Alison Singh Gee

This second volume of Trombone Travels (Volume 1 is on 8574093) continues with Matthew Gee’s exploration of three great cycles of early 20th-century British song. Elgar’s Sea Pictures evoke lullaby and turbulence alike, Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel chart a wanderer’s lonely journey through the landscape, and in Songs of the Sea Stanford’s music embraces both the sombre and the exhilarating, with Gee joined by a trombone chorus to emulate the male voice choir. Throughout the recital Gee lavishes colouristic effects, the use of mutes, and subtle inflections that reinforce the trombone’s unique ability to mimic vocal techniques.

"Pilgrim" is my seventh solo album release (or eighth if you include the gospel album "The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man"), and my fourth album release with worldwide distribution company White Knight Records. "Pilgrim" is a concept album, over a total of 69 minutes, which is based upon John Bunyan’s famous book of 1678, "The Pilgrim’s Progress" This was one of the books that most influenced my father, Reverend Michael Gee, in his ministry as a vicar in the Church of England for over 30 years. Then when my father died in 2000, we erected a stained glass window in his memory at Holy Trinity Church, Brimscombe (his first parish church as a minister), of the scene from Bunyan’s book where Pilgrim brings his burden to the cross. So this album was very much for me a personal journey, and a mission which I needed to complete in memory of my father, and of his wonderful life of loving and serving other people.

Starting out as a typical U.K. club soul band, and then turning toward psychedelia and prog rock in the latter half of the '60s, it wasn't until Pesky Gee! changed their name in 1970 to Black Widow, transformed, and released the satanic Sacrifice that they reached the public eye. If not singular in any particular way, the prog-edged Pesky Gee! album, released on Pye in 1969, has enough cool Hammond organ flourishes and late psych-intoned vocals (male and female) to cause interest. Much is aimless, relies too much on the blues-rock boom, or is downright bad ("Born to Be Wild"), but when they got the mix right they were superb, as on their original psych/soul/prog numbers: on "A Place of Heartbreak" there is a superb male/female vocal, a soulful beat, and some haunting changes…

Among the most exciting classical musicians of our time, Alison Balsom was first inspired by Dizzy Gillespie to become a virtuosic trumpet soloist. 'I've spent my whole life trying to show how versatile the trumpet can be,' she says. 'It's only limited by your imagination.' In this selection from her award-winning albums, she plays gems from the Baroque repertoire on both natural and valved instruments.