Wednesday, 15 February 2012

James Newton Howard


James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films. The recipient of eight Academy Award nominations, some of Howard's best known film scores include The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Dinosaur (2000), King Kong (2005), I Am Legend (2007), and, most recently Green Lantern (2011). He is also known for his collaboration with director M. Night Shyamalan, having scored all his films since The Sixth Sense (1999).

Source: Wikipedia.

Unbreakable SoundTrack - The Orange Man

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Paco de Lucía


Francisco Gustavo Sánchez Gomes (21 December 1947 – 26 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía, was a Spanish flamenco composer, guitarist and producer. A leading proponent of the New Flamenco style, he helped legitimize flamenco among the establishment in Spain, and was one of the first flamenco guitarists to have successfully crossed over into other genres of music such as classical and jazz. Richard Chapman andEric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar",[1] and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists."[2]
De Lucía was noted for his fast and fluent picados (fingerstyle runs). A master of contrast, he often juxtaposed picados and rasgueados (Flamenco strumming) with more sensitive playing and was known for adding abstract chords and scale tones to his compositions with jazz influences. These innovations saw him play a key role in the development of traditional Flamenco and the evolution of 'New Flamenco' and Latin jazz fusion from the 1970s. He received acclaim for his recordings with flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla in the 1970s, recording ten albums which are considered some of the most important and influential in Flamenco history.[3]
Some of De Lucía's best known recordings include Río Ancho (later fused with Al Di Meola's Mediterranean Sundance), Entre dos aguasLa BarrosaÍmpetuCepa Andaluza and Gloria al Niño Ricardo. His collaborations with guitarists John McLaughlinAl Di Meola and Larry Coryell in the late 1970s saw him gain wider popularity outside his native Spain. De Lucía formed the Paco de Lucía Sextet in 1981 with his brothers, singerPepe de Lucía and guitarist Ramón de Algeciras, and collaborated with jazz pianist Chick Corea on their 1990 album, Zyryab. In 1992, he performed live at Expo '92 in Seville and a year later on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Starting in 2004 he greatly reduced his public performances, retiring from full touring, and typically gave several concerts a year, usually in Spain and Germany and at European festivals during the summer months.

Source: Wikipedia.

Paco de Lucia - Entre dos aguas (1976)



Paco de lucia-solea


Paco De Lucia - Tico Tico


Paco de Lucia - Rio Ancho

Kevin Kern


Kevin Kern (born Kevin Lark Gibbs on December 22, 1958) is an American pianist, composer and recording artist of New Age music. He was born in Detroit, Michigan. He is now generally recognized as a representative of the New Age style. Born legally blind, Kern is aided in studio by SONAR’s accessibility and Dancing Dots’ assistive music technologies for the vision impaired.

Kevin was found playing "Silent Night" on the piano at 18 months of age. He started learning the piano regularly at 4 and began writing music at 8. At 14, he put on performances with the music group he founded called "The Well-Tempered Clavichord". Despite his poor vision (he's been legally blind since birth), he was still determined to be a pianist. His first performance in Asia was in Taiwan, in 2002. He has released nine albums, including a compilation album, and two songbooks, and is working on a new album. He also has released a Japan-only CD and songbook. Kern is married to Pamela Gibbs, who has helped him on his albums and plays the rainstick on The Winding Path; Kern mentions her in the credits in his later albums.

Source: Wikipedia.

Kevin Kern - Sundial Dreams




Kevin Kern - The Enchanted Garden




Through the Arbor - Kevin Kern

George Winston



George Winston (born 1949) is an American pianist who was born in Michigan, and grew up mainly in Miles City, Montana, as well as Mississippi and Florida. He attended Stetson University in Deland, Florida, and lives in Santa Cruz, California.

