Lars Gunnar Lars Gunnar Bodin

Tomas Bodin's regular job is to play the keyboards for The Flower Kings but as usual some of these musicians and especially if they are a member of The Flower Kings have too many ideas and one musical life doesn't satisfy them any longer. They need to have a solo project. And seemingly Tomas Bodin also has a lot of good ideas left over. But the music on his solo albums is quite different, it's a mix between Jazzrock/Fusion and Retro Prog, mostly instrumental. And of course the whole sound is keyboard dominated.

Tomas Bodin's regular job is to play the keyboards for The Flower Kings but as usual some of these musicians and especially if they are a member of The Flower Kings have too many ideas and one musical life doesn't satisfy them any longer. They need to have a solo project. And seemingly Tomas Bodin also has a lot of good ideas left over.
The music display some various atmosphere from the melancholic classical piano to the more upbeat techno output and finally to the intriguing and dark passage taken from a horror film no too far from Goblin. All those transitions are flowing together smoothly with some beautiful textures, and despite the absence of vocals and rock instruments, it never gets boring…

Few eighteenth-century composers earned a personal fortune solely by writing music; Joseph Bodin de Boismortier did, and could claim to be the first Frenchman to sell his talents on the open market. By 1700, the spread of music printing and publishing in Europe, allied to the growth of amateur music-making, made substantial sales of new music possible, and Boismortier seized every opportunity for meeting the popular demand for tuneful, technically simple pieces for a wide variety of vocal and instrumental combinations. Within a year of arriving in Paris in 1723, his first publications were on sale, and by 1747 had been followed by 102 works.

New instrumental album keyboardist Flower Kings, published them on his own label.Excellent soothing music, listen to easily and peacefully as the soundtrack to a film about the ocean and nature. Very sincerely!

Following on from Callirhoé (André Cardinal Destouches), Sémélé (Marin Marais) and Proserpine (Jean-Baptiste Lully), three important tragédies lyriques rescued from oblivion by Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel, Glossa is now restoring to the catalogue and within its collection of French Baroque opera, a recording made in Metz in December 2001: Daphnis et Chloé, the work which was to add Joseph Bodin de Boismortier to the roll call of the history of music in a most determined fashion.

The baroque ensemble I Fiori Musicali has chosen Urania Records for their newest production, a collection dedicated to Boismortier. The name of this composer comes after the decline of the great explosion of French artists of the golden age of Louis XIV. He is not comparable to Lully, Couperin or Rameau, but he expresses a whole part of the early French Englightenment and he fights against the school by Rousseau. This album brings available some of the lesser-known but more refined works of the French composer. The ensemble plays on period instruments and follows the proper timeline of Boismortier's compositions.

Amazing sounds from the Swedish scene of the 60s - a record that's archly modern, yet soaringly soulful too - a really wonderful combination of modes in the hands of pianist Berndt Egerbladh! The title's a bit strange - as Berndt's hardly the kind of guy that would make us laugh, and he definitely has our ears right away from the very first notes on the record - a brilliant blend of his own piano, plus alto from Lars Goran Ulander, bass from Lars Gunnar Gunnarsson, and drums from Sten Oberg! The alto is especially nice - very sharp-edged and soulful on the tracks in which it figures - and helping to give the record and even deeper feel than some of Egerbladh's other albums - even though we like those a lot too. Tracks are all originals - beautiful compositions that make the album sparkle with a freshness you'll appreciate instantly.

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was perhaps the very first free-lance composer in history. Being born in Thionville in Lorraine as the son of a confectioner, he went to Perpignan in 1713 and established himself there as a collector for the Royal Tobacco Excise Office, a position he held the next ten years. He must have received some musical training, though, since in 1721 a drinking song by a 'M. Boismortier de Metz' was published. His musical activities increased and he went to Paris, where he received his first permission to publish music in 1724. He published duos for transverse flute and cantatas, which was the start of a career as France's most prolific composer in the 18th century, whose oeuvre consists of more than 100 opus numbers with instrumental music, and in addition to that cantatas, motets and some stage works. He also was active as a theorist, writing treatises on the transverse flute and the 'pardessus de viole'.