Jun Fukamachi Spiral Steps

This CD features the versatile Fukamachi as a veritable one-man band in a lively album that captures the essence of the original Beatles' tunes throughout. The innovative arrangements of the artist, tailored to get the maximum benefit from a surrounding instrument array, produce one of the better technical efforts of this series. Synthesizer effects provide special "flavor," particularly at the close of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", and in the evocative opening of "She's Leaving Home". Fukamachi blends a concert grand, electric piano, Arp synthesizer, glockenspiel, bass drum, tambourine and other electronic instruments with results that indicate a group, not a solo, with ample display of each.

Recorded at Seibu Theatre, Tokyo (June 3rd and 4th 1977). This album packs a wallop! Lots of outstanding music and playing from everyone in the group - Jun Fukamachi, Randy & Michael Brecker contributing songs from the Brecker Bros albums. The 2CD set is a must - the song Triangle Session is actually a note for note cover of John Lee & Gerry Brown's song Rise On from the recently reissued album Still Can't Say Enough that the Brecker Bros played -recommended along with the companion album Mango Sunrise! Kenji Ohmura nails the guitar on this song and the whole performance. The drummer, Martin Willweber, and bassist Kenji Takamizu are also excellent.

Jun Fukamachi was Japanese jazz-fusion composer, pianist and pioneering synthesizer player. Born May 21, 1946, died November 22, 2010. During the late 70s he played with The Brecker Brothers, Steve Gadd, David Sanborn etc.

Recorded at Media Sound, New York, Polydor Studio, Tokyo, Larrabee Studio, Hollywood, CA in July - September, 1977.

Prokofiev first became fascinated by the violin upon hearing the playing of his private teacher, Reinhold Glière. A dozen years later Prokofiev wrote his Violin Concerto No. 1 – a work of contrasting open-hearted lyricism and whimsical playfulness that features a wild central Scherzo with dazzling technical gymnastics. By contrast, the Violin Concerto No. 2 is emotionally reserved and sardonic with an inspired plaintive and long-arching slow movement. Composed to an official Soviet commission for an ensemble piece to be played by talented child violinists in unison, the witty and upbeat Sonata for Solo Violin can also be played by a single performer.

Spiral Realms is the brainchild of legendary violinist Simon House of Third Ear Band, Hawkwind's finest era (In the Hall of the Mountain Grill, Warrior on the Edge of Time, Astounding Sounds, 25 Years On, Quark, Strangeness & Charm and PXR 5) and David Bowie fame. In 1995, he decided to take a brilliant track off Warrior called Spiral Galaxy 28948 (according to legend, his birth date!) and produce two albums of similarly spectacular, spacey, psychedelic and totally original electronic music of the highest caliber. The first one ,"Trip to G9" is a collaboration with American Len Del Rio (keyboardist with Nic Turner's Sphynx as well as Hawkwind side project Anubian Lights) and it is a most rewarding electronic symphony that owes a little to the Tangerine Dream/Klaus Schulze style but is way more violin driven which gives it a completely different aura…

For her first recording on the Linn label, Ingrid Fliter performs the two piano concertos of Frédéric Chopin with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Jun Märkl, and both performances are presented in the hybrid SACD format. The multichannel treatment might seem excessive for these works, since the piano part is always clear and prominent, and the orchestration isn't dense or complicated. Even so, the myriad subtleties of dynamics, attacks, and phrasing come across with exceptional clarity and effectiveness in the state-of-the-art recording, which does a great service to Fliter and the orchestra.