Miki

Ciao! Best of Lush is a compilation album for the band Lush, released in March 2001 by 4AD. The essay in the booklet was written by Dominic Wills and includes quotes from Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson. The best-of CD appeared almost five years after the band's dissolution and drummer Chris Acland's suicide; the compilation is dedicated to his memory.

Baroque powerhouse Domenico Scarlatti – son of the great Alessandro Scarlatti and born in 1685, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Friderich Handel – wrote an enormous 555 keyboard sonatas. These were mostly to be performed on the harpsichord, although several sources suggest that he may have also written some for the fortepiano at the Spanish court, where he was employed from 1733. The universal appeal of these sonatas – containing Scarlatti’s trademark influence of Iberian folk music and dances – is such that they have been pushed beyond the boundaries of the intended instrument, and thus the recording also boasts performances of selected sonatas on the harp and accordion, bringing these wonderful sonatas into the 21st century.

Mari Takano, from the standard publicity photograph she uses, looks like a soccer mom ready to go out on a date with her husband, taking a phone call in the kitchen before she heads out the door. Nothing in the photo would give you the impression that Takano is a venturesome and fiercely original classical composer who has studied with Brian Ferneyhough and György Ligeti.