If you ever had a choice to choose your jelly or jam with a cracker or two slices of bread, what would you select? Strawberry? Grape? Apricot? How about Freaky Jelly? Reverse is the 2017 album released by Rockshot Music.

1969's Fancy Free marked the beginning of Donald Byrd's move away from hard bop, staking out fusion-flavored territory that – at this juncture – owed more to Miles Davis than the R&B-dominated jazz-funk Byrd would embrace several years down the road. Recorded just a few months after Davis' In a Silent Way, Fancy Free finds Byrd leading a large ensemble prominently featuring Frank Foster on tenor, Lew Tabackin or Jerry Dodgion on flute, and several percussionists. But the most important piece of the puzzle is Duke Pearson's electric piano, the first time Byrd utilized the instrument.

Continuing their globalising musical quest into 2017, Nomade Orquestra return with their second album EntreMundos set for heavyweight vinyl, CD and digital release on 23rd June 2017. Recorded at Red Bull Studios, Sao Paulo, EntreMundos is like a cosmic musical playground where Ethio-jazz, Indian classical and Oriental sounds dance around Afro-Brazilian roots rhythms and Northern hemisphere jazz, funk, soul, library music and hip-hop influences. The sheer vastness of the album is astounding, Nomade Orquestra have quite literally conquered the world in sound.

Dublin 1230 Day3 is a 2CD bootleg by Irish rock band U2, recorded in Dublin, Ireland on 30 December, 1989 during their Lovetown Tour. This was released in 2017 by the Moonchild label as part of their Lovetown Tour Soundboard Series.

Since the mid-2000s, British pianist, composer, Alexander Hawkins (Evan Parker, Chicago/London Underground) has become a force to be reckoned with, largely within Europe's exploratory progressive jazz and improvising circles. As a collaborator and solo artist, the pianist transmits a distinctive line of attack, where melody and free-form extrapolations enjoy a happy coexistence. On this studio set, he teams with notable performance artist, abstract vocalist and fellow Brit, Elaine Mitchener (Phil Minton, George Lewis) for a semi-structured set highlighted by the quartet's deconstruction of some standards and free-jazz sax icon Archie Shepp's, "Blasé."

If ever there was a gathering that's true to name and a misnomer, this is it. The Reunion Project isn't a glimpse at a band reformation or a grand comeback statement, but rather an expression of shared experiences, influences, and actions. It's both a look back to earlier times and the dawn of a new adventure.

Vault Playlist Vol. 1 is a 2017 EP by American legend Alicia Keys. It is not an EP of hateration but more of a celebration of something or another. RCA made this poss.

Six original songs and two standards, modern Jazz, Fusion and Funk with alternative Rock influences. Sophisticated, yet coherent, intriguing harmonic language, wrapped with wonderfully endless grooves. Based in Los Angeles, the Israeli guitar player and composer Ayal Vishnitzer has collaborated with Canadian bass player Donovan Bullen and Venezuelan drummer Daniel Prim in the creation of this album. The three have gigged together for a some time, playing the songs and shaping up the grooves. They worked to create a vibrant and energetic feeling with constantly changing dynamic around the improvisations.

Recorded live in front of an enthusiastic crowd at the CJC jazz club in Auckland at the end of their 2015 tour, Reuben Bradley (drums), Dixon Nacey (guitar), and American bass playing legend David Friesen deliver a 70 minute set of full-on contemporary jazz.

West Dylan Thordson has composed the original score for the upcoming psychological thriller Split. The film is written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable) and stars James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Jessica Sula and Haley Lu Richardson. The movie centers around a man who endures a major loss and becomes compelled to abduct three teenage girls. Shyamalan is also producing the project with Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Insidious) for his production company Blumhouse and Marc Bienstock. The director has previously collaborated with James Newton Howard on most of his features, while his last movie and first project for Blumhouse didn’t feature an original score expect for a piano theme during the film’s epilogue, which was written by Paul Cantelon. The filmmaker previously used Thordson’s cover of the Bob Dylan song The Times They Are A’Changin at the end of his 2006 feature Lady in the Water. Split will be released on January 20, 2017 by Universal Pictures.

Haydn wrote the six quartets of Opp 54 and 55 in 1788, by now a celebrated composer across Europe and still opera Kapellmeister at Esterházy. These period instrument players, whose very name declares their affinity for Haydn, excel in the latest in their Hyperion series. Ever spry in fast movements, faultless in dexterity and intonation, they find a special warmth of feeling in the slower moments: the songful Adagio Cantabile of Op 55 No 1, the puzzling, melancholy Andante of Op 55 No 2, the dark, hymn-like first bars of Op 54 No 2’s Adagio, out of which the violin soars in almost improvised, bluesy reverie. Too many pleasures to enumerate. Try for yourself.

Modular presents a 5-song EP by Tame Impala called Currents (B-Sides & Remixes). The songs are amazing, the music is magic.

The 19th century saw huge developments in the design of many musical instruments. In some cases changes were adopted more or less universally: the fortepiano that Mozart knew, a five-octave instrument constructed entirely of wood, had by around 1900 grown into the modern grand piano with over seven octaves and a cast-iron frame. With other instruments, progress was less streamlined. As late as 1865, the natural, valveless horn of Beethoven's time remained the instrument of choice for Brahms when he wrote his famous Horn Trio, and when valves began to be introduced, makers and musicians in Germany, France and Vienna favoured different solutions, offering different results in terms of sound and requiring different playing techniques. The present disc is a unique combination of recital and history lesson, with a young British team performing music from between 1800 and 1942 on no less than eight different historic instruments: four horns and four pianos.

Funky organ and plenty of vamping – a really tight little set from the mighty Charles Kynard – who's working here with a really wide-ranging command of the keyboard! As with some of the other Mainstream Records sessions of the time, the backings here are somewhat full – arranged and conducted by Richard Fritz with a style that's almost soundtrack funk at points, but which still has a more jazzy feel overall – thanks to the space given to Kynard's organ solos, and to backings from players who include George Bohannon on trombone, Arthur Adams on guitar, and Paul Humphrey on drums. The set features a surprising cover of Joe Quarterman's classic "I Got So Much Trouble On My Mind" – one that's almost as funky as the vocal original – plus "The World Is A Ghetto", "Superstition", "Zambezi", "Summer Breeze", "Momma Jive", and "You've Got It Bad Girl".

Former Yes guitarist Peter Banks posthumously rejoins Mabel Greer for the last song on the album “The Secret” which was written to celebrate 50 years of Peter and Chris Squire joining the group in September 1967. The song includes guitar parts played by Peter Banks and is included in the album. “We did it because reading of Peter’s passing in 2013 was the catalyst for meeting Bob Hagger again and coming up with the crazy idea of re-forming Mabel Greer. The result is that we have now produced two albums, and released re-mastered BBC tapes from 1967 on the EP ‘Images’”; said Clive Bayley.