Songs of a Lost World

Triumph & Disaster is a post-apocalyptic view on the collapse of the world told like a children’s story and illustrated through the eyes of a mother and her son as they spend one last day on Earth. The music is the narrative for the destruction and tragedy. The words tell the story of love, loss and letting go.

Clara Schumann's presence in the history of European music has become firmly fixed in recent years: the many new biographies, editions, recordings and performances of her compositions testimony to her significance and influence. Her songs, not as well known as her works for piano, are among the treasures of her creative work and can take their place with the best of the German Lieder repertoire.

*Premiere Recording* Never stop or falter, always play loud. Stay together as long as you can, but if you get lost, stay lost. Do not try to find your way back into the fold. Thats the instruction legendary composer Frederic Rzewski gave for his 1968 piece Les Moutons de Panurge. Songs of Insurrection (2016) is Rzewskis sequel to his masterwork "The People United Will Never Be Defeated".

If poet-cum-prophet Gil Scott-Heron taught us anything, it was to find your own truth. Which is precisely what Giacomo Gates does on this 10-track foray into the vast and fertile jungle of Scott-Heron songs, sermons and soliloquies. Gates could have covered pieces like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” “Johannesburg,” “We Almost Lost Detroit,” “Angel Dust” and “B-Movie,” all among Scott-Heron’s best works, none of which have lost their sting.

Four albums in 15 years is not exactly prolific when it comes to making records. But Annie Lennox has never been one to rush things, and her recorded output as a solo artist in life after the Eurythmics has been stellar. The last time she issued a recording in 2003 with Bare, a collection of deeply committed emotional songs that set a new standard for her artistically, though they were written in the turmoil following her second divorce. Perhaps the reason she hasn't had the time to record is her activism. She's involved herself in causes that range from her primary concern, raising awareness about AIDS/HIV (and she refers to this in the album's notes), to the environment and poverty. But Songs of Mass Destruction isn't a political album by any means, unless the personal is – and often it is. This is another album of love songs; dark love songs. These are breakup ballads, statuesque embers of pain and rage that have simmered down to the traces of that dull ache of emptiness that always exists in the aftermath of something profound.