60th birthday with a definitive statement of his solo artistry. In many ways, 'Solo' distills the essence of Hersch's pianistic expression. Recorded in a jewel-like Catskills church at the 2014 Windham Chamber Music Festival, the set evolves with a compelling internal emotional logic all its own, flowing through Hersch's familiar solo touchstones (Jobim, Ellingtonia, Monk, originals) that turn into vessels for his supremely graceful invention. His 10th solo recording, 'Solo' joins an illustrious collection of albums that started with his riveting 1994 addition to Concord Jazz's Live at Maybeck series.

2015 two CD collection. Reach For The Sky: The Change Anthology offers the very best of Change, the innovative studio group masterminded by Jacques Fred Petrus, and brought to life by producer/arranger Mauro Malavasi and bassist Davide Romani. Change launched Luther Vandross' solo career with the #1 dance classic 'The Glow of Love' and the Top 20 UK hit 'Searching'. This 28 track collection spans the group's six albums from 1980-1985 and includes every single that made the pop, R&B, and dance charts in the U.K. and U.S., plus an exclusive bonus new disco remix of 'It's A Girl's Affair' by Mike Maurro. Reach For The Sky features a 24-page booklet with rare photos, plus definitive liner notes with brand new interviews and a track-by-track commentary by some of those who helped define Change's biggest hits, including Jocelyn Brown ('A Lover's Holiday'), Diva Gray ('Paradise'), James "Crabbe" Robinson ('The Very Best In You'), and Deborah Cooper ('Change of Heart'). Newly remastered from the original tapes and housed in a deluxe digipak adorned with Greg Porto's iconic artwork throughout, including this release's front cover. Reach For The Sky will lead Change lovers to paradise.

Madstock! is a live album by ska/pop band Madness, released on 2 November 1992. The album includes highlights from Madness' first concerts since their disbanding in 1986, on 8 and 9 August 1992 at Finsbury Park in London. The bill included Flowered Up, Gallon Drunk, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Morrissey and Madness. At the Saturday show, Morrissey wrapped himself in a Union Jack flag, attracting a group of right-wing types to gather close to the stage. This controversy ended up garnering more attention than the re-union of Madness. The album reached #22 in the UK album charts. "The Harder They Come", a cover of the Jimmy Cliff song, was released as the only single off this album and reached #44 in the UK charts.

Always' - The Very Best Of Erasure is a brand new and essential singles compilation celebrating 30 years of the band, which brings the story bang up to date. The album includes a brand new version of 'Sometimes' re-booted for 2015 by David Wrench (Hot Chip, Jamie XX & Caribou). Formed in 1985, the award-winning song writing duo of Vince Clarke and Andy Bell unleashed on the nation a succession of both influential and chart-topping pop anthems of the '80s, '90s through to today. Songs like 'A Little Respect', 'Sometimes', 'Victim Of Love', 'Ship Of Fools', 'Blue Savannah', 'Star', 'Chains Of Love', 'The Circus', 'Who Needs Love (Like That)', 'Love To Hate You', 'Drama!', 'Always' and 'Breathe', ensured a formidable presence on the singles charts complemented by five consecutive No 1 albums (including The Innocents, Wild! and Chorus) and the beginning of the worldwide Abba revival, 'Abba-esque'. This is the 3CD bookpack edition features remixes from Moby, William Orbit, BT and The Grid (Dave Ball / Soft Cell) plus 4 brand new remixes.

Hyperion’s blossoming Romantic Cello Concerto series welcomes back German virtuoso Alban Gerhardt for this sixth volume. Henry Vieuxtemps and Eugène Ysaÿe are of course best known for their blistering pyrotechnics on the violin, but each of this eminent teacher-and-pupil pairing also wrote two works—little known today, alas—for cello and orchestra, and what a revelation they are. The two Vieuxtemps Concertos contain all the elements familiar from their famous violin counterparts—long-arched melodies alongside moments of outrageous virtuoso demands. The Ysaÿe works are shorter and make ideal companions.

Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick opts for a different approach on Midwest. Four years after the song-like Skala, his sophomore ECM date that has attained "classic" status in European critical circles, he employs notions of history, folk tradition, and dislocation. This album was inspired by Eick's time spent playing the American continent; his tour began on the West Coast. When he entered the rural, upper Midwest and encountered its vast open spaces, he began to feel a sense of "home." He later learned that over the past two centuries of immigration, over a million Norwegians had settled there. After conceiving a "road" album that would begin in Hem, the village of his birth, and traverse the ocean to America, Eick enlisted violinist Gjermund Larsen (a folk musician who has contributed to Christian Wallumrød's ECM recordings), pianist Jon Balke, double bassist Mats Eilertsen, and percussionist Helge Norbakken. The compositions are all lyrical, in typical Eick fashion, but with Larsen they take on a rougher, more earthen quality.

For the present disc, Accademia Daniel have chosen solo concertos for violin, viola d’amore and bassoon, as well as a concerto that combines three bass soloists (chalumeau – a popular instrument in Darmstadt, it seems – cello and bassoon), and one of several of the composer’s Entratas “per la Musica di Tavola”, to all intents and purposes an orchestral suite, though eschewing the French overture associated with that form. All of the concertos are in the fast-slow-fast three movement form and have little in common with the Vivaldian model; in fact, the solo instrument is more just another colour on the composer’s palette. With that idea in mind, the wanton addition of a recorder to the final movement of the suite is easily forgiven. Graupner’s music takes some getting used to – what seem like normal baroque movements take some unexpected harmonic twists and turns, and his melodies frequently surprise; these players are well used to his music now, and their easy facility is reflected in some delightful performances.

