Vanessa-Mae The Violin Player [1998]
Posted by admin on July 28th, 2008
Let’s get this straight upfront: Vanessa Mae is a good violin player, but I’ve heard plenty better in the classical world today. You buy this CD not for Mae’s technique as a violinist (frankly, I’d give her just a 6 or 7 out of 10), but for her innovation - her ground-breaking album that blends the old-style classical music with pop/techno/jazz, and gives that genre of music (which had there for a while even before Mae) the kind of visibility that it did not use to have. This album is novel and upbeat, and is highly listenable both to people who like classical music and those who find it intimdating (or boring). Would especially recommend this to people in their 20s and 30s. Read the rest of this entry »
Delightful for baby and all others. Light, airy, upbeat, inspiring, refreshing. Was easy for baby and I to listen to as we both endured the early rigors and beauty of nursing! Most who heard it, loved it. Have purchased this disk many times for grandparents(2x/home and car, my car and friends. My children smile and still are comforted (3yrs/1yr) when they hear this music, me too! Enjoy! 
The sticker on the disc’s cover states that this is “a return to his solid-body electric guitar,” and while that may be true in parts, Consequence of Chaos is still pretty far from the tense, nonstop electric sizzle of di Meola’s first three albums, which are landmarks in the jazz fusion genre. And while there is plenty of electric guitar here — and a musical reconnection with Chick Corea, Steve Gadd, and Barry Miles, all of whom have previously worked with di Meola — this is still dominated by the world music and more subtle framework that have characterized the guitarist’s playing for the last few decades. The performances are uniformly excellent, and even though the approach shifts from prog to acoustic to electric and world, di Meola’s distinctive style and classy approach congeal the music with authority. “Tao” alone takes more turns than a craggy mountain road, but never gets predictable or pretentious. Di Meola knows when to hold back and when to unleash his precise, percussive, fret-shredding Latin lines, 
Billed as the first pop concert performance in Andrea Bocelli’s career, the show anthologized on Under the Desert Sky was taped at the Lake Las Vegas Resort and featured an elaborate stage production from David Foster and Humberto Gatica, the pair who made a crossover hit out of Bocelli’s 2006 album Amore. It’s packaged as a CD/DVD combo, with a peculiar emphasis on the DVD side, since it includes more than twice as many songs as the CD. The audio portion has only five songs from the concert, plus four studio duets that are leftovers from the Amore sessions (one is actually an edited version of a song that did appear, Stevie Wonder’s “Canzoni Stonate”). The highlight of the duets is unquestionably “The Prayer,” which Foster wrote with Carole Bayer Sager for the movie Quest for Camelot. Bocelli’s vocal partner, Heather Headley, proves a great match and their harmonies reach a peak that’s barely equaled even 
Joan Baez - Greatest Hits [1996] Free MP3 Download 
Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool [1949] Free MP3 Download 
Johann Sebastian Bach, Andrés Segovia - Segovia Collection (Vol. 1): The Legendary Andres Segovia in an All-Bach Program [1990] Free MP3 Download 
Miley Cyrus: Breakout