Native Songs

5CD compilation entitled: 'Songs From The 100 Best Australian Albums'. It is a companion to a new book written by John O'Donnell, Toby Creswell & Craig Mathieson. As the name suggests, the book counts down the 100 Best Aussie albums of the pop era with detailed exploration of why the albums were chosen. The compilation is a 5CD pack and will include many tracks which rarely clear for compilations including not one, but two Midnight Oil tracks. It also features Easybeats - Friday On My Mind, Daddy Cool - Eagle Rock, The Saints - I'm Stranded, John Farnham - You're The Voice, Crowded House - Better Be Home Soon, Powderfinger - These Days, The Presets - My People, and many more.

In 1968, six former choral scholars from King’s College, Cambridge established the King’s Singers, later described by The Times as “the superlative vocal sextet”. The group has always comprised two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and over the years it has proved consistently exceptional for vocal distinction and breadth and diversity of repertoire. This celebratory collection of eight CDs focuses on Renaissance composers from Italy, England, France, Spain, Germany and the Low Countries.

Among all his remarkable and varied compositional talents, Purcell was the supreme craftsman when it came to setting his native language to music. Addison wrote of Purcell’s ‘Tunes so wonderfully adapted to his Words’ and Playford, in his introduction to the first volume of Orpheus Britannicus (1706) commented that ‘The Author’s extraordinary Tallent in all sorts of music, is sufficiently known; but he was particularly admir’d for his Vocal, having a peculiar Genius to express the Energy of English Words, whereby he mov’d the Passions as well as caused Admiration in all his Auditors’. Purcell combined an innate sense of the natural rhythms of speech and a wonderful melodic flair with a richness of harmonic language that few composers have ever matched.