Since the advent of acid jazz in the mid-'80s, the many electronic-jazz hybrids to come down the pipe have steadily grown more mature, closer to a balanced fusion that borrows the spontaneity and emphasis on group interaction of classic jazz while still emphasizing the groove and elastic sound of electronic music. For his second album, French producer Ludovic Navarre expanded the possibilities of his template for jazzy house by recruiting a sextet of musicians to solo over his earthy productions. The opener "Rose Rouge" is an immediate highlight, as an understated Marlena Shaw vocal sample ("I want you to get together/put your hands together one time"), trance-state piano lines, and a ride-on-the-rhythm drum program frames solos by trumpeter Pascal Ohse and baritone Claudio de Qeiroz. For "Montego Bay Spleen," Navarre pairs an angular guitar solo by Ernest Ranglin with a deep-groove dub track, complete with phased effects and echoey percussion. "Land Of..." moves from a Hammond- and horn-led soul-jazz stomp into Caribbean territory, marked by more hints of dub and the expressive Latin percussion of Carneiro. Occasionally, Navarre's programming (sampled or otherwise) grows a bit repetitious -- even for dance fans, to say nothing of the jazzbo crowd attracted by the album's Blue Note tag. Though it is just another step on the way to a perfect blend of jazz and electronic, Tourist is an excellent one.© John Bush /TiVo

The music on this album comes from the first generation of the flute's existence as a solo instrument. Its status grew rapidly, and by the late 1730s, a Paris publisher saw money in issuing six violin-and-keyboard sonatas by Arcangelo Corelli in flute arrangements. These are rendered here by Baroque flutist Anna Besson and a pair of other crack young historically oriented players, and they are quite energetic, retaining the virtuosity of the original violin works. The major news here, though, is the group of pieces by French composer Jean-Baptiste Quentin (ca. 1690-ca. 1742), a younger follower of Corelli. These have never been recorded before, and they are fascinating. Quentin, like Corelli, was a violinist, and Quentin probably followed Corelli's French publisher in writing violin music that would work on the flute as well. Certainly, the figuration and the melodic content owe something to Corelli, and the movements have Italianate titles, mostly tempo indications, rather than following French practice. Yet there is something quite French about them, coming from the ornamentation and from the peculiar graceful sentimentality in the melodies. It is a really unusual mix, and the album is worth one's money or time for these alone, in addition to the fact that it exposes some excellent young Baroque players in lively, sparkling performances.© James Manheim /TiVo

History will undoubtedly enshrine this disc as a watershed the likes of which may never truly be appreciated. Giant Steps bore the double-edged sword of furthering the cause of the music as well as delivering it to an increasingly mainstream audience. Although this was John Coltrane's debut for Atlantic, he was concurrently performing and recording with Miles Davis. Within the space of less than three weeks, Coltrane would complete his work with Davis and company on another genre-defining disc, Kind of Blue, before commencing his efforts on this one. Coltrane (tenor sax) is flanked by essentially two different trios. Recording commenced in early May of 1959 with a pair of sessions that featured Tommy Flanagan (piano) and Art Taylor (drums), as well as Paul Chambers -- who was the only bandmember other than Coltrane to have performed on every date. When recording resumed in December of that year, Wynton Kelly (piano) and Jimmy Cobb (drums) were instated -- replicating the alternate non-Bill Evans lineup featured on "Freddie the Freeloader" on Kind of Blue, sans Miles Davis of course. At the heart of these recordings, however, is the laser-beam focus of Coltrane's tenor solos. All seven pieces issued on the original Giant Steps are likewise Coltrane compositions. He was, in essence, beginning to rewrite the jazz canon with material that would be centered on solos -- the 180-degree antithesis of the art form up to that point. These arrangements would create a place for the solo to become infinitely more compelling. This would culminate in a frenetic performance style that noted jazz journalist Ira Gitler accurately dubbed "sheets of sound." Coltrane's polytonal torrents extricate the amicable and otherwise cordial solos that had begun decaying the very exigency of the genre -- turning it into the equivalent of easy listening. He wastes no time as the disc's title track immediately indicates a progression from which there would be no looking back. Line upon line of highly cerebral improvisation snake between the melody and solos, practically fusing the two. The resolute intensity of "Countdown" does more to modernize jazz in 141 seconds than many artists do in their entire careers. Tellingly, the contrasting and ultimately pastoral "Naima" was the last tune to be recorded, and is the only track on the original long-player to feature the Kelly-version of the Kind of Blue quartet. What is lost in tempo is more than recouped in intrinsic melodic beauty. Both Giant Steps [Deluxe Edition] and the seven-disc Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings offer more comprehensive presentations of these sessions.© Lindsay Planer /TiVo

