Echo & The Bunnymen have announced the release of The John Peel Sessions 1979-1983 via Rhino on September 6. The double album features 21 tracks recorded for John Peel’s Radio 1 show during the early years of the band’s existence.
LUCY WOODWARD is going big with this new project of hers, Lucy Woodward & The Rocketeers. Big as in the size of the band, which numbers 18, and big as in potential, and range. Throughout her career, Lucy has mixed genres, genre-bending if you will. And with this jazz orchestra, she pulls vibes from icons of jazz and pulsing vibrations from the then to the now and future music makers. Pushing the music forward is a worldwide collection of musicians from countries like Spain, Italy, and Ghana, all seriously helping to break the mold of the traditional Big Band.
LUCY WOODWARD is going big with this new project of hers, Lucy Woodward & The Rocketeers. Big as in the size of the band, which numbers 18, and big as in potential, and range. Throughout her career, Lucy has mixed genres, genre-bending if you will. And with this jazz orchestra, she pulls vibes from icons of jazz and pulsing vibrations from the then to the now and future music makers. Pushing the music forward is a worldwide collection of musicians from countries like Spain, Italy, and Ghana, all seriously helping to break the mold of the traditional Big Band.
The duo of War-N Harrison & Christa Belle have been creating music as Hungry Lucy since 1998. Their intoxicating multi-layered music and enchanting female vocals are at once unique and accessible. To date, Hungry Lucy have released 4 CDs, a DVD, a digital-only album and appeared on numerous compilation CDs internationally as well as touring the US several times over the past 5 years.
Listening to this, it's easy to believe that June Tabor was made to sing these old border ballads, tales of the uneasy coexistence of families in the marches between England and Scotland. Her dark voice is well-suited to the texts, which are often bloody and vengeful, and quite certainly epic – in some respects, the very essence of British balladry, whether it's "The Battle of Otterburn," with its gloriously textured Kathryn Tickell arrangement, or the demanding "The Duke of Athole's Nurse," where Martin Simpson is reunited with Tabor, his guitar offering shining counterpoint to her voice. The songs, tried and tested over the centuries, are wonderful in themselves, but Tabor's presentation of them brings them fully to life, like "The Cruel Mother." Harrowing at the best of times, it becomes pure torment in her hands. And her "Sir Patrick Spens" makes the old Fairport Convention version sound like a playground romp. Intensity has always been one of Tabor's fortes, and here she takes full advantage of the opportunity to indulge it.
Handel’s Queens features some of the most exquisite pieces of music written by G.F. Handel and his contemporaries for the two finest singers of the eighteenth century, Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni. Often wrongfully framed as rivals, these dazzling new recordings with Mary Bevan and Lucy Crowe reveal the distinctive yet versatile talent of the Italian vocalists.