This stunning instrumental is a reasonably straight version of a classical piece by Maurice Ravel, originally written in 1899. Eumir plays piano over a dense string background, adding a tiny bit of jazz phrasing. The texture of the layered strings and piano is remarkably intense and beautiful, and the piece is quite exquisite. I expect this recording would offend classical purists, but I must admit that having heard this version first, I still like it the best. Perhaps this is down to the sheer richness of the string recording, which may be endowed by studio wizardry rarely used in classical recordings. Either way, it's really quite incredible, and I urge you to check it out.

This sounds very different from most of what I've recommended. In fact, there are days when I wouldn't want to listen to this song at all. It is pretty incredible, however. I like it both for its remarkable mood and instrumentation (this is a Phil Spector production), and for its lyrical content (a melancholic but resigned tale, remembering a love affair). Leonard sings 'A heavy burden lifted from my soul/I learned that love was out of my control', with a reverb effect on his voice, accompanied by a sweet string arrangement and a faint, echoey backing choir. His delivery is casual, yet committed - a style that definitely influenced Nick Cave.

Recorded live in Osaka on 1 February 1975, immediately before the man took a break for several years, this track makes up one entire disc of the overlooked album 'Pangaea'. Gone are the multitude of keyboard players that dominated Miles's work over the previous few years, to be replaced by brutal guitars and African percussion. The real change however is Sonny Fortune's alto sax, a welcome relief after Wayne Shorter's squeaky soprano. It lasts more than 40 minutes, but if you like mind-blowingly heavy acid-funk-rock-jazz (or early-70s Zappa) than 'Zimbabwe' is for you.

This is an uptempo, light bossa nova vocal interpretation of this song, very much in the vein of the classic Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 sound. Very nicely arranged male/female vocal harmonies, superb electric harpsicord and swirling, lush strings really make this version quite outstanding and contrasting to the Perry Como version, who popularized this song a year earlier.