LibraryPreviews.com

Green Hill
Celtic Christmas Spirit by Caroline Peyton on Green Hill Music label
is unlike any Christmas album, or even Celtic Christmas recording, you have ever heard before. There are four songs sung in the ancient Irish Gaelic language, two in Latin, one in English and the rest in a wordless ethereal scat simply using vocal sounds. Often the voice is used as an instrument and overdubbed many times to form a rich texture. The songs are mostly very old compositions (some date back hundreds and hundreds of years) from the earliest days of Christianity in Ireland. The album captures a Christmas spirit, but because of the Gaelic, Latin and wordless vocals, the recording can be enjoyed year-round as simply an extraordinary musical excursion.

All the vocals are by Caroline Peyton, and although you may not recognize her name, you probably have heard her voice because she has become a regular singer in Disney animated movies.

• Welcome Home
  "WELCOME HOME" Esteban Ramirez
  You’re in for a BIG surprise when you listen to this CD! Without even being aware of it, you will begin to feel this wonderful music take control over your senses. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, Esteban’s piano playing will enrich your experience. His music can make you feel like you’re a player in a romantic film, with its rich imagery. I can almost guarantee that, in some way, “Welcome Home” will touch your heart and soul! The music is mostly solo piano, although four tunes are piano-cello duets. All but one of the tunes are original compositions with hints of classical.

• Sarah Brightman
  La Luna
  ANGEL
  Superstar crossover vocalist Sarah Brightman greets the new millennium with an even surer, bolder sense of her unique musical niche than that evident from 1999's Eden. Like 'Eden', La Luna is a concept album only in a vaguely free-associative sense. The selection of material here touches on images of the moon that reinforce its ambiguity as a force known to draw together "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet" (Brightman's photo shoots for the album do seem to suggest a sort of Titania-like figure out of a New Age Midsummer Night's Dream). And it's a stylistic as well as thematic voyage, coursing from such contemporary sounds as synth pop (on "This Love") through vintage jazz standards (Billie Holiday's atmospheric and haunting "Gloomy Sunday") to high opera for the title track (a version of the sublime "Song of the Moon" from Dvorák's fairy-tale opera Rusalka), and drawing elsewhere on the gorgeously sinuous melodies of Bach, Handel, and Rachmaninov--one song, "Figlio Perduto," even adapts the slow movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Throughout, producer Frank Peterson swathes Brightman's shiny small voice in luxuriant fabrics of sound. Detractors will lament the resulting sameness of tone--no matter what the style involved--but Brightman's focus on spinning an ethereal spell never gets eclipsed. This domestic release includes three tracks not available on the import version and has a special treat hidden in the final track as a bonus. --Thomas May

• Classical Healing
  Tom Barabas
  Soundings of the Planet
  New Age as well as classical music lovers will
  enjoy this new album of refreshingly arranged
  popular classical themes such as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
  and Debussy's Reverie .
  Accompaniment of violin, viola, cello and acoustic
  guitar result in a soothing, sumptious classical feast.
  (31 AUG 2000)

• Dreaming of Summer
  Pianist Robin Spielberg's latest solo recording is a
  collection of beautiful, fresh and compelling
  original works by one of the leading
  NewAge pianist-composers. Her first
  release on her own label playMountain Music.
  An enjoyable collection with Robin's touch of
  beauty, love, sincerity from her soul through the keyboard.
  (31 AUG 2000)

• Another Fine Day Salvage Tom Green
  CLIMATE
  Nice relaxing jazz based on on English folksongs, African music, acid jazz.
  Green was with The Orb, Baka Beyond.
  This CD uses the old African instrument called a thumb-piano at great effect.

• Fused Michael Goldrick
  COMPASS RECORDS
  McGoldrick was playing Irish music at the age of 8. By 15 he was a member of
  the rock band 'Toss the Feathers'.
  His flute busts rthe boundaries of celtic music to wich he is dedicated. He makes
  traditional music become contemporary along with some original material.

• Mozart: Rhythm & Romance
  ~ JOHN LEE SANDERS
  RAW RECORDS
  Acoustic guitar, piano, strings, celtic volin interpretations of the melodies
  of Mozart as influenced by contemporary styles of smooth jazz and newage.

for classical music resources go to: www.MUSIClassical.com