The Miller's Dance Winston Graham

This is a very unusual and rather experimental CD. The actual artist for the album is listed as Geoff Downes and the New Dance Orchestra. The liner says that the music the group performs is designed to bring tone and color to the stereo sound spectrum. It lists their further goals are to simultaneously retain "a deep musical foundation, upon which are built a series of images to stimulate the listener in his or her own domain." High ideals indeed, but does the music live up to it? Well, this music is strictly instrumental and quite electronic, but it does contain some very potent sound imagery and power and majesty. Among the other unique qualities the disc possesses is the fact that each of the five main pieces on the disc are divided into separate sections, for a total of 33 tracks.

One thing is certain in this uncertain world – you can trust Ashley Hutchings to do interesting things with various areas of British folk and rock music. In the case of the Albion Dance Band, under its various names, the focus was on mutating traditional English dance and folk music, which led to escapades involving traditional tunes, Morris dancers, double drummers, dance callers, Philip Pickett's entire collection of medieval instruments, and serious rock guitar front lines that tend to leap onto the hay cart and start blazing away. The Prospect Before Us is particularly unusual, even for Hutchings and the Albions – a number of the tracks were recorded live in the studio, complete with dancing by the Albion Morris Men, an effort that resulted in some especially raucous moments: the bonus version of "Merry Sherwood Rangers" is far more staid than the live rendition that made it to the original version of this album. An essential purchase, we think.

This six-CD set is sure to be of interest to fans of Susan Graham, the phenomenally successful American mezzo-soprano. The recordings, with the exception of just a few tracks from the 1990s, were made between 2000 and 2005, and they reveal Graham in her prime. Five of the discs had previously been released, but one is made up of selections from a variety of sources, including complete opera recordings. The set demonstrates Graham's versatility, both stylistically in the many types of music she sings and in the emotional spectrum that the songs and arias encompass. .