Instrumental and vocal techniques are intertwined in the music of Harrison Birtwistle: he often treats the voice instrumentally and his instrumental writing has vocal characteristics. Many of his works for small ensembles, with or without voices, occupy this common ground, his highly individual style juxtaposing the static and the violently dynamic and intersecting with his fondness for ritual and myth – not least a recurrent concern with the figure of Orpheus. This recording presents some of these relatively neglected pieces, recorded live in the presence of the composer, who also talks about his songs in interview.

Killer cuts from the legendary Hamilton Bohannon – an artist who first broke big on the Brunswick label with a really unique approach to a groove! Bohannon's cuts were always funky, but never straight funk – and instead, he had this minimalist way of layering together elements that was definitely a huge influence on later disco and club – but heard here in a style that's much more raw and down to earth! The package offers up 23 tracks that come from 45s that Bohannon did for the Brunswick label – some of which have different mixes, and all of which are razor-sharp groovers that are sure to please any fan of funk. Titles include "Run It On Down Mr DJ (parts 1 & 2)", "Come Winter", "Happy Feeling", "Gittin Off", "Have A Good Day", "Bohannon's Beat", "East Coast Groove", "The Fat Man", "Red Bone", "Truck Stop", "Stop & Go", "Save Their Souls", and "The Pimp Walk".

Call it postminimalist, totalist, or maximalist, the orchestral music of Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon is big, loud, frenzied, and assertive, jam-packed with stylistic references, dense with inventive orchestration, and overflowing with virtuoso activity. Dystopia, performed by David Robertson and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is a kaleidoscopic portrait of the city of Los Angeles, created in collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison. This live recording of the work's premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, January 12, 2008, captures the energy and spontaneity of the music, which at times is quite reminiscent of the hubbub of the Shrovetide Fair in Stravinsky's Petrushka, though one must imagine that the listening experience with the film was overwhelming. In contrast, Rewriting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not so much a wall of sound as a multi-layered gloss on its original material, an echo of Beethoven's music warped and reshaped through glissandi, microtones, clusters, montage, and other modern techniques.

Tavener wrote the extraordinarily moving …Depart in Peace… following the death of his father. Written for soprano, violin, tampura and strings it features Eastern elements and a glittering setting of the Song of Simeon ; Patricia Rozario and Clio Gould are outstanding soloists in this beautiful piece. Clio Gould’s perfectly pitched and emotive violin playing takes centre stage in My Gaze is Ever upon You and Tears of the Angels . John Tavener, who passed away in 2013, was described as one of ‘ the very best creative talents of his generation ’ by The Times; these compositions are among his finest.

Iconic Jazz artist Erroll Garner's greatest concert album and one of the best selling jazz albums of all time, The Complete Concert By The Sea celebrates the 60th Anniversary of the original concert from September 19, 1955. The complete live concert recording newly uncovered by the Erroll Garner Jazz Project and digitally remastered in its entirety after six decades is produced by Guggenheim Award-winning jazz pianist and Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh Geri Allen and 4-time GRAMMY Award-winning producer Steve Rosenthal. The 3-CD box set contains the complete live Concert By The Sea including 11 previously unreleased tracks, the original edited Columbia release from 1956 and bonus material including announcer Jimmy Lyons and interviews with the Erroll Garner trio: Denzil DaCosta Best, Eddie Calhoun, and Garner himself, recorded directly after the concert.

Sandy-voiced French singer and actress Louane Emera aka Louane (born Anne Peichert) found fame as a contestant in the second season of France's The Voice in 2013. Though she didn't make the finals of the singing competition, she was cast as one of The Bélier Family in the 2014 film, which featured her singing several songs including Michel Legrand's "Je Vole." She won a César Award for Most Promising Actress for the film. That same year, she released her first single, "Jour 1," which hit the Top Ten in France; "Je Vole" climbed to number two; and she appeared on two covers collections, We Love Disney, Vol. 2 and La Bande à Renaud, Vol. 2. Her debut album, Chambre 12, arrived in 2015 and went to number one on France's album chart, also charting in Belgium and Switzerland.

Joe Walsh's catalog by this point was two albums strong and of a consistently high quality. Despite a change of lineup for So What – a wide range of musicians is used, including the Eagles' Don Henley – the sound is very similar to previous releases. A number of classic Walsh tracks are featured, including a more polished version of "Turn to Stone," originally featured on his debut album, Barnstorm, in a somewhat more riotous style. "Help Me Thru the Night," Walsh's mellowest song to date, is helped along by some fine lead and backing vocals from the band. So What sees Walsh in top form as a guitarist. Most of the nine tracks feature solos of unquestionable quality in his usual rock style. The classic rock genre that the man so well defined with his earlier albums is present here throughout, and it is pulled off with the usual unparalleled Joe Walsh ability.

This recording presents an unusual pairing of the complete string quartets by Szymanowski and Debussy. Szymanowksi is one of Poland’s most famous composers. Influences on his style are many (Bartók’s percussive and motoric drive, Ravel’s coloristic sonorities) but he found his own personal language, lush, opulent, rich and sometimes exotic, always expressing a deep emotional content. Debussy’s string quartet dates from his early years, a beautiful and romantic work, the French answer to Wagner’s richly chromatic language.