Ugo
Group: Members
Posts: 5495
Joined: April 2000 |
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Posted: April 13 2008, 18:41 |
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Apart from the big three - i.e. Mike O., JMJ and Vangelis, I like quite a bit of New Age stuff. People like Andreas Vollenweider, Kitaro, Wim Mertens, George Winston. But there are various other genres of instrumental music I like. Here's a small sampling...
- Rock: the guitar monsters, Satriani, Vai, Michael Angelo Batio; a nice group that's now pretty much dissolved, called Billy Mahonie; and or course, although they're not strictly instrumental, Sigur Rós.
- Jazz: Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz - especially his very latest things with Kenny Garrett, Pat Metheny, Richard Galliano (that's jazz, ain't it? ).
- Classical: I've already listed them elsewhere, I think. However, it's Mozart and Chopin on top of all, with Beethoven coming straight after those.
- Pop: "instrumental pop" is quite hard to define, ain't it? But I love many of Moby's instrumentals, IMHO they're much better than his songs - and they may definitely be labeled as "instrumental pop".
Apart from all this, I always love it when a group that's not normally well-known for doing instrumentals actually does one. To a lot of people I know, "Lake Shore Driving" is the worst track on Duran Duran's Big Thing album. To me, it's one of the 2-3 absolute best tracks off that record. Same goes for "Shotgun", from The Wedding Album.
P.S.: About the Kenny G & Louis Armstrong thing - I can't exactly say I'm a fan of Kenny G [indeed, most of his stuff, although very tuneful and musically nice, bores the heck out of me!], but to me all of Metheny's outburst over the "What a wonderful world" pseudo-duet - after having heard it, of course - is largely unjustified and disproportionated. What Mr. G did, i.e. overdubbing an old recording with a new part, is so very common throughout all genres of music - in Italy they do it all the time! - that it has no reason at all, I think, to be considered disrespectful of the original, whatever the original is. Just to quote another example, I could never have imagined that Elvis Presley fans would like Céline Dion. Yet their recent "If I can dream" virtual duet received lots and lots of appreciation even from die-hard Elvis fans...
-------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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