Pomp and Circumstance is...

...an independent record shop and family business, specialising in classical music and jazz on CD and DVD. Established in 1994 and under new management since May 2010, we pride ourselves on

• making all visitors to the shop or website feel welcome
• our dedicated service – the personal touch
• helping customers find the kind of music they like
• an expert knowledge of not only classical and jazz, but other musical genres too
• our enthusiasm for all things musical
• our success in tracing rarities and deletions
• our expertise in identifying a piece of music a customer has heard (not knowing the title or composer), and then recommending the most suitable recording.

Pomp and Circumstance will not...

• patronise you or baffle you with musical jargon
• be impatient or discourteous should you just wish to browse
• pressure you into making a purchase.

We will order any  CD or DVD, any  genre

As music lovers we know how frustrating it is to hear a piece of music and not be able to get hold of it easily. Although we have the largest range of classical and jazz in Yorkshire, we also offer a full customer order service for music CDs and DVDs which are not in stock. We're often asked if we can order music other than classical and jazz, and the answer is an emphatic 'yes' - we've placed orders for just about every kind of music, much to the delight of our many satisfied customers! In addition, we can mail your purchases to your friends or relatives anywhere in the world. Our UK customer base ranges from Aberdeen to Whitstable, and overseas from China to the United States, so you can be confident of an efficient and timely service.

RECORD STORE DAY, Saturday 21st April 2012

This is the first time Pomp and Circumstance has participated in Record Store Day UK (RSD UK). Why? Because we felt it was important to celebrate independent record shops, many of which are like us – sole traders. Each shop is unique and proud of it!
The original idea for Record Store day was conceived and founded in the USA in 2007 as a celebration of the unique culture surrounding independently-owned record stores, not only in the USA but also internationally. The UK followed suit in 2008 and the event has grown steadily ever since. From humble beginnings, RSD UK now plays host to over 190 stores. Independent shops have a commitment to excellent customer service with a personal touch that chain stores and online suppliers can only envy. With city centres fast becoming 'everytown', it's the intriguing smaller shops in the side streets that give places a character all of their own.
With competition from huge online traders based offshore so that they don't have to pay VAT, independent shops have to work that much harder to survive. Of course, such shops have no special right to exist, but - brutal as it sounds - it's a case of 'use them or lose them'. If Record Store Day has a message, it's Support your local record shop!
On April 21, all the independently-owned record stores who signed up to support Record Store Day join forces with musicians and performers to celebrate the art of music. There will be special performances and events across the globe, alongside hundreds of exclusive products available on the day.
As part of this year's event Pomp and Circumstance will be selling some new, limited edition classical records on vinyl – something inconceivable just a few years ago. There will be complimentary refreshments and sparkling wine, and 10% off the price of CDs (excepting sale-marked and second-hand items), so do pay us a visit!
Finally, if you like our shop, why not vote for us in the Best Independent Record Shop Competition? The three shop categories are:

• Rock and alternative
• Dance
• Classical

I think you can guess which one we fall into!

Voting takes place at www.recordstoreday.co.uk and www.indierecordshop.org

For more information, visit the official RSD website on www.recordstoreday.co.uk
To see a list of all the special releases for Record Store Day 2012, visit www.recordstoreday.co.uk/exclusive-product.aspx

If you want to order any of them, email me as soon as possible as many are limited editions and stocks may well run out.

What’s new?

Buy our classical and jazz LPs on the Web

Jazz Special offers

Big discounts on new releases!

The pick of the new releases are featured in our advertisements in BBC Music Magazine and The Gramophone. We are a member of ICS – the Independent Classical Specialists - a group of independent record shops that have chosen to advertise together. Each is a unique shop with its own character, but we all offer the same generous discount on the new releases we recommend. If you want to know which these are at any given time, email me.

Kid’s stuff

We have a large selection of CDs designed to introduce children to classical music, ballet and world music. New releases include the EMI series Classical Clubhouse, retailing at £7.20 for a hardback booklet with CD. Titles include Big space adventure, Dance along, Journey around the world and Magical music box. These complement our spoken word and song CDs of nursery rhymes for the younger listener. We also stock a CD of soothing music for the mother to be and her baby – or babies! Baby to be is also £7.20. Ballet CDs for young ones are also available – I love ballet, a 2CD set @£10.25 and My first ballet album, a CD+DVD package at just £7.20. Moving on from EMI, Naxos titles include Favourite poems for children (£8.20) and Children’s favourites, an enchanting collection of favourite songs from the past. Tracks such as I’m A Lonely Little Petunia, Sparky’s Music Mix-up, I know an old lady, Popo the Puppet, The King’s New Clothes etc, sung by such unique entertainers as Burl Ives, Danny Kaye and Groucho Marx, are sure to bring back memories for the grown-ups (2CD, £14.35). Also from Naxos are Rhythm 4 Kids, a world music sing-along for children (£6.99) and a series of CDs of popular classics (Peter and the wolf, 1001 Nights, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Carnival of the Animals and others) with narration by much-loved names such as Bernard Cribbins, Brian Cant, Johnny Morris, Dame Edna Everage, June Whitfield, Prunella Scales and Angela Rippon (£6.99 each). And if you want something not listed above, we can probably get that for you too!

To place an order or make an enquiry, click here.

