In 1976, the revolutionary singer-songwriter LAURA NYRO returned from self-imposed exile. But her comeback confounded expectations, shifting away from the impassioned intimacies of her early albums to embrace more radical perspectives. Fifty years on, Nyro’s collaborators revisit her striking second act. “She was a hip American from the Bronx,” one friend and producer tells Rob Hughes. “But her soul was old.”

Works by Saariaho and Shostakovich Dudok Quartet Amsterdam Rubicon RCD1218 59:41 mins Carrying a dedication to ‘those who have departed’, Kaija Saariaho’s Terra Memoria for string quartet, composed in

My Focus – Live Under The Rainbow

Sun Triptych Maxim Rysanov, Dasol Kim, Roman Mints et al; BBC Concert Orchestra/ Dobrinka Tabakova ECM 4878558 64:61 mins This is the second ECM disc to feature the extremely accessible music of Bulga

On the morning of 15 November 2007, Morten Lauridsen stepped onto a podium in the East Room of the White House to receive the National Medal of Arts from president George W Bush. He was 64 at the time

Mike Patton and the Avett Brothers join forces to create a work of immense beauty.