Allan Clayton demonstrates his exceptional versatility with a Liszt programme of eighteen songs, all of which—in contrasting ways—make prodigious technical and musical demands of the performers.
There were a lot of heavy metal bands in the 1980s and there were a lot of pop bands too; there weren't many who combined the two styles as well as Def Leppard did. This is a statement that the simply titled The CD Collection, Vol. 1 proves over and over during the course of its playing time. Made up of the four albums the band released during the 1980s, a live show recorded in 1983 (which was issued as part of the deluxe edition of Pyromania), a disc of B-sides and rarities, and a mini-disc of the band's self-titled 1979 EP, the set is filled with razor-sharp riffs, hooky choruses, thudding backbeats, inferno-hot guitar soloing, keening vocal harmonies, and the inimitable yelp of singer Joe Elliott as it runs through their early career. Starting with the EP, it's plain that Def Leppard had the goods right away, but all they needed was a producer to help them clean it up a little.
Volume 2 of Discovering the Classical String Trio is a continuation of The Vivaldi Project's exploration of the 18th-century string trio, of its relationship to the earlier Baroque trio sonata (as exemplified by Vivaldi and contemporaries) and of its role as an important genre in its own right, side-by-side with the emerging string quartet. The string trio, although largely overlooked during the past century, was manifestly popular in its day at its compositional peak (c. 1760-1770) out-publishing the string quartet by a ratio of more than five to one! These forgotten works, some 2000 string trios by more than 200 composers, reveal not only a wonderful amalgam of instrumental techniques and styles, but also a significant, untold part of chamber music history.
UB40 have a catalogue of poignant original material and era-defining cover versions that make the band so loved. In 2014, a 20-track collection ‘Red Red Wine: The Collection’ was released and enjoyed incredible success. Four years on, UMC brings you ‘Red Red Wine: The Collection – volume 2’ a carefully compiled sequel to the original release which features 20 further recordings by the chart-topping Birmingham outfit. Featured here is a selection loaded with chart successes, including some of their undisputed highlights – ‘Rat In Mi Kitchen’, ‘Sing Our Own Song’, a much-loved extended version of their UK Chart No. 1 ‘Red Red Wine’ as well as great live versions of ‘Food For Thought’ and ‘I Got You Babe’. It is a fine, unmistakable body of work that has been part of the fabric of the UK music scene for over three decades.
Fridrich Bruk – born in Kharkov in 1937 and a Finnish resident since 1974 – made his name as a composer of tangos. But the heart of his music lies in a series of eighteen symphonies, which have a strong narrative element, some reflecting Jewish themes, others inspired by Karelia and Finland. Symphony No. 17, Joy of Life (which Bruk also calls a ‘Concerto-Symphony for Orchestra and Piano’), has an autobiographical programme charting, in abstract terms, Bruk’s surmounting of the obstacles fate put in his path. Symphony No. 18 takes as its starting point a Latvian-Jewish folksong: it is premised on the deportation of his grandparents from their Latvian home, in an anti-Semitic campaign by Tsarist Russia that Bruk sees as a kind of prologue to the Holocaust.
American Guitarist, Record Producer and educator David Veslocki leads a fulfilling and diverse musically life that has taken him around the world and earned him many awards, television, commercial and movie placements. The winner of the Elliot Fisk Award, The International Songwriting Competition, The Unsigned Only Songwriting Competition, David has performed as a soloist with the Hartford Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the world icon composer John Adams.
The final 2018 installment of the Grateful Dead’s Dave’s Picks live archival series will feature the band’s show at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey on June 17, 1976. The 3-CD set is limited to 18,000 individually numbered copies mastered to HDCD specs by Jeffrey Norman.