Richard Basset

Two super groups - the strings led by violinist Markus Däunert (leader of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra), and the winds led by oboeist Nicholas Daniel (whose distinguished career began with him being named BBC Young Musician of the Year) - combine in this, their second recording for Linn.

Heinrich and his son Carl Baermann count among the most accomplished clarinettists of the Romantic age. Many composers wrote for Heinrich, most notably Carl Maria von Weber, who composed his two concertos and chamber works with Heinrich in mind, impressed as he was by his ‘homogeneity of tone from top to bottom’. Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were among others who wrote for this ‘Rubini of the clarinet’, as he was known at the time. His son Carl was less talented as a soloist, though he accompanied his father on concert-tours playing the basset horn, and he turned both to teaching and to instrument-making: in 1860 he produced an 18-keyed Müller-type clarinet, which found favour with many players, including Richard Mühlfeld, for whom Brahms wrote several celebrated late works such as two sonatas and the Clarinet Quintet. Carl’s own compositions run to 88 opus numbers in all, of which three are played here by the young Italian clarinettist Dario Zingales: two evocative tone-poems and the early but more extensive and demanding Fantasie brillante Op.7.

Creative Funk was a group of friends/ musicians all aged between 17 and 21 from Jamaica, Queens, NYC. An unknown group, they decided to take the grassroots, DIY approach when releasing their first record. They started their own record label, and with the help of their bass player’s father, Deek Deberry, and released their first record “Ready Made Family”. A slow moving ballad, this side sold 25,000 plus in the NYC and surrounding areas. Soon major labels came knocking, and the mighty Bell Records won the bidding war and landed Creative Funk. Their self made record was released to the national record buying public, where for the next 2 and a half years they would go on making music. Creative Funk, as I stated previously, all hailed from Jamaica, Queens, except lead singer Diane Jenkins, who was from Brooklyn.