Flying on Fabric

The early Sixties and the years leading up to them was the era of the instrumental and the numbers on offer were as different as the instruments they each showcased. This superb 3 disc compilation features guitar-based rock from the Shadows, rhythm and blues from Booker T. & the M.G.s, the drum-led adventures of Sandy Nelson and the clarinet-led jazz of Acker Bilk …and that's only the first four tracks!

The early Sixties and the years leading up to them was the era of the instrumental and the numbers on offer were as different as the instruments they each showcased. This superb 3 disc compilation features guitar-based rock from the Shadows, rhythm and blues from Booker T. & the M.G.s, the drum-led adventures of Sandy Nelson and the clarinet-led jazz of Acker Bilk …and that's only the first four tracks!

The early Sixties and the years leading up to them was the era of the instrumental and the numbers on offer were as different as the instruments they each showcased. This superb 3 disc compilation features guitar-based rock from the Shadows, rhythm and blues from Booker T. & the M.G.s, the drum-led adventures of Sandy Nelson and the clarinet-led jazz of Acker Bilk …and that's only the first four tracks!

Here are the orchestral and `easy' instrumental hits, both big and small - but mostly big - that helped define the Golden Age of Popular Music, an era spanning, roughly, 1956-1967, when the US charts were brimming with an eclectic cornucopia of sounds and styles that is unlikely to be repeated in today's age corporate, socially engineered music making. `Hits With Strings And Things' is an important addition to this best-selling Ace series.

Chen was China's first woman to be awarded a master's degree in composition; she often incorporates Chinese instruments and melodies in her music. Born in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Chen Yi (b. 1953) learned the violin at a young age and continued to play the instrument up to her graduate student years at Columbia University in the late 1980s. In fact, during the Cultural Revolution, Chen had continued to practise the violin even after having been sent to the countryside. By the early 1970s, she had returned to the city where she served as violinist with the local operatic troupe. All of these experiences provided inspiration for the compositions featured on this CD, whether in borrowed operatic and folk tunes, calligraphic gestures, huqin fiddling techniques, imitative sonorities of Chinese traditional instruments (sheng, suona, xiao or qin), inventive use of percussion, or in the vivid depiction of nature. Chen has lived and breathed Chinese operatic tradition and folk culture for decades, while at the same time steeping herself in the study of the Western canon of music.

On their second collaboration, legendary singer Mavis Staples and Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy have crafted a gospel album for the 21st century, a music that strives for faith in a world where nothing can be taken for granted. On One True Vine, Mavis Staples gives voice to something new in her repertoire, something deeper and more resonant with our times; longtime fans will notice a new reserve in her singing, a muted, plaintive quality that serves the darker, more nuanced songs collected here perfectly. If her Stax hits spoke for a growing black social consciousness, and her seventies collaborations with the Band and others gave spiritual weight to the rediscovery of tradional American music, then in our post-millenial drift, Jeff Tweedy has crafted a pulpit from which Mavis lends her voice to a search for grace.