There is a special magic in the music of the Polish-Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg. After Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla's Deutsche Grammophon debut in 2019, the conductor continues her very personal mission to make Weinberg's important work accessible to the widest audience possible in outstanding recordings. This is here the second volume. © Deutsche Grammophon

Changing Places,  Tord Gustavsen’s first trio album on ECM in 2002, immediately laid the foundations for a unique sound which combines the minimalist, contemplative nature of Scandinavian jazz with a more spiritualistic approach. It takes inspiration from both gospel and Nordic folk hymns, and Gustavsen has deviated very little from this aesthetic path. Even though he’s offered us some musical projects with more developed orchestrations over the years, mostly with singer Kristin Asbjørnsen and saxophonist Tore Brunborg (Restored, Returned), the trio has remained the preferred medium of this Norwegian whenever he plays in concert. It seems to be the format that allows him to best capture everything he wants to say through music. He returned to this trio format in 2018 with his record The Other Side, and he seemed to pick up exactly where he left off with Being There ten years earlier. In his latest album, Opening, Gustavsen is still accompanied by the faithful Jarle Vespestad on drums. However, this time, he disrupts his beautifully balanced compositions with double bassist Steinar Raknes. Raknes modifies the collective dynamic not only through new avenues of instrumental dialogue but also through the electronic effects on his instrument, leading to a real revolution in the sonic identity of the ensemble. Gustavsen’s signature sound can still be heard on the tracks that open the album, with music that’s both sensual and meditative. It develops organically and there’s an ever-present sense that there’s more to this music than meets the ear. From intentionally simple tracks with incredible melodic power, the atmosphere of the album gradually and almost imperceptibly changes as it progresses, due to the increasingly prominent use of electronics. Drenched in an atmospheric aura laiden with complex textures, this music follows the evanescent beat of pointillist drums. The fluid piano echoes with nostalgia and the music takes on an almost cinematographic suspense. It feels like a prelude to an event that always happens offstage. With Opening, Tord Gustavsen has undeniably opened a new chapter in this trio’s musical story. © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz

Spanning dub, progressive house, tribal, and alternative dance, the duo's debut was one of the most successful electronic albums of the 1990s.© TiVo

This is a nicely programmed album consisting of French song cycles spaced several decades apart from the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of them, the Mélodies Persanes ("Persian Songs") of Saint-Saëns, is not a common item; with its bouncy text-setting, nobody would compare it to the deep Eastern influences woven into various Ravel works, but then, Ravel was inspired to execute those by listening to Saint-Saëns. In Berlioz's Les nuits d'été and Ravel's Shéhérazade, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux has plenty of competition, but there is less for the Saint-Saëns. Another attraction is the work of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo under conductor Kazumi Yamada, neither a household name. The group is velvety smooth in the Berlioz cycle, with quiet and perfectly controlled string sound throughout. The strings match the voice of Lemieux beautifully; both have a luxuriance that fits the extravagantly Romantic texts of the Berlioz. So, everything is in place here, and listeners' reactions to the whole are likely to come down to their feelings about Lemieux's voice itself. It has a rapid, confident vibrato that is remarkably pitch-accurate as it moves up and down within her range. To these ears, it is beautiful. It also doesn't vary much according to the text; the Saint-Saëns songs and Ravel's Asie, which are intended to evoke exotic melodic traits, sound much like the Berlioz. A bit of sampling will likely determine one's enjoyment of the album in general, and there are certainly many things to like here.© James Manheim /TiVo

