Noel 20203

Venice was surely the capital of music and the arts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and one of the most coveted positions in the city was that of maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica.

Council Skies is the highly anticipated fourth studio album from Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds released on 2nd June 2023. The album includes the new singles ‘Pretty Boy’ and ‘Easy Now’ plus an album version of the previously released demo ‘We’re Gonna Get There In The End’ as a bonus track. This deluxe format includes a bonus disc featuring previously unreleased live sessions, instrumentals, and remixes from The Cure’s Robert Smith, Pet Shop Boys, and David Holmes.

The new release from Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, "Back The Way We Came: Vol 1 (2011-2021)," celebrates 10 years since the inception of NGHFB. This double album, curated and compiled entirely by Noel, includes tracks from the three albums (‘Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’, ‘Chasing Yesterday’ and ‘Who Built The Moon?’) and the three acclaimed EPs (‘Black Star Dancing’, ‘This Is The Place’ and ‘Blue Moon Rising’) - plus 2 previously unreleased tracks including the brand new single ‘We’re On Our Way Now’.

This recording traverses Canada, America and the British isles in music that has helped define the culture of those nations. England is represented by two of its most celebrated composers, Holst and Vaughan Williams, and the iconic Scottish Auld Lang Syne is traditionally sung to greet each New Year. Celebrated Canadian songs include Jimmy Rankin’s Juno Award-winning Fare thee well love. Eric Whitacre’s distinctive harmonic clusters can be heard in Go lovely rose, and Gordon Lightfoot counts Bob Dylan among his many fans, Dylan once declaring that when he heard a song such as Pussywillows, cat-tails he wished ‘it would last forever’.

You might accurately describe this program as a compilation of "great hits of Christian church music", including as it does Franck's Panis angelicus, Finzi's God is gone up, Mozart's Laudate Dominum, Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine, Lotti's Crucifixus, Howells' Magnificat, and the overrated, overwrought, overlong (and usually excruciatingly-sung) Hear my prayer by Mendelssohn. We also get a couple of Purcell anthems, O God, Thou art my God and Remember not, O Lord, Stanford's glorious motet Justorum animae, Duruflé's tiny masterpiece Ubi caritas et amor, and the choral setting of Elgar's "Nimrod" orchestral variation (Lux aeterna).