Medea®

Medea is a solo project and brainchild of composer and multi-musician Henry Meeuws. It’s no secret that Henry likes to be inspired by bands as for instance Pain of Salvation, Dream theater, Savatage, Avantasia and Ayreon. All the characteristic rock opera’s of Medea tell an intense story, performed by great Dutch guest vocalists and musicians. After almost twelve years, the moment is finally there! On the 1st of September 2017, “NORTHERN LIGHT, the brand-new and long expected solo album of Henry Meeuws alias MEDEA, was released. After "Individual Unique” (2002) and “Room XVII (2005) this is the third rock opera of this multi faceted musician and composer from Someren (the Netherlands), who signed a record deal with Rock Inc. Entertainment / Snakebite Records for the production of this album.

Jacob Kirkman was a member of one of the most important harpsichord builder dynasties of his time. Even Charles Burney (music historian, composer & musician) was full of praise of him. Kirkman‘s family was also able to master the transition to the Fortepiano with a series of innovations. Medea Bindewald partly performs on keyboards built by the Kirkman company, with compositions by Jacob Kirkman.

Eileen Farrell was an American soprano who had a nearly 60-year-long career performing both classical and popular music in concerts, theatres, on radio and television, and on disc. NPR noted, "She possessed one of the largest and most radiant operatic voices of the 20th century." While she was active as an opera singer, her concert engagements far outnumbered her theatrical appearances. Her career was mainly based in the United States, although she did perform internationally.

Giovanni Simone Mayr‘s „Medea in Corinto“ is „the most absolutely amazing opera discovery in decades“ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). A triumph for the Bavarian State Opera, the work was staged with a roster of top vocalists headed by Nadja Michael and Ramon Vargas in a production crafted by one of the leading directors of our time, Hans Neuenfels, and with a musical director in demand all over the world, Ivor Bolton. Born near Ingolstadt, Germany, in 1763, Mayr moved to Italy around 1787 and became one of the most important composers of Italian opera between Mozart and Rossini. He also taught many reputable composers, such as Donizetti. Written at the dawn of romanticism and the bel canto era, his main works unite stylistic characteristics of Viennese classicism with Italian melodic exuberance. „Medea in Corinto“ was premiered in Naples in 1813.

Two immediate thoughts: the music of the American composer Samuel Barber (1910-81) is grossly under-performed (and indeed under-rated); and the cello concerto repertoire is relatively meagre. On hearing this Barber concerto (composed in 1945, and subsequently revised) for the first time, why, I asked myself, is it not up there with Dvorak, Elgar and Shostakovich? It's an absolutely terrific work, quite able to hold its own in such exalted company, and a fine example of what I would call Barber's distinctively spiced late-romantic idiom.