Fear Merchants - Mental - VINYL LP

Vinyl LP pressing. 1985 album from the British-American musical collective led by Jon Langford.

These three piano concertos provide new insights two discoveries from the classical era that alter our perspective on the seemingly familiar. Giovanni Battista Martini was a leading music theoretician of his time. His compositions caused a sensation. His many pupils included Johann Christian Bach. Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel sought musical instruction from him. His piano concerto is particularly remarkable for it's songful lyricism, whose expressiveness is far ahead of what was customary at the time. Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel worked as a court musician, and from 1802 directed the court music in Aschaffenburg. We know of contacts with Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber. The piano concerto in D major is characterized by clear structure and instrumental virtuosity. The piano concerto in D minorK466 is one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's greatest works. Comparing it to the now almost forgotten concertos by Sterkel and Martini yields an added perspective it is a psychological drama, in which we encounter Mozart's matchless genius.

The Dark marks the debut of EEA, a newly formed ensemble consisting of saxophonist Peter Epstein, Larry Engstrom on trumpet, and pianist David Ake. Whether performing original compositions, collective improvisations, or overlooked gems from the jazz repertoire, the Dark explores the full range of moods and textures afforded by this unusual instrumentation. Epstein, Engstrom, and Ake have performed and recorded alongside many of the world's finest artists in jazz and improvisational music, including Ralph Alessi, Uri Caine, Scott Colley, Ravi Coltrane, Charlie Haden. EEA allows all of their varied experiences to make it's way into their music.