Hommage Symphonique is an album of progressive rock covers recorded by master keyboardist Erik Norlander along with the virtuoso band of Gregg Bissonette, Don Schiff and Mark McCrite with Kelly Keeling handling all of the vocal duties. Erik also employed a small ensemble of acoustic instruments featuring Jon Pappenbrook (trumpets flugelhorn), Eric Jorgensen (trombones), Mike Alvarez (cello) and David Schiff (woodwinds). David is the brother of Don Schiff, and in addition to Don's NS/Stick work on the album, he also fills out the acoustic string ensemble with the new Bowed Guitar instrument. Erik's choice of covers reflects his own broad musical taste, performing songs originally recorded by ELP, ELO, Yes, Rick Wakeman, King Crimson, Procol Harum and Jethro Tull and Chuck Mangione…
2007 release of a mammoth box set of 50 CD's with key recordings from the Angel/EMI Music classical catalog. Performers include Yehudi Menuhin, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Quatuor Hongrois, Heutling Quartet, Erich Leinsdorf, Jean-Philippe Collard & Augustin Dumay & Frdric Lodon, Christian Zacharias, Paolo Bordoni, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Geoffrey Parsons, Lucia Popp, Barbara Hendricks, Radu Lupu and many more.
Back in 1975, prog-rock virtuoso Rick Wakeman, at the time also an ‘on-off’ keyboardist with the group Yes, released the third of his solo albums. Like the previous two albums (The Six Wives of King Henry VIII (1973) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974)) it was not short of ambition, planning to tell, in musical form and mood, the story of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table…
Kaamelott, pour la première fois en disque. La bande originale de Kaamelott – Premier Volet, le premier film de la trilogie cinématographique de la saga créée par Alexandre Astier sort le 27 novembre 2020 (Deutsche Grammophon). Composée et orchestrée par Alexandre Astier, elle réunit 115 artistes : l’Orchestre national de Lyon dirigé par Frank Strobel, le Chœur de chambre Spirito, les solistes Cyril Dupuy (cymbalum), Gabriel Rignol (théorbe) et Alexandre Astier lui-même (piano, guembri, ghungroo, cajón, dholak, hulusi).
Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is the fourth studio album by Norwegian experimental collective Ulver. Produced with Kristoffer Rygg, together with Knut Magne Valle and Tore Ylwizaker, it was issued on December 17, 1998 via Jester Records. It is a musical setting of William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The album blended electronics, industrial music elements, progressive metal and avant-garde rock, adding ambient passages, following Blake's plates as track indexes. Stine Grytøyr, Ihsahn, Samoth and Fenriz all feature as guest vocalists.The album received widespread acclaim from critics within both the rock/metal and alternative music press - being awarded Album of the Month in several high-profile magazines such as Terrorizer, Metal Hammer, and Rock Hard and ranked very highly in their end of year's best polls. However, the album’s transitional nature perhaps alienated many fans of the band’s first three albums - causing a backlash from the black metal scene.Controversial director of films Kids and Gummo, Harmony Korine, recently commented, alluding to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "There's a real lineage from a composer like Wagner to a band like Ulver."