Music Box

Oh What a Feeling: A Vital Collection of Canadian Music is a 4-CD box set released in 1996 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Juno Awards. A second box set, Oh What a Feeling 2, was released in 2001 to mark the awards' 30th anniversary, and a third set, Oh What a Feeling 3, was released in 2006 for the 35th anniversary. All of the sets feature popular Canadian songs from the 1960s onward. The sets were titled for the song "Oh What a Feeling" by rock band Crowbar. The original 25th anniversary box set peaked at #3 on the Canadian Albums Chart and was certified Diamond in Canada.

A work with a name like this can only be unusual. The opus in question is a three-part solo piano epic, lasting a shade under four hours and of a complexity to match. Combine an all-night raga sequence with Bach's Art of Fugue and you're getting close. Is it worth the listen? Yes, if you want to give your heart and mind–not just your brain–a real workout. For all his outsize demands, Sorabji was a front-rank pianist, who understood technique as a physical end to spiritual means. There are stretches of manic complexity here, but also passages of real poetry: try the lengthy "Interludium primum" which opens Part 2, or many of the 81(!) variations which follow the magisterial "Passacaglia" in Part 3. It's music which cries out for transcendental virtuosity, and Geoffrey Douglas Madge gives it just that. He gave four performances over six years and this Chicago one from 1983 assumed mythic status among those who heard it. Remastered for CD release, it is awe-inspiring in its grasp of what's gone into this music: the audience clearly living it with the pianist every step of the way. Hear it for yourself, then why not run the marathon or climb Everest for relaxation?

This elegantly packaged 10 disc retrospective surveys four decades of work by Philip Glass, from his earliest solo pieces to his world-renowned operas to his Oscar-nominated film scores. In music, words and pictures, it traces the evolution, as critic Tim Page puts it in his liner notes essay, of 'the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music-simultaneously.' The long-awaited release of this set follows this past spring's triumphal new staging of Glass's 1980 Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Jean Françaix declared motto of always having aimed to create "musique pour faire plaisir" partially conceals the great variability and frequent inscrutability of the music created by this composer, born in Le Mans in 1912. Françaix succeeded in finding and consolidating his own style at an early stage and became known almost overnight in 1932: According to the critic Heinrich Strobel, this work communicated the impression of "fresh water gushing forth from the source with the elegant originality of all natural elements and at the same time appears as the creation of an artist with a clarity and awareness seldom observed in our time." He retained his mastery of composition which effervesced with ingenious ideas and musical humour and his ability to combine musical grace and irony up to an advanced age. 2012 sees the 100th birthday of Jean Françaix. In an anniversary box, WERGO has compiled selected works from original recordings (CDs and LP from our program), showing the wide range of music by the French composer and pianist.

Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King - The RCA Albums 1977-1985 (2020) {8CD Set, Soul Music Records SMCR -5197BX}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.67 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 114 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 30 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2020 RCA / Soul Music Records | SMCR -5197BX
R&B / Disco / Contemporary R&B / Post-Disco

Combining her diva-level vocal power and teen-next-door effervescence, Evelyn "Champagne" King scored a trifecta with "Shame," a Top Ten hit on Billboard's club, R&B, and pop charts across 1977 and 1978. The definitive disco classic was merely the start of a long run with RCA Victor highlighted by 19 additional charting singles and a trio of Top Ten R&B LPs through 1986. Commercial R&B evolved rapidly during this period. King was in on virtually all of the developments, including but not limited to funky disco (backed by members of Instant Funk, whose underappreciated T. Life discovered and first produced her) and pop-flavored post-disco (assisted most prominently by innovators Morrie Brown, Kashif, and Paul Laurence Jones).

Johann Pachelbel (baptised 1 September 1653 – buried 9 March 1706) was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.