Finzi / Collins / Philharmonia Orchestra - Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5 - Finzi: Clarinet - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

When five-time Grammy award winner Taj Mahal intersects with The Phantom Blues Band, it's one of those rare joints that hits you before you even know you've been hit. They walk in, plug in, and the whole room shifts. Studio assassins, road lifers, groove keepers and somehow still hungry. They are an internationally renowned Two-Time Grammy Award winning group. Taj Mahal's fearless, open-hearted spirit still shadows the whole thing with that genre-hopping joy. He leads you down the road with a history lesson and the Phantoms carry it with honor to the Griot. Mahal sings and plays harp as he fronts an all-star lineup of legendary musicians with the three ringleaders for the Phantoms-Johnny Lee Schell, the soulful gunslinger with tone for days, Tony Braunagel keeps the whole ship steered straight and on time, every time, and Larry Fulcher, the anchor, the heartbeat, the quiet storm on bass. Additionally, Jon Cleary, with that unmistakable New Orleans piano swagger, Mick Weaver, a session master who's playing slides in with an undeniable velvet magic, and in the horn section, Joe Sublett on sax and Les Lovitt on trumpet bring the orchestration into the full view of this genre. This band doesn't 'backInch anybody. They lift you up, carry you, and dare you to rise higher. On this record they slide through blues, soul, R&B, and island color with the ease of men who've lived every bit of it. This is deep-groove, grown-folks music from a band that still plays like the night is young.

John Anderson - Oboe Concerto & Other Concerti [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/03/1995

The Golden Age of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia OrchestraInch describes the 25 years from 1912 during which a London-born church organist took a provincial American ensemble and built it into one of the finest orchestras in the world, noted for it's precision, virtuosity, and splendid tone-color. With the advent of the microphone during the 1920s, Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra made an enormous number of 78rpm discs that would become landmark recordings. For much of this time Stokowski concentrated on basic repertoire - including Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Debussy, Mussorgsky and many others. However, side-by-side with familiar pieces went a number of works which no-one else had recorded before or, indeed, has recorded since! Although Stokowski was to record certain compositions several times over during his long career, there were a number which he recorded only once - on 78s made with the Philadelphia Orchestra. This unique collection of restored recordings brings together just those items which fall into this InchraritiesInch category, and it demonstrates Stokowski's incredibly wide-ranging musical sympathies. It covers many periods and styles, from melodies centuries old to colourful Iberian and Oriental works, together with music of 20th-century America.