Domani 21 04.2009

Authenticity, sweat, and electric guitars: these are the ingredients of a recipe that, with very small changes over the years, made Ligabue one of the most successful modern Italian rockers…

This collection compiles, for the first time ever on a single set, all existing studio recordings of Chet Baker singing from 1953 (his earliest vocal recordings) until 1962.
The music on this CD puts Chet Baker on the scene not just as a brilliant trumpeter, but also as a talented singer. These songs were a revelation at the time and won Baker new fame and a new audience, which was less familiar with jazz than with pop music. The reasons are quite clear: Chet's voice is tender and beautiful, and at the same time his phrasing always swings and surprises. Among the contents of this set are the complete original albums Chet Baker Sings and Chet Baker Sings It Could Happen to You, plus all other existing studio vocal sides within that period.

Famed Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli is an iconic figure in music, as one of the most successful classical solo artists ever, and one of the best-selling performers in any genre, having sold more than 80 million albums worldwide of both his classical and pop albums. His worldwide hit albums such as Romanza, Amore, Passione and Love in Portofino have made him synonymous with love and romance. On July 10th, 13 titles from his incredible Pop catalog and 3 bonus discs of memorable Bocelli performances will be released in a special edition box set.

One of the most interesting and difficult-to-categorize singers in '60s pop, Gene Pitney had a long run of hits distinguished by his pained, one-of-a-kind melodramatic wail. Pitney is sometimes characterized (or dismissed) as a shallow teen idol-type prone to operatic ballads. It's true that some of his biggest hits – "Town Without Pity," "Only Love Can Break a Heart," "I'm Gonna Be Strong," "It Hurts to Be in Love," and "Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa" – are archetypes of adolescent or just-post-adolescent agony, characterized by longing and not a little self-pity.

Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. His music was an eclectic mix of theatre music, jazz and neoclassicism. This diverse Modern period composer created works in virtually all genres. As already stated, Bernstein was an eclectic composer whose music fused elements of jazz, theatre music and neoclassicism, the latter inspired by composers like Copland, Stravinsky, Milhaud, and Gershwin. Some of his works, especially his score for West Side Story, helped bridge the gap between classical and popular music.

Veteran Italian rock band Pooh formed in Bologna in 1966. During the late '60s, the band featured Roby Facchinetti, Valerio Negrini, Dodi Battaglia, and Riccardo Fogli, but after Negrini left in 1971, the band recruited guitarist, bassist, and vocalist Red Canzian plus drummer and percussionist Stefano D'Orazio, and began a long run as one of the best and most popular Italian rockers of their times. The band recorded for many labels, including CBS, Vedette, CGD (Compagnia Generale del Disco), and Warner Music Italy, selling over 100 million records in the process. Pooh continued to tour and record continually up into the 2010s, but in late 2016 they decided to call it quits by the end of the year, in order to complete their 50-year anniversary as a band.

La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) marked a culmination of the convergence of serious and comic elements in Rossini’s work. The result is an ideal hybrid: a tragic opera with a happy ending that rises to the status of true opera seria. With its outstanding dramatic and musical qualities it remains one of Rossini’s greatest and most successful operas, a constant presence in the repertoire since its triumphant 1817 première in Milan. This performance is conducted by Alberto Zedda, who made his conducting début in 1956, produced the first critical edition of La gazza ladra, and is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the operas of Rossini.