When it dropped in 1994, the Beastie Boys' fourth album was initially received as a "more of the same" effort that expanded on the alt-punk-funk-rock-rap of Check Your Head—and it's true that Ill Communication is their first album that doesn't feel like a brash reinvention that does something entirely new from its predecessor. But it's also the best exhibition of how the Beasties effectively found a way to make all their disparate references and enthusiasms cohere into something distinctly theirs. It's not just hard to imagine any other '90s group this equally conversant in late-Golden Era hip-hop ("Root Down"; Q-Tip feature "Get It Together"), hardcore punk ("Heart Attack Man"; "Tough Guy"), and garage-funk jams ("Futterman's Rule"; "Ricky's Theme") while also delivering the absolute scream-the-walls-down pinnacle of aggro rap-rock ("Sabotage"). It's that they do all this stuff with the level of commitment and bravado of a crew who channeled their always-present snotty defiance to increasingly positive and introspective ends. MCA's misogyny-rebuking verse on opener "Sure Shot" and his Buddhist awakenings on "Bodhisattva Vow" carry a lot of that weight, but Ad-Rock and Mike D also back up this emergent identity of anti-slacker, pro-unity DIY communalism running through that feels like the perspective of artists who realize they're building a deeper legacy than they originally thought. And though there's still plenty of room for goofy vulgarity, by this point it's easy to hear the Beasties' in-progress maturation efforts as a well-struck balance between pop-culture-addict irreverence and activist-adjacent '90s bohemian philosophy that's aged surprisingly well. © Nate Patrin/Qobuz

The Hantaï brothers – Marc on traverso and Pierre on the harpsichord – give us here everything Bach “really” composed for flute and harpsichord, as some possible falsely attributed works are not featured here. Compared to the violin – which counts six sonatas and partitas for solo violin and six sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord – the transverse flute may look like the forgotten sibling in the Kantor’s works. But at the time the transverse flute was still a very recent instrument, that had just come (back) from France (where it was called the “German flute”) and Bach only started using it in his cantatas around 1721-1722, and therefore only had a very limited dedicated repertoire. These four sonatas are anything but a collection. Two are missing to reach the sacred number of six. Furthermore, they were composed over a period of twenty years. And while one may be tempted to confer them the balance and symmetry desired by the arranger – two sonatas with obbligato harpsichord (BWV1034 and 1035), two with basso continuo (1030 and 1032), two in minor, two in major, two in three movements, two in four, two in E, and two fifths ascending or descending from this central E, etc. –, all of it might be merely fortuitous; they are rather a “blended” family. However these works for flute have in common the fact of being clouded by great uncertainty – whether it is about their chronology, the date of composition, the intended recipient, their form, their main instrumentation, their creation… So all is left for the listener is to experience them, performed here on a flute made by Joannes Hyacinth Rottenburgh (first half of the 18th century) from Brussels, and a harpsichord after Mietke (Berlin) made in 1702. © SM/Qobuz

A large reason that Dead Can Dance tours and performances were so praised by hardcore fans lay in the band's welcome preference for unknown and otherwise unheard material, rather than simply rehashing expected numbers. Bootlegging of these tracks and performances was understandable and widespread, so involved and passionate was the band's following. Recorded at a Los Angeles performance from the Into the Labyrinth tour, the astounding Toward the Within shows that the band's magic was clearly not simply something created in studio. Both lead performers are simply in excelsis, their vocal abilities hardly diminished by the rigors of the road -- if anything, they sound even more inspired as a result. The range of instruments tackled is testimony to the group's breadth, from the yang ch'in, a Chinese equivalent to hammered dulcimer, to a wide range of drums. As for the songs, only four of the fifteen had been officially released before, including fine takes on "Cantara," "Song of the Sibyl" and "Yulunga (Spirit Dance)." As for the numerous new delights, Perry has a number of solo or near-solo tracks he performs with acoustic guitar. These include the lovely "American Dreaming" and the mystical set-closing "Don't Fade Away," calling to mind Tim Buckley's sense of scope and vision. Gerrard's unquestioned highlight is the combination of "Tristan" and "Sanvean," the latter of which is an awesome, widescreen number that became an undisputed highlight on her solo debut The Mirror Pool. Perhaps the most astonishing numbers are "Rakim," featuring a striking intertwining of Perry and Gerrard's singing, and a version of Sinead O'Connor's "I Am Stretched on Your Grave" that redefines passionate drama.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

