Saturday 27 June 2020

By request, Remo Rau Project's Voyage to the Stars: A Tone Poem (Switzerland, 1985)





Remo Rau:

Swiss jazz pianist and vibraphonist, born 19 July 1927 in Yokohama, Japan, died 3 February 1987 in Zürich, Switzerland.

Blurb on the back:

The Swiss composer and musician Remo Rau was born in Yokohama, Japan.  He acquired his musical training at a private school there.  A Russian emigrant couple from Leningrad, Lydia and Josef Shapiro, both skilled musicians, were his tutors.  He also sang in the choir of the nearby Anglican Church.  In 1942 after he and his family returned to Switzerland, he continued his musical studies and began to play jazz and has been active in the field since. In 1959 he took part in the National Jazz Festival at Zurich and won first prize performing on vibraphone.  In 1983 he was nominated composer of the year by the cultural committee of the dept. of education of Canton Zurich and was commissioned to write a larger jazz composition.  Besides jazz Remo Rau has written music in the contemporary, classical direction, and among his works are 3 full operas and at present he is working on a 4th.  He describes Voyage to the Stars as follows:  
"This compoisition is a combination of several styles in contemporary music, including the romantic.
I have always dreamt of being able to travel through space and this music expresses this intense  longing... I am immensely grateful to all who made this rcording possible."

There is quite a mix of the contemporary jazz, modern angular classical, and occasionally bits of electronic with the synths and keys usually playing oddly dissonant chords and passages, unlike the drony one-chord-wonder we are accustomed to in the electronic sphere.  So as a whole it's quite interesting, albeit occasionally out there enough to sound almost fully improvised.  On the other hand it flows together quite smoothly making it difficult to discern the different tracks of sections.

Information here, note the presence of Art Lande on keys and Heinz Lieb on percussion.
An oddity too is that some of the tracks were recorded live, indicated they were totally composed--I think.  There were thus three keyboardists on some tracks.

The one called Gliding through space gives an idea of the curious mix of synths, jazz percussion, and classical composing:






6 comments:

  1. https://www44.zippyshare.com/v/VCb4EeR7/file.html

    https://www.sendspace.com/file/13g65e

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  2. Thanks to you Remo Rau has returned back to earth!
    Very much appreciated!

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  3. Do you have any Gianluca Mosole?

    Even better, any Franco Bonfanti, possibly some Giovanni Putzolu, or a bit of Gianluca Podio? Roberto Anselmi? Antimo Serino? Or some Henghel Gualdi?

    My apologies. Bada Boop Bada Beep.

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    Replies
    1. remember I posted a bunch of anselmi in the past

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  4. Many thanks for this album. Would it be possible to upload a lossless version? That would be very kind and much appreciated for an album of this calibre.

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  5. You work wonders, thanks for your recent post. Yup, that was Renato Anselmi. My friend how can I forget Chelsea Road off "Know What I Mean?" Thank you for that. As for Roberto Anselmi, he's from the same breeding ground of Italian Funk geniuses as Bonfanti. He's got a few Strumentali's from the NRE label.

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