Paul Miller

Paul McCartney’s tenth solo album, 1997’s Flaming Pie, will become the 13th instalment in his Grammy-winning Archive Collection on 31 July. The acclaimed set, which featured such favourites as ‘Young Boy,’ ‘Calico Skies’ and ‘Beautiful Night,’ will be released in multiple formats with a treasure trove of unheard home recordings, demos and other rarities.

Blue-eyed soul singer Frankie Miller made his name on the English pub rock circuit of the early '70s, and spent around a decade-and-a-half cutting albums of traditional R&B, rock & roll, and country-rock. In addition to his recorded legacy as an avatar of American roots music, his original material was covered by artists from the worlds of rock, blues, and country, from Bob Seger and Bonnie Tyler to Lou Ann Barton and the Bellamy Brothers. And Miller himself scored a surprise U.K. Top Ten smash in 1978 with "Darlin'," giving his likable, soulful style the popular airing many fans felt it deserved all along…

John Corigliano's music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by some of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. He is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, five GRAMMY Awards, the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Oscar. The Piano Concerto ranges in expression between lyricism and atonality and is extremely virtuosic and theatrical, while the competition piece Fantasia on an Ostinato investigates the performer's imagination and musicality through minimalist techniques. The devilish discipline of etude Fantasy contrasts with the improvisatory origins of Winging It, while Prelude for Paul echoes the soul of Rachmaninov.

This CD may be scoffed at by serious jazz listeners, and even by big-band devotees wary of modern "ghost band" performances, but the fact is that it sold over 100,000 pieces when it first appeared in 1983, and its CD version was among the very earliest compact discs ever released commercially in the United States (indeed, so early that the actual CDs had to be imported from Japan). The second-ever release by GRP Records, it put the label on the map, and it also stood as testimony to how good those original arrangements of the Glenn Miller Orchestra were. So how is it as music?