ASTRALPHASIA - プログレ日記(Prog Blog)

「Always With You」


For the last forty years Rick Wakeman has immersed himself in music. Leaving the Royal College of Music Rick has worked with some of the biggest names in rock and pop music playing on some of the biggest hits by artists as diverse as Cat Stevens, Marc Bolan and David Bowie. Likewise he has played with one of the biggest rock bands in the world. As a member of Rick played some of the biggest arenas in the world and released massively successful albums.

In 1973 he released his first proper solo album The Six Wives Of Henry The VIII following that album up in the seventies and eighties with other hugely popular and successful albums.

In the eighties Rick also recorded albums in the then popular genre entitled “New Age”

Releasing such popular albums as The Aspirant Series of recordings (Aspirant Sunrise, Aspirant Sunset and Aspirant Sunshadows)

It would seem perfectly logical then that Rick would also record music by some of the world’s finest composers leaving his own individual stamp on these recordings.

For centuries, composers of all nationalities have been taking existing musical themes from other composers and rewriting them by putting their own twists and turns into the music and in the process, often giving a completely new slant to that of the composer’s original intentions.

Continuing in this age-old tradition, Rick Wakeman has created his own musical variations, purely for piano of many different genres of music, which stretch from choral work to full orchestra and folk songs and even rock with a version of Stairway To Heaven.

Always With You contains compositions from the new and the old all of which have been recorded by Rick in his own inimitable style.

Always With You is an album of accomplishment and melody and an album that will bear repeated play. With tracks such as Ave Maria, The Piano Messiah, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring and the title track Always With You this album will appeal to a wider audience than Rick usually appeals to through his rock releases mixing as it does the contemporary alongside the traditional.