George Winston was first recorded by John Fahey for Fahey's Takoma Records. The album Ballads and Blues disappeared without much notice, although it was later reissued on Winston's Dancing Cat Records. However, in 1979, William Ackerman talked with Winston about having Winston record for Ackerman's new record label, Windham Hill Records. At first Winston played some guitar pieces he liked and then he played some of his nighttime music on the piano, which became the basis for the record Autumn, which Ackerman produced. Autumn soon became the best-selling record in the Windham Hill catalog,[citation needed] and his albums December and Winter into Spring both went platinum (million-plus sales in the United States). He has recorded 7 more solo piano albums, and he is one of the best known performers playing contemporary instrumental music.

Winston was 16 when Charles Schulz's A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered in 1965, and he ran out and bought the soundtrack the next day.He eagerly awaited each new Peanuts special to hear Guaraldi's newest music. In 1996, Winston released Linus and Lucy – The Music of Vince Guaraldi. Much of the album is devoted to the theme music Guaraldi wrote for the Peanuts cartoons: 15 television specials and one feature film from 1965 until Guaraldi’s death in 1976. "I love his melodies and his chord progressions," Winston said of Guaraldi. "He has a really personal way of doing voicings."Winston recorded a follow-up album, Love Will Come – The Music of Vince Guaraldi, Volume 2, released in February 2010.

Winston's 2002 album Night Divides the Day – The Music of the Doors took the music of the 1960s band The Doors and transformed it into solo pianos. The title of Winston's album is a lyric from "Break on Through (To the Other Side)", the first track of the Doors' self-titled first album.

Source: Wikipedia.

The Carol Of The Bells -George Winston


George Winston - Blossom/Meadow


Rain - George Winston


George Winston - Colors/Dance

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

Basil Poledouris


Vassilis Konstantinos "Basil" Poledouris (August 21, 1945 – November 8, 2006) was a Greek-American music composer who concentrated on the scores for films and television shows. Poledouris won the Emmy Award for Best Musical Score for work on part four of the TV miniseries Lonesome Dove in 1989.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Basil Poledouris credited two influences with guiding him towards music: the first was composer Miklós Rózsa; the second his own Greek Orthodox heritage. Poledouris was raised in the Church, and he used to sit in services enthralled with the choir's sound. At the age of seven, Poledouris began piano lessons, and after high school graduation, he enrolled at the University of Southern California to study both filmmaking and music. Several short films to which he contributed are still kept in the university's archives. At U.S.C., Poledouris met movie directors John Milius and Randal Kleiser, with whom he would later collaborate as a music composer. In 1985, Poledouris wrote the music for the movie Flesh & Blood of Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, establishing another durable collaboration in films.

Poledouris became renowned for his "powerfully epic style" of orchestral composition and "intricate thematic designs". He scored the music soundtrack for The Blue Lagoon (1980; dir: Kleiser); Conan the Barbarian (1982; dir: Milius); Conan the Destroyer (1984); Red Dawn (1984; dir: Milius), RoboCop (1987; dir: Verhoeven); The Hunt for Red October (1990); Free Willy (1993) and its first sequel; Starship Troopers (1997; dir: Verhoeven); and For Love of the Game (1999).
Poledouris's studio, "Blowtorch Flats", is located in Venice, California, and is a professional mixing facility specializing in film and media production.

Poledouris married his wife Bobbie in 1969; they had two daughters, Zoë and Alexis. His elder daughter, Zoë Poledouris, is an actress and film composer, who occasionally collaborated with her father in composing film soundtracks.

Poledouris's score for Conan the Barbarian is considered by many to be one of the finest examples of motion picture scoring ever written.

In 1996, Poledouris composed the "The Tradition of the Games" for the Atlanta Olympics opening ceremony that accompanied the memorable dance tribute to the athletes and goddesses of victory of the ancient Greek Olympics using silhouette imagery.

Poledouris spent the last four years of his life residing on Vashon Island, in Washington State. He died on November 8, 2006, in Los Angeles, California, aged 61, from cancer.

Source: Wikipedia.

Basil Poledouris - Riddle of Steel / Riders of Doom


Conan The Symphony - Part 1 (Anvil of Crom - Riddle of Steel / Riders of Doom)


Les Miserables


Conan the barbarian OST 1982 (full album)


Basil Poledouris - Hymn To Red October


Robocop