Hammill began work on The Fall of the House of Usher back in the early '70s, yet it didn't see the light of day until the early '90s as a hard-to-find European import. He didn't feel it was completely finished until 1991; hence its elongated delay. This rock opera is comprised of six acts, and is based on an Edgar Allan Poe tale with small changes to the story here and there…
As a two-CD overview of the career of Peter Bardens, Write My Name in the Dust: Anthology manages to fit in a lot of material and display his work in different contexts, but also suffers from some problems that might prevent it from being wholly satisfying to some fans of his music. Despite the 40-year time span of the title, it's not a chronologically balanced selection by any means; 23 of the 29 tracks predate 1972, only three postdate the mid-'70s, and those three are all from his 2002 album The Art of Levitation. Too, there are just three cuts from Camel, which to art rock listeners might be the most familiar of the groups in which Bardens played.
‘The burly Aussie tenor is now even more identified with this ill-fated protagonist than Peter Pears, the first Grimes. And everywhere Skelton has sung the part, whether at English National Opera, the Proms, the Edinburgh festival or now on this international tour of a concert staging mounted by the Bergen Philharmonic, the conductor has been Edward Gardner. Theirs is one of the great musical partnerships, and they continue to find compelling new depths in this tragic masterpiece.’ – Richard Morrison – The Times. This studio recording was made following the acclaimed production at Grieghallen, in Bergen, in 2019 (repeated in Oslo and London and reviewed above). Luxuriant playing from the Bergen Philharmonic and a stellar cast under the assured direction of Edward Gardner make this a recording to treasure.
It's hard to explain the enduring appeal of Peter Hammill's music, but maybe it has some connection to the fact that his career has always run on a parallel track somewhere removed from the main sequence of Progressive Rock fashions. At a time when musicians were renowned for their virtuoso chops, Hammill was the notable exception…
Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac formed in London in 1967 by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, with bassist John McVie completing the line-up for their self-titled debut album, Fleetwood Mac began as a very different beast to the one they would become by the mid-1970s. Danny Kirwan joined as third guitarist in 1968 and keyboardist Christine Perfect, who contributed as a session musician from the second album, married John McVie and joined in 1970. Primarily a British blues band initially, they scored a UK number one with Albatross , and had lesser hits with the singles Oh Well and Black Magic Woman , the latter successfully covered by Santana. All three guitarists left in succession during the early 1970s, changing the sound of the group quite dramatically.
Peter Green is regarded by some fans as the greatest white blues guitarist ever, Eric Clapton notwithstanding. Born Peter Greenbaum but calling himself Peter Green by age 15, he grew up in London's working-class East End. Green's early musical influences were Hank Marvin of the Shadows, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Freddie King, and traditional Jewish music. He originally played bass before being invited in 1966 by keyboardist Peter Bardens to play lead in the Peter B's, whose drummer was a lanky chap named Mick Fleetwood…
Edward Cowie is one of the most individual and notable voices in contemporary music and considered by many to be the greatest living composer directly inspired by the natural world. He has worked for over 40 years writing music in response to landscapes and the voices of creatures. In this new cycle of 24 ‘sonic portraits’ of different British birds from 4 distinctive habitats, Cowie has drawn even closer to composing music that not so much imitates nature, but that – after much study and extensive field-work – has led to new music with highly original treatments of the relationships between the bird singers and where and how they sing. This album will be followed in early 2022 by a companion (music for flute and piano) featuring birds of Australia entitled ‘Where Song was Born’.
Yeah this is another album there Jimmy Smith is working with Oliver Nelson and his orchestra, and this album is based on Serge Prokofiev's Peter & The Wolf and the first four minutes is the Prokofiev music, but the rest is credit to the great Oliver Nelson and he even wrote about it in the liner notes too, yeah this is nice piece of music written by the fantastic Oliver Nelson based upon the feeling that Prokofiev once provide.
Singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist Peter Hammill is a veteran of the rock genre, recording in excess of 40 albums both alone and as a band leader for more than 30 years. A frequent collaborator and friend of Peter Gabriel, Hammill achieved high regard in his native Great Britain and across Europe. Hammill and Gabriel played an important role in the development of progressive rock, leading the art-prog-rock bands Van der Graaf Generator and Genesis respectively and singing in a theatrical, wordy, typically English style…