Let's put on the show right here!
Come and browse through our CDs and DVDs of shows and movie musicals or contact us by phone or email with your enquiry. West Side Story, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, South Pacific, My Fair Lady etc and other favourites are always in stock, but so are a lot of less well-known ones. Many are ripe for revival - are you listening, musical societies and drama groups?

Music magazines

If you like reading old music magazines, we have a large collection of back issues of the following for sale:

• BBC Music Magazine
• Classic FM Magazine
• The Gramophone
• International Record Review
• Music and Musicians
• Records and Recording.

There are too many to list, so email us giving details of the title and which issue(s) you require. We'll tell you whether or not we hold it, and give you a quote if we have.

Nostalgia is what it used to be
With recordings dating back to the 1890s there’s so much to choose from at P&C. Whether it’s bawdy music-hall ballads, poetry or songs from the First World War, or ‘Flapper’ music from the 1920s, we stock it. And moving forward in time, we also have CDs with spoken memories of the Blitz, songs that roused the Nation during World War II, to the ‘time of beginning again’ in the post-war years through to the late 1950s. If you remember a song and want us to find it on a CD, just contact us.

To place an order or make an enquiry, click here.

Organ music

We have acquired a collection of CDs featuring the 'King of Instruments', many of them rare and/or deleted. They include several releases by specialist labels based in France, Belgium, Australia and elsewhere, as well as titles from Hyperion, Priory and Regent. It's well worth a visit to the shop to browse through them, but if you can't, click here to ask for more information.

Sheet Music Search Service
Did you know that we have hundreds of pieces of vintage sheet music in all genres? Click here for more information.

You don’t have to be Jewish...
...to like Jewish music. I think any independent record shop must reflect its owner’s tastes to a degree, hence the burgeoning number of Klezmer CDs in-store. But we also have sacred music, Lieder, cabaret, traditional / folk music and comedy. A visit to the shop to browse is best but if you can’t make it, here are some suggestions:

• Tradition, a CD by violinist Itzhak Perlman. Amongst other tunes, he plays A Yiddishe Mamme quite beautifully (£10.25)
• Joshua, an oratorio by Franz Waxman (£15.40)
• Yiddish, Hebrew and Klezmer: an anthology of Jewish Music 1905 - 1952. A 2CD set of music by turns lively, melancholic and life-affirming (£16.40)
• You don't have to be Jewish / When you’re in love the whole world is Jewish were two great comedy LPs issued on the American Kapp label in the 1960s. The first sold a million in 1965, and its success prompted the follow up a year later. Both albums are full of brilliant sketches e.g. A call from Long Island, The Bar Mitzvah, Divorce - Kosher style but the second also has several clever songs including one based upon Benny Hill’s hit Ernie, the fastest milkman in the west, reborn as Irving – the 142nd fastest gun in the west (although none of the reviews I’ve read make the connection). Produced by Bob Booker and George Foster, the LPs star Lou Jacobi, Nancy Walker, Beatrice Arthur (The Golden Girls), Valerie Harper (Rhoda) and many others. At last, both LPs are available on a single CD for £16.40. I envy anyone who hasn’t heard them.
• Crooner Issy Bonn was a favourite in the thirties and forties and we always stock at least one of his CDs
• Comedy CDs and DVDs by Jackie Mason, Shelly Berman etc. Hebrew Humour features archive British music hall recordings by Max Bacon and Julian Rose. Max Bacon started as the drummer with Ambrose's Orchestra, but later went on to become a comedian. Here he performs Gershwin Lockshan-Soup Jack, Beigels, Barmitzvah boy, Shmoul - pick up the Kishke, Buy my little Ten-a-Penny Pills, I can get it for you wholesale, Even a Crooner must eat, Pancho's Widow, Holtz Myer and Cohen. I must see Annie tonight, Little Red Hooding Ride and William T-Hell. Julian Rose is famous for his depiction of Levinsky at the Wedding, the full version of which is included on this CD. As an extra, Sam Levenson gives us a lesson in Basic Yiddish (£12.30)
• Dancing on the edge of a volcano: Jewish Cabaret Popular and Political Songs 1900-1945 is a fascinating survey of this music by the New Budapest Orpheum Society. Composers include Hans Eisler, Kurt Weill, Friedrich Hollaender, Gustav Pick, Darius Milhaud and many others (2CD, £16.40)
• The Milken Archive comprises the largest collection of American Jewish music ever assembled. It covers every aspect of music – classical, sacred, Klezmer, traditional, opera and more. The Archive's primary goals are to reconstruct and preserve for current and future generations major musical manifestations of the American Jewish experience, and to reveal the intersection of Jewish composers and Jewish subject matter with some of the major genres in Western classical music. At least 50 CDs have been released by Naxos. For further details see
  http://www.naxos.com/series/milken_archive_of_american_jewish_music.htm
  
  Single CDs in the series are available from us @ £6.99.

• Musicals and shows e.g. Fiddler on the roof, I can get it for you wholesale etc. Finally, we stock CDs by the great Klezmer band Moishe’s Bagel. If you get a chance to see them live, don’t miss it!

To place an order or make an enquiry, click here.

Gift ideas for the music lover who has everything

Click here to view our gift suggestions.

Contact us to contribute your views, make comments and ask questions.