When it dropped in 1994, the Beastie Boys' fourth album was initially received as a "more of the same" effort that expanded on the alt-punk-funk-rock-rap of Check Your Head—and it's true that Ill Communication is their first album that doesn't feel like a brash reinvention that does something entirely new from its predecessor. But it's also the best exhibition of how the Beasties effectively found a way to make all their disparate references and enthusiasms cohere into something distinctly theirs. It's not just hard to imagine any other '90s group this equally conversant in late-Golden Era hip-hop ("Root Down"; Q-Tip feature "Get It Together"), hardcore punk ("Heart Attack Man"; "Tough Guy"), and garage-funk jams ("Futterman's Rule"; "Ricky's Theme") while also delivering the absolute scream-the-walls-down pinnacle of aggro rap-rock ("Sabotage"). It's that they do all this stuff with the level of commitment and bravado of a crew who channeled their always-present snotty defiance to increasingly positive and introspective ends. MCA's misogyny-rebuking verse on opener "Sure Shot" and his Buddhist awakenings on "Bodhisattva Vow" carry a lot of that weight, but Ad-Rock and Mike D also back up this emergent identity of anti-slacker, pro-unity DIY communalism running through that feels like the perspective of artists who realize they're building a deeper legacy than they originally thought. And though there's still plenty of room for goofy vulgarity, by this point it's easy to hear the Beasties' in-progress maturation efforts as a well-struck balance between pop-culture-addict irreverence and activist-adjacent '90s bohemian philosophy that's aged surprisingly well. © Nate Patrin/Qobuz

While Angela Hewitt is renowned for her exquisite recordings of the solo keyboard music of JS Bach, her playing with flutist Andrea Oliva on this 2013 Hyperion release must be judged as a collaborative act. Oliva and Hewitt play Bach's flute sonatas (the three genuine sonatas and three attributions) on modern instruments, so there's no room for quibbling about the authenticity of the instrumentation. Indeed, both musicians display a fine sense of Bach's aesthetics and understanding of what sounds right, so only a grudging purist would resist their naturally appealing musicianship in favor of a clinical performance on Baroque instruments. The interpretations are straightforward and tasteful, allowing for some freedom in ornamentation but never to the point of fussiness, and the openness of expression fits well with the bright and even robust sound of the flute and the piano. This recording demonstrates the importance of putting musicality and expressive depth over the dry mechanics or historicity of playing Bach, and there is considerable pleasure to be derived from these highly artistic readings. Hyperion's sound is clear and spacious, yet close enough to give Oliva and Hewitt presence.© TiVo

Released just as punk was taking hold on the public's imagination in America and making groups like Jethro Tull seem like dinosaurs on their way to extinction, Bursting Out became a seemingly perpetual denizen of the cutout bins for years afterward. However, it happened to be a good album, a more-than-decent capturing of a live Tull concert from Europe. The sound is remarkably good, given the group's arena rock status at the time, and the repertoire is a solid representation of the group's history, going all the way back to "A New Day Yesterday" from their second album and up through 1978's Heavy Horses, with stops along the way for "Bouree," "Aqualung," "Locomotive Breath," "Cross-Eyed Mary," and a compact reprise of Thick as a Brick. Some of these tracks work better than others -- the tendency here is to play loud and hard, and sometimes that just doesn't translate well on record; seeing "Locomotive Breath" probably worked better than hearing it.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

