Charles Joseph Smith - Collected Works and War of the Martian Ghosts - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Collected Works and War of the Martian Ghosts is the definitive recorded collection of living Chicago DIY legend, Dr. Charles Joseph Smith. It also marks the first archival from Chicago's Sooper Records. All of the music here is being made widely available for the first time ever. This 90-minute collection is compiled from 30 years of Charles' self-released music spanning concert piano, electroacoustic experimentation, electronic beats, free improvisation, and two instrumental realizations of his evolving sci-fi opera, War of the Martian Ghosts (a 2023 electronic realization, and a 2018 piano realization). This double Vinyl / Triple CD Collector's Edition includes an extensive liner note booklet containing 9000 words about the artist's life and work, as well as poetry, interviews, quotes, and 30 archival photographs. Liner notes written by Sooper co-founder Glenn Curran and edited by Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz.Dr. Charles Joseph Smith's remarkable story begins with a mute child's gift for music, and the purposeful way he nurtured this talent to become both life practice and raison d'être. Charles recounts this artistic journey in his autobiography, The 88 Keys that Opened Doors, a self-published book that chronicles a life in which music was (and still is) the primary key to overcoming immense challenges posed by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).His career as a musician starts in the church, reaches into the international concert piano circuit, and eventually settles to bear strange fruit in Chicago's experimental underground. Along the way, Charles Joseph Smith's compositional voice absorbed and metabolized popular music spanning pop to jazz, the gospel of the church, the canon of the classical conservatory, modern dance scores, and the rule-shattering experimentalism of his city's DIY subculture, where he has been a mainstay for over 30 years. Since the mid-1990s,

The early twentieth century was a period of enormous innovation and inventiveness in French organ music. On his debut album, Charles Maxtone-Smith brings together some of it's finest treasures by three titans of the organ repertoire, namely Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, and Maurice Duruflé, making full use of the resources of Buckfast Abbey's Ruffatti instrument. Vierne's tumultuous Cinquième Symphonie explores chromaticism through his vivid imagining of two overarching themes which coalesce at the end into a triumphal conclusion. Charles Tournemire evokes the beating heart of French mysticism with his sensuous colour and harmony in an improvisation, later transcribed, on the Marian hymn InchAve maris stellaInch. Vierne's carefully controlled musical forms and Tournemire's evocative expression are synthesised perfectly in the Maurice Duruflé's Prélude, Adagio et Choral varié, whose beauty and power celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Album Tracks 1. Vierne - Symphony No.5 in a Minor, Op.47 I. Grave 2. Vierne - Symphony No.5 in a Minor, Op.47 II. Allegro Molto Marcato 3. Vierne - Symphony No.5 in a Minor, Op.47 III. Tempo Di Scherzo Ma Non Troppo Vivo 4. Vierne - Symphony No.5 in a Minor, Op.47 IV. Larghetto 5. Vierne - Symphony No.5 in a Minor, Op.47 V. Final. Allegro Moderato 6. Tournemire - Cinq Improvisations Fantaisie-Improvisation Sur L'InchAve Maris StellaInch (Transcribed By Maurice Duruflé) 7. Duruflé - Prélude Sur L'introit de L'épiphanie, Op.13 8. Duruflé - Prélude, Adagio Et Choral Varie Sur Le Theme Du InchVeni CreatorInch, Op.4 9. Duruflé - Prélude, Adagio Et Choral Varie Sur Le Theme Du InchVeni CreatorInch, Op.4 I. Prélude 10. Duruflé - Prélude, Adagio Et Choral Varie Sur Le Theme Du InchVeni CreatorInch, Op.4 II. Adagio 11. Duruflé - Prélude, Adagio Et Choral Varie Sur Le Theme Du InchVeni CreatorInch,

The music of Samuel Adler - born in Mannheim in 1928 but long since one of the leading figures of American music - has it's roots in the Neo-Classical clarity of composers like Copland and Hindemith, who were among his teachers. The works on this album arose from a range of impulses a Neo-Baroque concerto grosso and a tribute to Bach encase a series of tributes to lost individuals and traditions; and two jeux d'esprit - Ives' tongue-in-cheek Variations on America and Holst's 'Jupiter' from The Planets - both bring jollity in Adler's idiomatic arrangements for string orchestra. Album Tracks 1. Arcos Concerto (2008) 2. Elegy (1962) 3. Beyond the Pale (2008) 4. Come Let's Dance (2020) 5. Gedenkfeier (2018) 6. In the Spirit of Bach (2013) 7. Variations on America, for String Orchestra 8. The Planets 'Jupiter', for String Orchestra