Simon Wright - Sea Pictures - Music Makers - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The Great White Sea Eagle is the follow up to James Yorkston and The Secondhand Orchestra's The Wide, Wide River - a Guardian Top 10 Folk Album of 2021. Yorkston and Sweden's The Secondhand Orchestra had no real plans to do a follow up, but as James visited his studio in Cellardyke, Fife everyday in early 2021, he began to start writing songs on the piano as opposed to his usual guitar as he gazed upon the sea outside his window. After sending the first five or six songs to Karl-Jonas Winqvist (the leader/conductor of TSHO), they began to discuss working on the music together. With Yorkston's shift from guitar to piano, they thought about what other changes they could make to their process which led to the involvement of a guest singer and the legendary Nina Persson (The Cardigans) was brought into the fold.1. Sam And Jeanie McGreagor2. An Upturned Crab3. Keeping Up With The Grandchildren, Yeah4. The Heavy Lyric Police5. A Sweetness In You6. A Forestful Of Rogues7. Peter Paulo Van Der Heyden8. Mary9. Hold Out For Love10. The Harmony11. The Great White Sea Eagle12. A Hollow Skeleton Lifts A Heavy Wing

One of the most exciting events I have experienced during a reviewing career approaching half a century, was the verdict of the Birmingham Post's critic after hearing the premiere performance of Elgar's Piano Quintet in a new orchestration by Donald Fraser, with Kenneth Woods conducting the English Symphony Orchestra. This version, which was also named a InchPremiere of the YearInch by Classical Music magazine, appears in a studio recording alongside Fraser's choral arrangement of Elgar's Sea Pictures, with Woods conducting the English Chamber Orchestra and the Rodolfus Choir. Fraser has frequently orchestrated works by Elgar at the behest of individuals and organizations including Yehudi Menuhin and the Elgar Society.

Steve Reich is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost exponents of minimalism, arguably the most significant stylistic trend in late 20th-century music. This chronological survey shows how Reich's innate curiosity has taken his work far beyond such musical boundaries. One of the first fruits of Reich's creative quest is 'Music for Two of More Pianos,' in which the influence of Morton Feldman and jazz pianist Bill Evans can be heard. The rhythmic and flamboyant 'Eight Lines' comes from the true heyday of minimalism, while 'Vermont' and 'New York Counterpoint' both explore webs of phased patterns created by multi-tracked instruments. 'City Life' is a dramatic set of impressions of New York, vividly weaving sampled speech and street sounds into a work with symphonic depth of range and expression.