There are dozens of compilations of music by Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango, one of the great globetrotters in world music, who brought the sound of his trademark “Soul Makossa“ (that had little actual makossa in it) to Europe, the United States, Asia, and beyond. He has recorded with everyone from Sly & Robbie to Fela Kuti to Don Cherry. He has been recording since the 1960s, and criss-crossing the globe since 1972. That said, of all the compilations out there, this one is unique. First of all, its 17 tracks are all previously unreleased. Secondly, recorded in both France and in New York, the music contained herein was written and recorded for soundtracks and library recordings; meaning, of course, that apart from cinema, this music appeared in television programs and in commercial radio and television advertising. The list of musicians and complete discographical information is unavailable, but the French Fremaux & Associes imprint that compiled these sides has done an admirable job of getting Dibango to go into his memory banks and offer at least partial details. All of these tracks were cut between 1971 and 1975. The French recordings were easier because they contained players from his Parisian band: Jacques Bolognesi, Ivan Julien, François Jeanneau, and Slim Pezinhere. The sides recorded in New York contained guest musicians that were all jazz superstars, including drummer Tony Williams, bassist Buster Williams, and pianist Cedar Walton. Not surprisingly, the sounds here are of a wide variety, they are not only appealing, but stellar. The styles range from the Afro-beat sounds in “Lagos Go Slow,” to the funky, African jazz of “Da Bush a Bush,” to the Gato Barbieri-influenced Afro-Cuban jazz funk in “Blowin’ Western Mind,” to straight-up exotica funk on “Aphrodite Shake.” This set offers the many sides of one of Africa’s and the world’s most diverse musicians at his very best. Anyone who’s ever been interested in Dibango’s music will want this set. There are liners by Benjamin Goldstein, Jacques Denis, and Patrick Fremaux, and though they hold less actual historical information than the music fanatic would necessarily desire, they are aesthetically and culturally informative. In true label fashion, this set is attractively packaged and competitively priced.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

The rediscovery of music by female composers came a bit later to France than it did to Britain or the U.S., but the new label La Boîte à Pépites is changing that with a series of generous releases illustrated by nifty drawings of the composers. The label does a real service here with this double-album revival of vocal music by Rita Strohl (songs, plus a fascinating set for narrator and piano), who lived from 1865 to 1941. It is hard to understand the neglect of her music, which was praised by Henri Duparc and programmed by Pablo Casals in its own time. In these songs, it is a bit hard to hear the "compositrice de la démesure" ("composer of excess") promised by the album's subtitle; perhaps that is still to come in the label's series, but Strohl did expand upon her models -- Franck, with some Wagner and Debussy -- in striking ways. Perhaps the best-known Strohl work so far is the uniquely dramatic and programmatic cello sonata called Titus et Bérenice, presumably still to come from La Boîte à Pépites. However, the songs here are hefty in their ambition and reach, sounding in no way derivative of anybody else. Strohl offers her own set of Pierre Louÿs' lesbian Songs of Bilitis that could easily be programmed with Debussy's set of three. The second disc in the set is devoted mostly to settings of Baudelaire and other poets; the two cycles, written in 1891 and 1894, would have been received as entirely contemporary in their time. Most interesting of all is the set of narrations, titled Quand la flûte de Pan; they have Symbolist texts by the little-known Marie de Courpon, who was also a composer, and the relationship between text and music is fluid. The performances are by major artists, including the soprano Elsa Dreisig and baritone Stéphane Degout, which bodes well for the future of a series that has started promisingly indeed.© James Manheim /TiVo

