Members Weeekly Music Recommendations-Oct. 16

[thebes]

As some of you are aware we had a gathering in DC this weeekend of

several forum members. At GaryMd's house and LarryC's house I got to

hear several new pieces that are new to me. It's always great to meet a

few folks and talk about gear and music.

Format's simple: Name of artist or group, name of album, type of music

as best you can (rock, blues etc.), and recording format (cd, lp etc.)

As usual I'll start it off with:

Berlioz, "Symphonie Fantastique" classical, available on either cd or lp

I'm kinda cheating because I don't own this piece yet, but Idid hear it

performed by the National Symphony on Saturday night as part of our

gathering.

Historians seem to have reached a concensus that this was written while

the composer was on opium. Not as bizarre as the previous would

seem to indicate but he certainly broke with several classical

conventions in it's compositin. He also added some instruments

not normally employed in an orchestra such as cast-iron church bells.

The first movement was to me uninvolving and the second reminded me of

the lightness of a Vianiece (sp) waltz. The last three movements

however, are stunning in the their use of instrumentation and dynamic

range. Well worth picking up a copy.

So waht do have to share this week?

[Big Piney]

Thebes, when I first heard this I thought it was the 1830's version of Black Sabbath. Or perhaps Black Sabbath was the 1960-70's version of Berlioz. Good Stuff.

[grog]

Julia Thornton - Eye of the Storm

Import CD ( England )

Category: Classical, Harp

Street Date: Jul 26, 2004

Yes this is the same Julia Thornton from Roxy Music.

This CD is not rock it is 100% pure classical and 100% pure harp. This is some great relaxing music. If you like to relax to soft classical and you love harp.... then this CD is worth a spin. I actually got this one in a little over a week ago but saved the review for this week.

01 Pavane

02 Prelude No. 1

03 Diatonic Prelude

04 Prelude No. 3

05 Prelude No. 1

06 Prelude No. 2

07 Prelude No. 4

08 Sarabande {From Violin Partita No. 3}

09 Chanson Dans la Nuit

10 Pavane & Variations

Released as a result of fan demand, Julia Thornton's Eye of the Storm has only been previously available as a limited edition cassette sold at live performances and has fast become a collector's item.

As a solo recital, Eye of the Storm is the perfect counterpoint to Julia's lushly orchestrated 2003 EMI debut 'Harpistry'.

http://www.juliathornton.net/

After winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, I studied there for 5 years, winning many prizes including the Julia Leney and Renata Schefelstein harp awards, and both the harp prizes at the Royal Overseas League competition. I was also awarded the Mathias Prize for the best performance of his Sante Fe Suite at the International Harp Competition in Cardiff.

After leaving college my career involved a mixture of teaching, orchestral and solo work. I performed with a variety of orchestras, opera and ballet company's, and gave recitals including performances at the Cambridge, Beaumaris and Cheltenham music festivals.

I began working with Bryan Ferry in October 1999. I performed both harp and percussion on his 'As Time Goes By' tour, which was a collection of 1930s standards such as the title track. Together with a band which included a jazz horn section, a piano and a string quartet, we toured for almost a year, starting in the USA, and visiting Europe, Russia, South Africa and Indonesia. My work with Bryan has taken me all over the globe, to some of the most beautiful concert halls and famous venues in history.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?&xml=/arts/2004/11/01/bmharp30.xml&page=5#3

It takes some pluck

(Filed: 01/11/2004)

While on a tour with Bryan Ferry, Julia Thornton confused the local press in Hong Kong, which ran a picture story wondering whether that was Jerry Hall, Bryan's ex, on stage. Several fans wrote to her suggesting she should be the next Roxy Music cover model.

For several Ferry and Roxy Music tours, she's been contributing both glamour and her exceptional harp and percussion playing, as well as establishing an adventurous solo career and doing sessions for newer artists such as Susheela Raman.

She says the archetypal "ethereal harpist" couldn't survive these days - the modern harp requires a lot of stamina for one thing: "There's about seven pounds' pull on each string." Thornton has also had to be tough and resilient in her career.

After finishing her studies at the Royal Academy in London, to which she won a scholarship, she found herself taking "surreal bookings". She recalls turning up at one birthday party in Kensington to be told she had to change in the broom cupboard. "Then the wife found out I was Jewish, and she wanted me to get in touch with her son at university - she thought I'd make a suitable girlfriend."

