This is the Classical Music section of Rainlore's World of Music, covering all types of classical and related music, from ancient and medieval to contemporary, and including the classical music traditions of non-western cultures.
In order to secure its future as an ongoing project, and indeed resume regular activity such as new reviews, Rainlore's World of Music urgently needs to raise substantial funds through some kind of sponsorship or similar. (Please also see The Future of Rainlore's World of Music on the About page, and the News entry for 2008/11/09 on the Home page.)
It has regrettably become impossible to keep Rainlore's World of Music going on a purely spare-time basis. The amount of work involved is simply too overwhelming. At the rate that for example CDs kept arriving for review and gigs were covered during 2004, there was enough work to keep two people busy on a full-time basis!
Of course, I wish to preserve the non-commercial and not for profit nature of Rainlore's World of Music, but without some kind of sponsorship the site simply cannot continue in any meaningful active way. Despite not having had any updates for about four years until its re-launch in October 2008, Rainlore's World of Music remains a popular site. The reviews and artists' profiles have always achieved excellent visibility in search results, and have also been referenced widely. There are also many new features I would like to add to Rainlore's World of Music, such as a Gig calendar to replace the old one
and a Features section that should have been added during 2004 already, plus more.
Sadly, without some form of sponsorship none of this will be possible and the site will at some point soon become purely archival.
If you think you might be able to help in any way, please get in touch through the sponsorship form. |
News
2010/03/14
One album review and an article this week hope to draw attention to two - almost - "cause celebres". The album in question is the magnificent The Music Lives On: Now The Mines Have Gone, featuring The Best Of Colliery Bands, while the article, Double Zed Music - Everything Accordion! explores one of the finest accordion resources on the web.
The Music Lives On: Now The Mines Have Gone is a compilation album featuring some of the greatest British colliery brass bands surviving today, as well as some of the finest brass band music selections. The album was released to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the end of the last great miners' strike on 3rd March 1985, as well as to celebrate the survival of the colliery bands and the brass band movement.
Sadly, however, it seems to me that celebrating the survival of the brass band movement may be a little premature when so many former colliery and other brass bands have perished since the 1980s, and many more are struggling to survive today - both financially and in attracting new membership. When even a quite well-known band from a basically fairly prosperous corner of southern England so very nearly faced extinction a few years ago, it certainly became very obvious that the whole brass band movement was facing problems. And it's not only the demise of the mining industry and its support for the colliery bands that's been at the root of these problems. Far more, and more seriously, it is changing public tastes and attitudes. Sadly, the glory days of the height of the most widespread popularity of British brass bands of the 1970s and early 80s have long gone. The days when brass band was televised regularly by the BBC, when brass band even penetrated the pop charts, when in 1977 the Brighouse & Rastrick Band scored a massive and unprecedented singles hit with The Floral Dance and were only prevented from reaching the No. 1 spot by the release of Paul McCartney's Mull of Kintyre, or when new-wave pop star Jona Lewie had a monster hit with brass band accompaniment in Stop The Cavalry that was only stopped from reaching the No. 1 spot by the sad death of John Lennon and the speedy re-release of some of his records. And who could possibly forget the 1970s Hovis Bread TV commercial with Shaftesbury's Gold Hill standing in for a road somewhere in what we were supposed to believe to be Yorkshire, with a young lad carrying a loaf up the steep hill to the unforgettable strains of the second movement of Dvorak's Symphony From The New World played by a brass band (if memory serves, the Black Dyke Mills Band?)!
Despite the occasional flashes of brilliance since those days (such as 1995's Brassed Off movie), somehow the braas band movement never quite captured the wider public imagination to anything like the same extent again. In the 1970s, there were some 20-30,000 brass bands in Britain, yet today we are left with a mere 500-1,000 perhaps, and many of those are struggling. And this is a very sad state of affairs indeed. Brass band music is not only absolutely glorious music, it's as quintessentially British as Yorkshire pudding, cheddar cheese, pork pie, the great British banger, a sense of fair play and tolerance, the glorious British landscape, excentricity, the Last Night of the Proms, the British sense of humour, jellied eel, pie and mash, fish and chips, 'warm' beer, panto, the boat race, Ascot, the Grand National, Mrs. Beeton, curry and chips, the institution of the monarchy, wippets and greyhounds, cream teas, and whatever else you might care to think of. The brass band is a British tradition and heritage to be immensely proud of and that ought to be cherished and nurtured. Isn't it time we all in Britain took more of an interest and pride in some of the best and finest traditions of the land and kept our heritage alive and well? Before it's too late?
