Renaissance
50th Anniversary Ashes Are Burning
(Cherry Red/Esoteric)
★★★★

RENAISSANCE made their recording debut long ago in 1969, albeit with a totally different line-up, and this venerable prog-rock institution marked their 50th anniversary by performing a series of US concerts with an orchestra during October 2019.

The most memorable of these shows found the band in particularly fine fettle as they brought their distinctive blend of classical, folk, rock and jazz to the historic Keswick Theatre in Pennsylvania.

This impressive concert souvenir, extending over two CDs, a DVD and a high-definition Blu-ray disc, captures a polished performance, with Renaissance tackling several back-catalogue gems which had never been orchestrated or performed with an orchestra before.

Annie Haslam’s soaring five-octave vocals remain the band’s trademark and, as an added bonus, founder member Jim McCarty lent a hand on two of the standout tracks, Island and the epic closer Ashes Are Burning.

Peter Knight’s Gigspanner
From Poets To Wives
(Talking Elephant)
★★★★

VETERAN folkie Peter Knight is best remembered these days for his musical exploits with Steeleye Span during the early 1970s but the demon fiddler actually received a classical training at the Royal Academy of Music a decade or so earlier.

In more recent years, this master musician has focused his attentions on the development of Gigspanner, a groundbreaking trio whose open-minded approach to music-making has been attracting critical plaudits ever since their debut album first saw the light of day some 10 years ago.

From Poets To Wives brings together Knight’s favourite pieces from Gigspanner’s recorded repertoire to date and they serve up their dazzling reinventions of everything from the much-recorded She Moved Through The Fair to a slice of 18th-century social commentary from his Steeleye days entitled Hard Times of Old England.

Paul Brett
Stone Survivor
(Cherry Red/Lemon)
★★★★

PAUL BRETT’S exquisite guitar work has graced a whole host of interesting recording sessions and critically well-received solo offerings during the past half century or so but he remains a fairly shadowy figure as far as the mass of the general public are concerned.

That’s an unfortunate state of affairs which the appearance of this well researched four-CD retrospective should help to rectify a little.

The contents include delightfully obscure offerings from long forgotten outfits such as The Union and Tintern Abbey as well as Devil’s Grip, the debut single from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and a generous selection of tracks from the three albums that he recorded with the excellent Paul Brett’s Sage for the Pye/Dawn label during the early 1970s.

The entire collection provides an eloquent vehicle for Brett’s rare prowess on both electric and acoustic guitar.