Thornton got the Roxy Music work after the wife of Bryan Ferry's producer heard her play at a yoga class. The exposure on the band's tours helped get her a major record deal with EMI, and in 2003 she made a record, Harpistry, which was widely admired.

But she wasn't entirely happy with the result. "I had to please too many people there was a serious amount of compromise involved," she says. One thing she disliked was the over-polished production "You hear a Paul Weller or Eric Clapton record, or someone like Glenn Gould playing, and it's full of character - nowadays in classical music, everything has to be perfect and clean.

Any slight imperfections are edited out in the studio, the edge is lost. A friend said to me recently that there are no session musicians any more, we are merely sound-wave donors." EMI was pushing her as a Vanessa-Mae type classical babe.

"At least they didn't ask me to take my kit off," she says. "And I met my husband at EMI - he works in the art department - so it wasn't all bad."

Having "asked EMI to drop me", she has taken the formidable challenge of setting up her own record label, Crossways, and recently released a more strictly classical album, Eye of the Storm, which features preludes by Bach and Tournier.

"I loved the idea of selecting music that has a special place in one's heart," she says. "Pieces or songs that, as I was studying the harp with my teacher Daphne Boden, I grew to love like old friends." It's a risk, but she's happier with her new freedom, and is now experimenting writing her own material. Last month, she played some sophisticated electronic music at the Ocean in Hackney, east London.

As for her being the next Roxy Music cover model, "the suggestion would have to come from Bryan perhaps we'll leave it at that, shall we?"

[oldbuckster]

Something about these guys that always seems to get me in trouble doing things I shouldn't do..........

MORRISON HOTEL.............the DOORS............Remasterd CD....1970..

Talk about different groups, here's a group that stands alone, nothing quite like The Doors....Their own sound, a goodlooking, strange young man out front, backed by Drums, Guitar, and Keyboards.....When the Doors are being played, there is no doubt who you are listening to.....A sound all their own...at times, almost EVIL.....Eerie, yet at times Beautiful.....Words that will make you scratch your head wondering, yet at the same time, full of passion....Jim Morrison was a star like no other...good looks, great voice, but a little on the darkside and that comes through in his songs. This is one of their most complete recordings......all good songs......performed well, and remastered for great sound...........

HARD ROCK CAFE ;

1 Roadhouse Blues

2 Waiting for the Sun

3 You make me Real

4 Peace Frog

5 Blue Sunday

6 Ship of Fools

MORRISON HOTEL ;

7 Land Ho!

8 The Spy

9 Queen of the Highway

10 Indian Summer

11 Maggie M'Gill

Pretty impressive song list......Classic Doors Album......Sometimes the Doors get overlooked, give this album a spin.........I bet you'll play it again.....I'll even bet, that deep down you forgot about this 70's Classic..............LAND HO!!!!!!!!!

[oldtimer]

Good one OB. Rest assured the Doors are never forgotten in this household. They do kind of bring out the reckless abandon in a person. Roadhouse Blues is one of greatest driving songs IMO.

[Big Piney]

Something about these guys that always seems to get me in trouble doing things I shouldn't do..........

Happens to me on Tequila...............

[skonopa]

Alright, I got something truly unique here for this weeks recommendations!

Forget that banel crap that is all to often heard on the radio. If you want to hear something truly different, musically "challenging" and with some very interesting lyrics - may I present the following:

Beyond Twilight - For the Love of Art and the Making:

The track listing is easy:

1 -"For the Love or Art and the Making"

Running length - some 40 minutes or so, but it is divided up in 43 parts.

Basically like one of those old riddles, in this case, "What do you get when you cross a symphony orchestra and a progessive metal band?" The answer? THIS!

There is some incredible instrumentation as well as vocal work here. All different kinds of styles of vocals, including a multiple voice chorus in sections. There is everything from pipe organs to strings in here for instrumentation, but you can bet there are going to be plenty of hard-driving guitars and percussion in here as well as plenty of headbanging moments, after all, it is metal! I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of talent level these musicians on here had to have to pull something like this off! If anybody is even remotely insterested in metal, especially progressive metal, this is a very definite must have!

