Michel Alhadeff Jones,

Ice Station Zebra (1968) is a Cold War thriller following a U.S. submarine and its mysterious British passenger on a top-secret mission to the North Pole. Based on a novel by Alistair MacLean, the film features fine performances by Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, Ernest Borgnine and an all-male supporting cast. The combination of realistic military protocol and high-adventure espionage—as well as groundbreaking special effects and production design—won the film many admirers, among them the late Howard Hughes. Michel Legrand was best-known for pop-based scores like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Thomas Crown Affair, but was no less creative and dynamic in the symphonic Hollywood idiom (The Three Musketeers). His score for Ice Station Zebra is at once epic yet also offbeat, with powerful main themes dressed in an intricate web of mystery and suspense. The film is first and foremost a military story, but in Legrand's hands it becomes almost like a Cold War ballet, with a polished, artistic sheen to its danger. Legrand himself provided the terrific orchestrations and conducted the 75-piece orchestra in a five-channel stereo recording.

Surrounded by Time is Tom Jones' 42nd album, his first since the passing of wife Linda in 2016. Since 1965, the Welsh vocalist, possessed of a singular booming baritone, has sung almost every form of popular music of all stripes. This is Jones' fourth album with producer Ethan Johns, and includes his manager/son Mark Woodward as co-producer. Surrounded by Time differs from Jones' previous outings with Johns, which were rooted in Americana sources. The set opens with a sparsely orchestrated reinvention of Bernice Johnson Reagon's activist classic "I Won't Crumble with You If You Fall." Jones performs the lyric like a gospel preacher atop Neil Cowley's and Johns' layered Moogs, Nick Pini's arco bass, and Dan See's mallets.

Julie Park, notably the first violist to receive a Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Scholarship, now makes her debut on Linn with a programme of works by York Bowen. Together with her duo pianist Michel Xie, they perform the Viola Concerto in C minor, Op. 25, and the Phantasy in F major, Op. 54. Both dedicated to viola virtuoso Lionel Tertis, these pieces successfully exhibit the compositional developments from the composer’s early years to his more mature style. Composed in 1907, the concerto mirrors Bowen’s youthfulness and energy, whereas the Phantasy, dated 1918, delves into a deeper, more mature Romanticism. In 2022, four exceptional recipients of the Academy’s 2020/21 Bicentenary Scholarships scheme – Julie Park, Camilla Harris, Ossian Huskinson and Charlie Lovell-Jones – will each release a new album to coincide with the Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary celebrations.

Listen to the Movies! Musical memory of cinema! Angélique, Marquise of Angels / Michel Magne Soundtracks of the five films in the series Angelica (1964-1968) in 1964, Michel Magne is a talented young composer shaggy, revealed by his collaborations with Roger Vadim (The Rest of the Warrior), Henri Verneuil (A monkey in winter, Melody in the basement) and Georges Lautner (Les Tontons flingueurs). The Christmas 64 years will further consolidate it's status, with the inauguration Simultaneous two successful series: Fantômas and ngelique. This adaptation the novel cycle of Anne and Serge Golon give the actress Michele Mercier opportunity to interpret the role of his life… and that of writing five Magne large orchestral scores, halfway between Baroque music and romantic, worn by a big lyrical theme in the form of portrait of the heroine. " It is a theme that tells Angelique, said the composer. That is to say a woman who is fighting desperately for his love. "Thanks in particular to TV replays, the Angelique among the most famous scores Magne… but, paradoxically, had never been fully edited.

First time on CD. Composed & Conduted by the legendary Legrand including his "Picasso Suite". This nostalgic coming-into-manhood fantasy features a gorgeous Oscar-winning score by Michel Legrand ("Yentl", "The Thomas Crown Affair"). Director Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird) evokes the period with double-dip ice cream cones, paddleball, saddle shoes, packages of Fels Naptha and the mist of memory in which the hero's thoughts are enwrapped. Herman Raucher's screenplay is a discerning and appreciative translation of one boy's trip along a trajectory of psychological and sexual change.

For several years, decades in fact, a lost gem issued originally not just in the US but in the UK as well (and our vinyl pressings were always much better than their US counterparts), on Chrysalis records who, for a while, had some very good material in this genre, for example the two Auracle albums (and wouldn't lots of us like to get those on CD). But finally it's now reappeared on CD and how very nice it is to be reacquainted with it in that format. Anyway, this album ~ his second, as far as I know ~ features a host of jazz luminaries of the day (Hancock, Erskine, Pastorius, Carlton, Ritenour, Gadd, etc.) and its only failing is its mildly raw upper registers, though thankfully there are no vocals to pollute the proceedings and Jaco Pastorius' electric bass work is of truly sterling calibre. On this album, if anywhere, you can hear why he was held in such very high esteem by his contemporaries.