Roger Best

Here is the 1985 Nimbus release 'Benjamin Britten: Works for String Orchestra' performed by English String Orchestra conducted by William Boughton with Roger Best on viola. This particular Nimbus release has been out of print for some time now, but all of these works by Britten has been included on various later and more recent Nimbus releases.

Expansive 13 disc (12 CDs + NTSC/Region 0 DVD) collection of solo material by Queen drummer Roger Taylor including albums from his side project The Cross. This box set celebrates his 35 years of activity outside of his `day job' in Queen…

Best known for his stint fronting art pop hitmakers Supertramp, Roger Hodgson was born in Portsmouth, England, on March 21, 1950. While growing up in Oxford, Hodgson started playing guitar before he was a teenager, and was soon writing songs while at boarding school…

Roger Glover is best known as the bass player of the Hard Rock flagship Deep Purple, which he has been part of all incarnations of the band since the reunion in 1984. He joined the Lord, Paice and Blackmore, together with Ian Gillan in 1969 to form the famous MK II, Deep Purple line-up which is considered the legendary, classic line-up of the band. In the ‘70s he co-wrote and played on albums like “In Rock“, “Machine Head“ and “Fireball“, not to mention “Made in Japan“. His solo works have always been on a very high musical level, showing how much influence his bass lines and musical view are essential parts of the famous Purple sound.

The first-ever single-disc anthology of Queen drummer Roger Taylor's solo material, 2014's Best brings together tracks off all five of his studio albums. The collection follows-up the more exhaustive 2013 box-set, The Lot, and features cuts from 1981's Fun in Space, 1984's Strange Frontier, 1994's Happiness?, 1998's Electric Fire, and 2013's Fun on Earth. While primarily known for his commanding drum presence with Queen, Taylor is also a strong rock singer and talented songwriter, responsible for penning such Queen hits as "Radio Ga Ga," "Breakthru," "These Are the Days of Our Lives," and others. Vocally, Taylor has a throatier, more gravelly presence on the microphone than Queen's highly resonant, operatic frontman Freddie Mercury. In that sense, he often brings to mind the sound of such similarly inclined contemporaries as the Who's Roger Daltrey, Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter, and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the cuts here sound like they could easily have ended up on a Queen album, and tracks like "Let’s Get Crazy," "Man on Fire," and "Strange Frontier" showcase the same synth-driven, pop/rock approach Queen was championing in the '80s.

Roger Chapman is best known for his barbed-wire voice, used to front British '70s rock acts Family and Streetwalkers. He began a long-awaited solo career in 1978 that led to over a dozen full-length releases. Never heard of them? It's not surprising: album-wise, he camped out in Germany for 20 years. His first album and tour got high praise in his British homeland, but critics cut into him soon after. When the hassle-free German market beckoned, Chapman began to focus his subsequent work there, where he had become a musical hero, "the working-class artist." Chapman split with his longtime writing partner, Charlie Whitney, after the breakup of Streetwalkers in 1977.

The performance of Radamisto is notable for an array of vocal talent headed by Janet Baker. Every name is familiar and admired. The ECO was a vibrant presence in the Handel operatic and oratorio market at this time and Norrington at the helm ensures that period practices are helpfully integrated into the fabric of a modern instrument performance – recitatives for instance, once the bane of some 1960s and 70s performances, move fluidly and intelligently, highly responsive to textual meaning and dramatic implications. Note Act I’s Reina, infausto avviso when Tigrane and Polissena’s recitative embodies fine pacing, telling rubato, and appropriately coloured accompaniment. Some cuts though were clearly necessary to accommodate the length of the production.