Also to add - if you want to read all the details, as lifted directly from Beyond Twilight's website - here you go:

RELEASE APRIL 21ST 2006

The new album - For The Love Of Art And The Making is one ongoing

composition containing 43 sections. It is 1 track of about 40 minutes.

The concept is abstract and at times almost surreal. It deals with the

larger things in life. Such as life, death, love, the very essence of

being dishonest, lies, sin, the essence of truth, the essence of

creating, art, theft, moral values, bdsm, freedom, sadness, joy, anger,

every possible emotions humans have, human nature. But most and foreall

the concept deals with the passion for composing, creating, art and the

essence that is music.

The composition is unique in different ways. It is one

ongoing composition - a symphony/metal opera with a concept you could

call it but it is not really covering the essense of it. The

composition is devided into different sections/orchestrations fully

packed with Beyond Twilight details both musically and lyrically.

Here's a few examples. Try counting how many times "In The Eyes Of My

Soul" is introduced and how. Another "key piece" - "The Black Box Of

Reverse" - note "Sleeping Beauty" is composed backwards. But not

restricted to backwards as composition. The melodyline is composed and

played backwards. The bassline is composed and played backwards as if

it was recorded backwards. There's a quite a difference of playing

composed and recorded backwards. This is a mix between both in one

composition. A mathematical challenge but also deep in the essence of

composing and of the very soul of music if you analyse it closer.

Another key piece "Past The Magic" is compositions containing

compositions in the compositions made of rhytmic laughter. If you

analyse the music and lyrics you'll find many more details. The music

includes several hundreds tracks and the complexity is beyond anything

we've ever released. You can say many things with words but you can say

so much more with music.

The concept is compounded by 43 sections and 3 hidden

sections. The sections are (pieces of a puzzle). Lyrics and music both

play important roles. Each section has it's own life/story and every

section is a brick of the whole puzzle. Depending on in which order you

listen to the pieces of the puzzle you'll get a new picture of For The

Love Of Art And The Making. So you can really understand this piece of

work in numerous different ways. It's up to you how you gather the

puzzle.

"It is a great joy musically for us all to release this album

and it pleases us personally in many ways. This album is most and

foreall for our fans and for ourselves. It is not exactly something for

easy-listeners - it is deep - very deep. You will have to give it quite

a few spins in the cd player to get the understanding of the depths of

this unique album. Enjoy!"

[grog]

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells II CD

Street Date Sep 22, 1992

01 - Sentinel

02 - Dark Star

03 - Clear Light

04 - Blue Saloon

05 - Sunjammer

06 - Red Dawn

07 - The Bell

08 - Weightless

09 - The Great Plain

10 - Sunset Door

11 - Tattoo

12 - Altered State

13 - Maya Gold

14 - Moonshine

Notes

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Producers: Mike Oldfield, Tom Newman, Trevor Horn. A second "variation" on the album that put both Oldfield and Virgin Records on the map probably didn't seem like such a bad idea--especially with a guy like Trevor Horn enlisted to help produce. That said, TUBULAR BELLS 2 is quite good. It is a derivation, naturally, but one that has been fleshed out, further expounded upon, and given a modern '90s gloss. Horn's is relegated to the background, but his involvement is vital. He makes Oldfield's permutations flicker with an Art of Noise resonance, and the songs--which really play as one grand suite--have a palpable luster immersed within the absolutely excellent production. All of Oldfield's trademarks are brought to the fore here; the music is pastel, austere, vibrant, twinkling, and eccentric. For this second chapter, Oldfield brings along everything from synths and guitars to glockenspiel and other assorted percussive instruments--including tubular bells. Maybe history can in fact repeat itself.

Mike Oldfield

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Oldfield

Tubular.net, an open website dedicated to Mike Oldfield.

http://tubular.net/

Tubular Bells II on Tubular.net

http://tubular.net/discography/TubularBellsII.shtml

Active forum on Tubular Bells II

http://tubular.net/forums/ikonboard.cgi?;act=SF;f=32

I am not going to say a lot about this CD.

If you remember the original Tubular Bells release from 1973 then you must pick up Tubular Bells II.

Greg's pick is track #7 - The Bell.

Crank it up!!!