Rem Complete Rarities 1988 2011

This is Tom Principato’s first recording with Powerhouse, his legendary horn-driven band from Boston, now available on CD for the first time anywhere. This 2-for-1 CD contains the complete Powerhouse LP Night Life along with Lovin’ Machine, a collection of unreleased and live tracks. The 1970's were exciting times for live music. Regional bands from all over the country were melding blues, rock and R&B influences into a style that would bring many to national prominence. In the Northeast, the Boston-based Powerhouse was a standard bearer for this hard drivin' soulful sound. Powerhouse endlessly toured the club and college circuit before finally disbanding in 1977.

Heitor Villa-Lobos is widely recognised as Brazils most important composer, whose style reflects his country and his era: rooted in 20-th century European modernism, he developed his own unique style, blending all colours, smells and sounds of his homeland into his rich, exuberant and vibrant music. Villa-Lobos wrote an immense oeuvre. An important place hold his guitar works, the perfect instrument to present his own style, fusing Latin-American folk-inspired elements with more learned European forms, like Etudes and Preludes. The complete guitar works of Villa Lobos, played by one of the best classical guitarists of today, Frédéric Zigante.

Paisiello composed more than 90 operas, he was highly successful and influential in his time. Giovanni Paisiello is more than just another name in the history of classical music. He was loved by Mozart, who used Paisiello's comic opera as a model for his own operas, as can be heard in 'Le Nozze di Figaro', but also later in Rossini's 'Il barbiere di Siviglia'. His instrumental and orchestral works are less well known than his operas. He also composed far fewer of these, with 12 symphonies to his name, 12 string quartets, a set of sonatas and 8 keyboard concertos. His music is fluid, elegant and refined. His concertos are very exuberant works, with moments of great charm and beauty, especially in the slow movements.

As all four of the discs in this set have been reviewed in these pages before, this notice accordingly provides only a brief summary. J. F. Weber discussed the Read more in Fanfare 33:2, the Weihnachtshistorie and Auferstehungshistorie (the Nativity and Resurrection narratives) in 33:5, and the Matthäus-Passion in 35:1, while Ronald E. Grames and I both covered Die sieben Worte and the Johannes-Passion in 34:2. In all instances the reviews were enthusiastic and offered unqualified endorsements of these performances as the recordings of choice for these works; now having the opportunity to hear them all, I heartily re-affirm that collective judgment.

Between 1976 and 1987, the Alan Parsons Project released ten studio albums, most of them going at least gold in the U.S., several generating big hit singles, too. This was enough to sustain a vigorous cult audience well into 2014, which is when Legacy boxed all ten of the Alan Parsons Project albums, adding the scrapped 1981 record The Sicilian Defense to bring in the hardcore who already have purchased this catalog several times over, including deluxe editions that contain bonus material nowhere to be found here…