One really has to hope that The Music Lives On: Now The Mines Have Gone, as well as the currently running BBC 2 television series A Band For Britain (about the struggles and revival of the Dinnington Brass Band, aided by irrepressable TV presenter Sue Perkins) will go some way in helping to widen popular interest in brass band music and the heritage as a whole.
Double Zed Music - Everything Accordion! explores what is probably the greatest single accordion music resource on the web, ZZ Music. Everything from accordion albums by a huge variety of artists, accordion sheet music, books and more to accordions of the highest pedigree from Claudio Beltrami.
Again, accordion music, especially in the UK, tends to be rather neglected and/or ignored. All too often, the accordion is still regarded as either something somewhat old-fashioned or "humble". Yet, neither could be further from the truth. The accordion is one of the most versatile instruments around and finds a place in just about any type of music you could think of, from folk right up to jazz and classical music - concertos have even been written for it, including a contemporary one in the last ten years by accordion maestro extraordinaire Romano Viazzani (three of his solo accordion albums were recently reviewed on this site). If you labour under the very much misguided impression that the accordion is simple or "humble", then you really ought to have a look at - and more importantly, a listen to some of the finest accordions around as played by some of its finest exponents. Even the accordion's still more "humble" cousing, the concertina, is anything but. Not only could a good quality instrument cost you enough to have to extend your mortgage, but again it has found its way into all manner of musical styles including classical - indeed, many a folk concertina player is classically trained on the instrument.
The accordion is at least very much alive, but it certainly is deserving of much wider popular interest in this country especially. Maybe you'd like to explore a little further?
Rainlore's World of Music
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2010/03/07
The 2008/09 version of this page has now been archived.
Finally, it has come to our attention that there appear to be a few minor problems with our web forms, specifically with radio buttons and check boxes, with some browsers. This is continuing to be checked out, but as everything seems to work just fine in Internet Explorer, it seems likely that the problem lies with the other browsers in that they may not have fully implemented this aspect of forms. In which case there appears little that can be done about it other than to suggest you temporarily switch to Internet Explorer in order to use our forms, if you are affected. Flash based forms might be another option longer term.
Rainlore's World of Music
© 2010 Rainlore's World of Music/Rainlore. All rights reserved.
2010/02/28
Just one review to add this time, but of one hell of an album! You've simply got to hear guitar virtuoso Nicolas Meier as the multi-tracked Modern Guitar Orchestra and his 2004 album Vivaldi - Four Seasons to believe it! Consisting of the complete four concertos making up Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, plus a few carefully selected Meier originals in the form of a brief intro and a closing epilogue that also features veteran jazz guitar legend John Etheridge, this is a completely true to the original arrangement by Meier and is Vivaldi like you've never heard before - on steroids! The fabulous sample track with the review will give you a taste of the flavour of the whole. This most original of arrangements is not to be missed! Meier has been making a huge impact on the UK and international jazz guitar and world music scenes in recent years but can't really be pinned down to any one genre, and this excursion into the classical/Baroque world proves it and his incredible versatility.
Rainlore's World of Music
© 2010 Rainlore's World of Music/Rainlore. All rights reserved.
2010/01/31
Should have been here long ago, but better late than never, are reviews of one of the very finest of today's maestros of the accordion, Romano Viazzani's albums from 2007. A trio of outstanding solo accordion releases, they could and indeed ought to be treated as a boxed set but work equally well on their own. Piazzolla - Ángel Suite / Bobiç - Liturgical Suite, Encore, and Viazzani takes Stok cover a huge gamut of styles and genres, form Baroque, contemporary classical, via Argentine Tango and Italian dance classics to contemporary music and rock/pop. A veritable gourmet feast for any music lover, and especially for the accordion connoisseur. Delectable sample tracks (if you don't have Flash Player 8 or later set up yet, now's the time!) accompany each of the three reviews and should wet any appetite sufficiently to want more! To buy, just go to the ZZ Music label's web site. (This small Indie label seems to specialise entirely in accordion - something long needed.) Of course, Romano Viazzani will already be familiar on this site, at any rate to jazz lovers, through his long association with the great Gilad Atzmon's extended Orient House Ensemble. The present recordings are accordion at its most glorious. More, please!
Rainlore's World of Music
© 2010 Rainlore's World of Music/Rainlore. All rights reserved.
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