In the 60 years since John Coltrane's Giant Steps was released, the album has (justifiably) taken its place in the pantheon of classic albums. However, upon its release in early 1960, it was just the Atlantic Records debut of a hotshot saxophonist who had made a name for himself with Miles and Monk and recorded a few albums as a leader (and countless albums as a sideman) on Prestige. He was widely recognized as a technical talent, capable of dazzling and dizzying solos, but his compositional skills had only been showcased properly on one album: the (less justifiably) classic Blue Train, which was released in 1958 and was more clearly related to the hard bop of the day. Now, with a multi-year contract with Atlantic in hand, Coltrane was able to focus his label debut on his own material, positioning himself as a mature, confident, and singular artist, rather than as a gunslinger-for-hire. Everything on Giant Steps is a Coltrane composition, with a deep focus on harmony, phrasing, and melody. The album is intensely inventive from a structural standpoint—it's here that the "Giant Steps" chord progression (a.k.a. "the Coltrane Changes") makes its debut, as does the soon-to-be Coltrane standard "Naima," the themes of which would make their way into some of his most experimental and free-flowing future concerts. There's also plenty of blues ("Cousin Mary"), bouncing blasts of joyful lightness ("Syeeda's Song Flute"), and improvisational pyrotechnics ("Mr. P.C."), and the album swings so hard and is so emotionally evocative, it's easy for a listener to overlook just how epochal it was. This is the album that—along with Kind of Blue a year earlier—effectively closed the door on bebop. Coltrane's compositional approach here opened the door to his probing, analytical take on spiritual improvisation over the next few years. Of course, thanks to the luxury of having two days in the studio—far longer than a typical blowing session—he was able to get it right, resulting in a perfect album ... as well as several reels of outtakes. A raft of those appear on this 60th anniversary "Super Deluxe” edition—eight alternate takes and 20 additional outtakes (many of which are previously unreleased) flesh out this collection. Few of them provide much insight or improvement on the album versions and the inclusion of an alternate take of the Coltrane Jazz track "Like Sonny" (recorded contemporaneously with "Naima" on a different date than the rest of Giant Steps) is a bit of a stretch. This latest remastering, while spacious and alive, doesn't improve substantially upon Bill Inglot's 1998 remaster; in fact, one could argue that the 2014 mono remaster is an even more rewarding listening experience. But having a few "definitive" versions of a classic album—one that has been continuously in print and remastered/reissued/updated several times since its original release—is not a bad problem to have. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Leftism spans most of Paul Daley and Neil Barnes' singles output from 1992 to 1995 (excepting only "Not Forgotten") and adds several new tracks. Far from being just a stale progressive house LP, it spans a wide range of influences (tribal, dub, trance) and includes a good mixture of vocal tracks (with Toni Halliday, John Lydon, and Earl Sixteen) and instrumental workouts.© John Bush /TiVo

"Vieux pays merveilleux des contes de nourrice" (‘Old marvellous land of nursery tales’): These few words describe the irresistible and striking interpretation of Ravel's Shéhérazade, now of a bygone era. The timbral lows and highs radiate from Egyptian soprano Fatma Said’s voice. Her exemplary diction shines. Each word is intelligible and each sound exists to colour the word, emphasising its meaning. Nobody would have thought that the singer’s extremely versatile musicality – reminiscent of Regine Crespin’s vibrant performances – would find an even greater versatility in the orchestral version, with Malcolm Martineau’s beautifully timbred and precise piano occasionally slowing things down.The program completely immerses itself in Spain, with Rafael Aguirre’s subtle guitar substituting itself for Martineau’s piano. Other facets of Fatma Said’s voice are her musical agility and ethereal spirit, which are revealed in the two Falla pieces. The Canción de Marinela by José Serrano, where her voice thickens, will remain an unforgettable moment of sweet sensuality. It's easy to start dreaming of Said exploring some other roles in zarzuelas, for which she would be divine! The three songs by Federico García Lorca, excerpts of the 13 Canciones españolas antiguas, are rather modest and of a noble elegance, even in the carnal arabesques of Nana de Sevilla. This is the perfect transition for the ‘Arabic’ songs that Fatma Said chooses next.She introduces, for example, a pretty melody from Egyptian composer Gamal Abdel-Rahim (1924-1988), before flying off into the gorgeous Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe by Bizet where Burcu Karadağ's nev (a sort of reed flute) improvises in counterpoint alongside the vocals. The last four pieces return to the Egyptian and Lebanese standards, in a jazzy and nostalgic atmosphere. This is a captivating album with overwhelming emotion! © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz