Stephen Young

Fourteen years after his last solo outing, STILLS ALONE, Stephen Stills unveiled 2005's MAN ALIVE!, a remarkably vital and dynamic album that features the veteran performer penning almost every song and playing many of the record's instruments. Although David Crosby is absent, Stills's other CSNY mates, Graham Nash and Neil Young, turn up separately. While Nash subtly sticks to backing-vocal duty, Young contributes his typically incendiary electric-guitar lines to the hard-rocking "'Round the Bend" and offers up vocal harmonies and acoustic-guitar work on the spare, soulful "Different Man." A more unlikely cameo comes in the form of pianist Herbie Hancock's prominent presence on the 11-minute epic "Spanish Suite," which also features Latin percussion great Willie Bobo. Of course, Stills is the main attraction on MAN ALIVE!, with his husky voice carrying every song, including the socially conscious CSN-like track "Feed the People" and the blues-tinged "Piece of Me".

Works from three different musical eras seemingly unconnected – but in the mind of Pianist Stephen Beville very linked – hence the album title – as inspired by Visions and Ventures: Bach always a visionary musically and guided by his religious faith; Beethoven venturing into Romanticism with revolutionary ideas and optimism for a better world; Prokofiev caught up in the unrest in pre-revolutionary Russia, sketching pieces to escape the political turmoil – at least in his imagination. The Visions Fugitives come from a composer in his mid-twenties, just graduated and full of musical confidence, and are typically Prokofievian while some contain radical modernist elements. The Beethoven Sonata is likewise the work of a young 26-year old. It is full of playful invention and optimism and is perhaps one his most appealing works. Stephen Beville was acclaimed in 2010 as ‘one of the most talented young musicians to emerge from the UK’. (Frankfurter Neue Press).