Robin Rotham

20th Century Blues is a hard rockin' blues CD that was produced in 1994. The power trio on this CD consists of Robin Trower on guitar, Mayuyu on drums and Livingstone Brown on bass and vocals. Those familiar with Trower know that the vocal duties have primarily belonged to James Dewar and in his brief absence, a host of others including Trower, Davey Pattison and, as in this case, Livingstone Brown…

Guitarist extraordinaire Robin Trower has reassembled the core of his late-'80s band, once again joining forces with Dave Bronze (bass), Davey Pattison (vocals), and Pete Thompson (drums). On 2004's Living Out of Time, they equal (if not best) their work on 1987's Passion and 1988's Take What You Need with 11 sides that reconfirm Trower's breathtaking instrumental capacity, as well as his knack for writing heavy rockers that don't come off as trite or excessive…

The first album of Robin's "lost" period. Robin is clearly searching here, looking for something different…

Constantly in search of eclectic and meaningful programmes, the soprano Anna Prohaska here celebrates ‘life in death’. An ambitious programme, conceived with Robin Peter Müller and his ensemble La Folia, which takes us on a journey across the centuries and through many different countries, with French chansons of the Middle Ages (including one by Guillaume de Machaut), seventeenth-century Italian pieces by Luigi Rossi, Francesco Cavalli and Barbara Strozzi, German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Dietrich Buxtehude, Christoph Graupner, Franz Tunder) and the English luminaries Henry Purcell… plus John Lennon and Paul McCartney. A musical and spiritual quest that even takes in a detour to North America with a universally known song by Leonard Cohen.

This marks the first release with Robin Ticciati leading the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, and it makes the requisite splash. There's a world premiere: even if you're not on board with the trend of enlarging the repertory through arrangements of works that are perfectly good in their original form, you will likely be seduced by mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozená's ravishing reading of Debussy's voice-and-piano Ariettes oubliées, inventively arranged by Brett Dean. There's a little-known work: the opening one, Fauré's Prelude to Pénélope (a sparsely performed opera, with a slightly less sparsely performed prelude) is a lush and beautifully controlled arc. Controlled and detailed are two words that come to mind for Ticciati's interpretation of La mer, the warhorse work on the program; it may seem a bit deliberate, but there are many hues in his performance. The two Debussy works are balanced by two of Fauré's: the fourth work is the suite from Fauré's incidental music to Pélleas et Mélisande (in Charles Koechlin's version), also deliberate and lush. Linn recorded the performance in Berlin's Jesus Christus Kirche, which allows the full spectrum of orchestral colors to come through. Worth the money for Kozená fans for her turn alone, and a fine French program for all.

A good mix of down-and-dirty blues, 1976's Long Misty Days also features Robin Trower's ethereal ballads. Its 1977 follow-up In City Dreams – also included on this two-fer – is slightly funkier than the previous albums, but still highlighted by a delicate ballad, "Bluebird" and the majestic title track.

Long lost collaboration by Glenn Hughes and Robin George, originally recorded in 1989.Mastered from the original tapes.

Long lost collaboration by Glenn Hughes and Robin George, originally recorded in 1989. Mastered from the original tapes.

Caravan to Midnight is the 6th studio album by Robin Trower Robin's usual guitar playing that combines a unique blend of blues and soul is sometimes pushed to the back here probably because of the disco movement affecting the way rock artists approached music at the time…