CAROLYN ANN FRANKLIN spent her singing and song writing career somewhat in the shadow of her hugely successful sister, The First Lady Of Soul, Aretha, having followed both her older siblings Aretha and Erma from the church into a secular recording career in the mid to late sixties. Although, Like Erma, Carolyn had modest success compared to Aretha she recorded with her sister many times and proved herself as an excellent songwriter penning hits for Aretha such as ‘Ain't No Way,’ ‘Save Me’ and the stunning ‘Angel.’ From 1969-1973 Franklin released three albums in produced by Jimmy Radcliffe which provided the R&B hits ‘All I Want To Be Is Your Woman’ and ‘It's True I'm Gonna Miss You,’ proving Carolyn was an exceptional vocalist in her own right.
While nothing is predictable or certain about improvisation, when the piano magician Carolyn Hume meets the vocal wonder Katja Cruz there is one thing we can be sure about. They will create a haunting, hypnotising, mesmerising atmosphere full of suspense and ghostly images that will linger in your memory forever. This is both the magic and mystery of making music. Carolyn Hume's previous four Leo-albums with the drummer Paul May created a user friendly variant of free jazz that was both tuneful and fashionable. Similarly, these ten, mostly improvised solo piano pieces prove impeccably ambient and easy on the ear, even when the notes are discordant,they make very attractive patterns as they fall.
Verlaine’s poetry lends itself well to music and many of his poems have been set successfully by numerous composers. Thus it was a brilliant idea to build a programme around Verlaine and include several settings of some of the poems. Since Carolyn Sampson has cast her net widely and included several rarely heard composers, we are offered a very comprehensive odyssey through the Verlainean waters.
The last years of Schubert's life were clouded by illness, so thoughts of the afterlife cannot have been far from his mind. For their latest recital for BIS, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton present an all-Schubert recital themed around Elysium, the mythical idea of a blessed and happy eternal future, with texts that explore different states of the afterlife by well-known authors such as Goethe, Rückert and Schiller as well as by lesser-known ones.
The live performance last year of this major and substantial work by the young Latvian composer Ešenvalds thrilled critics and audiences alike. As a new liturgical work that looks set to enter the repertoire it is comparable to Arvo Pärt’s Passio. Eschewing the single narrative perspective that characterizes the great Passion settings of the past, the composer has assembled an interlocking mosaic of texts from the gospels, from Byzantine and Roman liturgies, and from the Old Testament.
Carolyn Wonderland is an American blues singer, songwriter and musician. Wonderland's instrumental abilities include guitar, slide guitar, mandolin, trumpet and piano. Although primarily a blues artist, Wonderland likes to incorporate elements of country, swing, zydeco, surf, gospel, soul, and cumbia into her musical mix. She usually performs with Cole El-Saleh on keyboards and Robert Michael Hooper on drums…