Maria Eckermann

Maria McKee returns early next year with a new album La Vita Nuova. Mckee is remembered for her role in American country-rock band Lone Justice and for issuing some amazing solo records, including 1993’s You Gotta Sin To Be Saved (which includes the exquisite ‘I’m Gonna Soothe You’) and Life Is Sweet ( from 1996). Of course, she best known for UK number one single ‘Show Me Heaven’ which was featured in the Tony Scott film Days of Thunder.

A brilliant dancer before becoming “famous throughout Europe for his learned and elaborate sonatas, and for the elegance of his performance on the violin”, Jean-Marie Leclair is far more than the sum of his talents. His music is woven with the multiple threads of his life, carrying within it all the facets of his technical and musical explorations, his travels, his impressions, which have moulded man as much as musician.

This recording includes an excellent selection from Beethoven’s many settings of Irish folksongs, with imaginative new arrangements of his accompaniments, rescored for more traditional instruments than the original piano, violin and cello. His settings are interspersed with more conventional versions of Irish and Scottish folk tunes taken from other sources. These help to highlight his remarkable ingenuity, which preserves the original character of the folksongs while elevating them to a much higher level of interest.