Music Connection May 2021

All I Got Left, the new solo album from internationally acclaimed guitarist, singer and songwriter Chris Bergson, is an intimate, stripped-down affair. Bergson’s “glorious guitar” (Blues Magazine) provides the only accompaniment for his “deeply soulful vocals.” (Blues in Britain.) Hailed as "the New York street poet with a blues soul” (MOJO) and "one of the most inventive songwriters in modern blues music" (All Music Guide), Bergson offers a collection of songs that speak to the shared experience of the past year through the universal lens of the blues. Born during lock down in New York City in 2020, the album includes original material – both new and reimagined - inspired by lived-in scenes of the pandemic, along with new interpretations of songs by Richard Julian (Norah Jones, Little Willies), Glenn Patscha (Ollabelle, Rosanne Cash), Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan.

Lee Kerslake was the drummer for Uriah Heep from 1972 to 1979. Prior to that, he'd played with a band called Gods, releasing three albums with them. He also found the time, while still in Heep, to play on David Byron's and Ken Hensley's solo albums, among other efforts. In fact, in 1976, he recorded a final album with Gods. He eventually rejoined Heep, but not before recording with both Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath. Lee Kerslake died on September 19, 2020 after a long battle with cancer; he was 73 years old. “ELEVENTEEN” is a collection of eight songs, seven of them written or co-written by Lee, and starts with CELIA SIENNA.

Kateřina Kněžíková's lyric coloratura soprano has delighted audiences in numerous music centres worldwide, both at opera houses and concert venues. She has appeared with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberger Symphoniker, Camerata Salzburg, the Czech Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, etc. under the baton of conductors of such renown as J. Bělohlávek, S. Baudo, M. Honeck, J. Hrůša, T. Netopil and R. Ticciati. The highlights of her career include the invitation to portray the title role in Janáček's opera Katya Kabanova in Glyndebourne. Kateřina Kněžíková's debut Supraphon solo album features enchanting fin de siecle songs, "… songs that are particularly close to my heart and voice, all of them dating from the turn of the 20th century, all of them tinged with Impressionism," as the singer herself put it.