William “Big Bill” Morganfield was born on June 19th, 1956 in Chicago, Illinois. Raised solely by his grandmother, he moved to south Florida early in his life. His father, McKinley Morganfield is better known as Muddy Waters, the Father of modern Chicago blues. Despite his father’s fame and talent, Big Bill Morganfield had little contact with him throughout his life, and built up his impressive career on his own. “Big Bill” Morganfield did not start his personal career until after receiving two bachelor degrees in English and Communications and becoming a teacher. After his father passed away in 1983, he began to take music seriously, refocusing his life on these goals. Still maintaining a career as a teacher, he spent several years focusing on the craft of blues guitar and then made a strong professional debut in 1996 with his group The Stone Cold Blues Band.

Charlie Cawood is an English multi-instrumental musician, composer and music journalist, known for his cross-disciplinary musical skills as well as his work with a wide variety of projects and artists. An active member of Knifeworld, Mediaeval Baebes, My Tricksy Spirit and Tonochrome, Cawood has worked in art rock, pop, folk and early music as well as Indian, Chinese and Balinese music and a variety of other forms. In addition to his work as a supporting player, Cawood composes his own instrumental music. His debut solo album, The Divine Abstract was released on the Bad Elephant Music label on 3 November 2017. Blending multiple aspects and influences from Cawood's career to date, the album featured twenty-one musicians drawn from his varied other bands and projects, including Mediaeval Baebes, Tonochrome, Knifeworld and assorted musicians associated with his SOAS alma mater.

On the continuation of 2003's Testimony Neal Morse further explores his spirituality and pushes his musical abilities to the hilt with the enigmatically titled ?. This 12-song offering surrounds itself thematically around the Tabernacle, the biblical dwelling place of God. Drawing from references of mythology, Christianity, archeology, and history, Morse weaves a captivating narrative that is complemented by a solid stable of some of prog rock's elite. Mike Portnoy and Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater, Steve Hackett, and fellow Spock's Beard alumnus and sibling Alan Morse all make guest appearances and contribute outstanding performances to a score that is complex in technicality and a rich tapestry of cultural vocabulary. It's a refreshing release in a CCM genre filled with formulaic, pedestrian music and trite songwriting.

inexplicably, both these Quintets by Bruckner and Schmidt are rarely performed and recorded. One demands to know why these magnificent works are not part of the standard repertoire. Here the scores are given performances of the strongest advocacy by the Vienna Philharmonia Quintet. The recordings were made for Decca over thirty years ago and they remain among the finest examples of late-Romantic chamber music on record.

Reger is one of those composers more talked about than listened to—caricatured as a prolific writer of organ music with a penchant for dense musical textures. But he certainly wasn’t averse to a good tune: the two Romances abound in lush lyricism, while the magnificent A major Violin Concerto shows him continuing in the tradition of the violin concertos of Beethoven and Brahms. An unashamedly symphonic work, it’s nearly an hour long—around the same length as the nearly-contemporary Elgar Violin Concerto. No less a figure than Adolf Busch championed it—first performing it when he was just sixteen.

A tenacious Swiss melodic hard rock/heavy metal crew, Shakra emerged in the late '90s and found success in Europe in 2001 with their third full-length effort, Power Ride. Despite enduring multiple lineup changes over the years, the band has endured for over two decades, releasing dozens of well-received albums like Everest (2009), Powerplay (2013), and Mad World (2020) that balance blazing riffs, fist-pumping melodies, and crisp production with plenty of attitude.

One of the most celebrated conductors of the 20th century, Eugen Jochum was a leading interpreter of the works of Anton Bruckner. Famous for his fleet and impassioned Bruckner style, Jochum also perfectly captures the spirituality of each of the symphonies, from the first Schubertian strides of No. 1 to the bleak expanses of the unfinished Ninth.