This release from the BGO label combines two of Gino Vannelli's albums for A&M, Powerful People (1974) and Storm at Sunup (1975). Both releases peaked in the Top 60 of the Billboard 200, while “People Gotta Move” – the lead song on the former – was one of Vannelli’s biggest singles and narrowly missed the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. Those who pick up a well-chosen Vannelli compilation can get the essential songs, but soft rock diehards can obtain a fair amount of Vannelli’s choice album-bound material right here.
By this point, Vannelli has pared away the often-bizarre edges of his sound and became more mainstream. That's not a bad thing. This album's predecessor, A Pauper in Paradise, seemed to blow up his pretensions to skyscraper size with only the melodic and gorgeous "The Surest Things Can Change" coming out unscathed…
The journey Niels Lan Doky and Gino Vannelli have undertaken in this album is - most of all - a rejoining journey. A reunion with their own roots ("A Word To My Father"), with their most intimate affections ("Tout Depend De Nous"), with Nature ("The War Of A Lonesome Dove"), with the World ("Close Your Eyes") and Spirituality ("Karumi"). To rejoin all this is to perceive Opposites and Conflicts as mere appearances. As such, melody and dissonance, sound and silence, perfect and unperfect, sacred and profane share the same, radiant Light. Recognising such differences means to solve them, to focus where the beauty and unity are coming from. This is "Haitek Haiku": at the same time an ideal Myth, a Project and a Sound.
In the heterogenity of its ten tracks, hypertechnological and hyperhuman coexist with one another…
Gino Vannelli's Yonder Tree is a musical breath of fresh air from a gifted artist who can perform just about anything he wants to. However with Yonder Tree, the listener truly feels his exuberance and his human compassion as he explores themes of romance and moral consciousness in a musical genre that is so well suited to his voice.
With Yonder Tree, Gino delves into his gift for lush arranging and presents us with a beautifully orchestrated work that is romantic, eclectic, and highlights his most beautiful instrument, his voice, in a way that his three previous albums did not. This is yet another overlooked and underappreciated effort from an artist who is constantly evolving and dares his audience to join him on the journey. Those who are able to be touched by a genuine artist whose primary goal is to touch the heart and soul with his music will enjoy the ride.
Crazy Life was Gino Vannelli’s debut album for A&M. Word has it that Gino, frustrated with being unable to secure a record deal in Los Angeles, hung out early in the morning at A&M’s lot and waited for someone of importance to show up. When a startled Herb Alpert encountered Vannelli in the parking lot, he agreed to an audition, signed Vannelli, and produced the debut album. Crazy Life was the gamble that A&M took on this relatively unknown talent, one that would pay off in future years with hits like "People Gotta Move" and "I Just Wanna Stop" for A&M.
Looking back on much of Gino’s mid-era A&M output, Crazy Life actually sounds less dated than many of his other albums. All the elements were there in the beginning: jazz inflections, "pop" vocals about love and relationships…
It is a meaningful sign of the times that Astor Piazzolla is arguably one of the most frequently performed composers on the contemporary musical stage, even though he probably never aimed at writing “classical” music. True, one of the fundamental encounters of his life was with composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, who mentored many of the most important avant-garde musicians of the second half of the twentieth century. And, under her guidance, Piazzolla did attempt to express his personality through the language of Western contemporary music. The results, of course, were very good, since nobody could question Piazzolla’s talent. Yet, when Piazzolla performed one of the tangos he had already written to his professor, she exclaimed: “Astor, all your classical pieces are well written, but the true Piazzolla sound is here, never leave it behind!”. And if the language of Piazzolla’s music does not correspond to that of the coeval European avantgardes, neither does it conform to the standards of the Argentinian tango tradition. It is precisely for his utter originality that Astor Piazzolla rightfully claimed and obtained a place in the pantheon of twentieth-century classical music. But it is also this originality that may puzzle those attempting to classify him within one of the established musical categories.