SunScapes features a new Ambient Music concept that has received strong feedbacks from the many followers of the legendary Café del Mar. SunScapes is a deeply atmospheric journey featuring some of the most iconic ambient artists such as Marconi Union, Biosphere and Max Cooper.

Ivan Sokolov, born in Moscow in 1960, has made his mark both as composer and as pianist. His early compositions were avant-gardist, but he eventually rejected radicality in favour of a more traditional musical language, one with its roots in Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Rachmaninov, flavoured, perhaps, with a hint of Shostakovich. Most of the works here were composed within the last few years and are couched in the unforced lyricism of his latter-day Romanticism.

The intensity with which the Russian composer Herman Galynin (1922–66) lived his short life is reflected in the extraordinarily high voltage of his music. In spite of a difficult start in life – he was an orphan – his instinctive musicality combined with the impulsiveness of his personality to make him one of the best known of Soviet composers while he was a student. Although mental illness put an early end to his meteoric career, the wild, freewheeling energy of his compositions – as witness these five works for strings – leave little doubt that Galynin would have been one of the major musical voices of the second half of the twentieth century; as it is, what he did achieve is remarkable.

DJ-Kicks is a 1999 "mixtape" compilation released by Thievery Corporation as part of !K7 Records' DJ-Kicks series. This was released on !K7's label Studio !K7.

The English composer Christopher Wright, born in Suffolk in 1954, declares that he is ‘not fettered by fashion, style, ideology or gimmickry or some insatiable desire to be original’; instead, he writes music that aims to communicate directly with the listener – although it can also be thorny and challenging. This first-ever album of his sacred choral music reveals it to be in the British-cathedral tradition of composers like Benjamin Britten, William Mathias, Bernard Rose and Malcolm Williamson: the melodic lines may on occasion be angular and the harmonies sometimes tart, but Wright’s concern with immediacy of expression ensures that the ‘personal prayers’ embodied in these pieces can be readily understood and appreciated.

Born in Russia, Victoria Borisova-Ollas has lived in Sweden since 1993. In the international music press, she has been described as ‘a composer with a sparkling individual voice’ and an ‘orchestrator of the greatest virtuosity’. This is borne out by this wellfilled disc which features five works from 2003 – 2013, in performances by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (RSPO) with which BorisovaOllas enjoys a collaboration of long standing. Angelus, which opens the disc, is also the longest work with a duration of some 22 minutes. It was composed for the 850th anniversary of the city of Munich and takes the listener on a walk through the city and its many clock towers.

Having given us acclaimed cycles of the symphonies of Schubert and Schumann, the 40-odd members of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and their conductor Thomas Dausgaard are well on their way to completing their series of Brahms’s orchestral works. Previous instalments have been praised for the transparency and clarity of the performances, virtues that are less than common in this repertoire.

"The two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms are in very stark contrast to each other. This is not solely due to the more than twenty years separating the works. Brahms had a preference for pairs of works with the same instrumentation, which he frequently composed according to the principle of contrast. In the case of the cello concertos, it is above all the character and mood of the respective pieces that describe the contrasts. In the version for cello, the Violin Sonata op. 78, one of Brahms’ finest chamber works, supplements the two original cello sonatas in a charming way.

Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser", "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed more than a thousand pieces, whereas Monk wrote about 70.

Native Wisdom: World Music Of The Spirit collects music from all over the globe in an attempt to offer an introduction to world music. Though any effort like this is bound to be incomplete, the album does indeed offer an effective introduction to broad array of musics. Neophyte listeners would be well-served by the collection, since it lets them sample a variety of styles.

Launched in 1994, Disques Cinémusique has been a mail order outlet for soundtracks on compact disc until 2000, when the company reoriented its efforts to the restoration and transfer of analog recordings to the digital medium. In July 2002, we started producing film music CDs on the Disques Cinémusique label.Disques Cinémusique has released so far 65 CDs. This output is relatively small but it constitutes quite an achievement in a country like Canada, which unfortunately has little to offer in terms of original soundtracks. Film production and, consequently, the market for film music are mainly in the United States, Europe and Japan.

There's an old saying that one is only as good as the people with whom one collaborates. Judging by the list of musical contributors to Hector Zazou's Sahara Blue, Zazou is quite good indeed. Among many others, those adding their own touch to Zazou's album include Bill Laswell, Dead Can Dance, John Cale, David Sylvian, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Tim Simenon. Zazou devised the album as a mix of musical styles set to lyrics/vocals taken from the pen of Arthur Rimbaud. While it might appear like a pretentious undertaking on paper, the album is a cohesive slice of eclectic music-making. Jazzy spoken word songs such as "Ophelie" intermingle with throbbing dance-oriented numbers like "I'll Strangle You" and quiet, peaceful piano-based meditations such as "Harar et les Gallas." Dead Can Dance duo Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard work their particular magic on "Youth," exchanging vocals, and on "Black Stream," where Perry's dark, somber synth weeps around Gerrard's stunning vocals and yang chin. Zazou himself mostly stays in the background, providing production and electronic sounds, allowing the players to showcase their abilities.

Italian pop culture icon Gianni Morandi worked his way up from the bottom of the entertainment industry. Born in 1944, as a child Morandi sold soda and candies at the local movie theater in his native town of Monghidoro to make ends meet. He made his performance debut at age 12, singing in the public square on New Year's Day, 1956. His noticeable musical talent caused his parents to move him from traditional schooling to a school in Bologna, where he studied song and performance with master vocalist Alda Scaglioni. He made his official debut in 1958 in Alfonsine, Ravenna; three years later Morandi formed a band, and was soon referred to as the Italian Paul Anka. In 1962, Morandi won a small talent competition where he met and impressed boxing and entertainment promoter Paul Lionetti, who arranged an audience with RCA executives. That same year, the world was introduced to Morandi via his premier 45, "Andavo a Cento All'ora." Morandi's popularity blossomed in 1969 with his win at the Canzonissima Festival. Although he experienced a slight decline in popularity during the 1970s, the next decade was a great era for Morandi, punctuated with his winning performance at the prestigious Sanremo Festival in 1987. Over the course of his career, it is estimated that Morandi has sold more than 30 million records.

Soul Jazz Records' new Space, Energy and Light is a collection of music by early electronic and synthesizer pioneers (from the 1960s through the 1970s), mid-1970s proto-new age gurus and 1980s guerrilla D-I-Y cassette-era electronic artists, spanning in total over a near 30-year time frame.

The Best of Andrea Bocelli: Vivere is the first greatest hits album released by Italian pop tenor Andrea Bocelli. It includes five new studio recordings and was internationally released by Sugar on 22 October 2007. Included are duets with Celine Dion, Sarah Brightman, Giorgia and Laura Pausini.