Jean-Marie Leclair, a pure product of the 18th century, was at the crossroads of styles, cultivating a virtuosic art combining melodies à la française and Italian virtuosity stemming from Corelli and Vivaldi. He was 49 when he undertook his first (and only) lyric tragedy: Scylla et Glaucus. In the greatest French tradition, this work combines sumptuous numbers of sentimental outpourings with frightening scenes of fury and terror, in which the orchestra, with forceful passages, plays a dazzling role.
Delirium is an important band in the history of Italian progressive rock music, having been active since 1970. They originally formed in Genoa during the late 1960s as I Sagittari and their line-up consisted of Ettore Vigo (keyboards), Peppino Di Santo (drums, vocals), Mimmo Di Martino (acoustic guitar) and Marcello Reale (bass). The later arrival of Ivano Fossati (vocals, keyboards, flute) completed the band, whose early musical style was a mix of the so-called Italian melodic tradition and UK progressive influences, in particular King Crimson and Colosseum.
Their first album, the rough-hewn ''Dolce Acqua'' (1971), was one of the earliest Italian progressive albums and is a conceptual suite with each of its eight movements being based on different human emotions…
Excellent Chilean quintet ultilizing guitar, bass, drums and dual sax players. Very much influenced by King Crimson and even by the "KC Projekts", Akinetón Retard play an aggressive forn of angular, modern prog that has few if any equals on the current scene. There is also something of the NY 'downtown' scene present in their uniquely avant-garde take on the prog rock genre. Maybe hints at Curlew or even John Zorn's groundbreaking ensemble Naked City.
In this new release, Vincent Dumestre’s Le Poème Harmonique once again immerses us in the France of the second half of the 16th century, which witnessed the emergence of new centres of artistic activity. These ‘bourgeois’ societies were initiated by patron princes concerned with building their prestige through the arts and letters just as much as by arms. At the same time, refined circles held by cultivated women enabled them to rub shoulders with the leading poets of the time, as well as musicians sensitive to humanist research, all profiting from a context propitious to the invention of new artistic forms and practices.