Canadian composer Neil Chotem and his library albums Themes and Melodies (1974, 1975)

Neil Chotem, databased here, ought to be well-known to everyone thanks to his arrangements for Canadian folk-prog band Harmonium with whom he worked most remarkably for their magnum opus L'Heptade.  He composed a great deal of the music in that 2-LP work and played the piano for them.   It was quite a stunning collaboration and progressive in the most beautifully memorable way, though it was totally unfashionable by the late seventies to the point where the band touring the US were thrown off by the poor reception for their great, stunning production.  I have an old video that documents that unpleasant experience.  Imagine the band so elated from their accomplishment, having just composed their '9th symphony', going from city to city to bad press and negative reviews from those born-asshole Rolling Stone critics who were now all caught up with the more fashionable trends of reggae, punk, and the early new wave sounds... just tragic, especially when you think of how meaningless those critics were (from the perspective of today), how they would destroy whole careers with their stupid biases, and they were far too ignorant to understand 'prog rock,' a term they quickly translated into an insult.

Slightly later, Neil worked with Marie-Claire Seguin for two also remarkable solo albums with very creative arrangements and compositions, which went far beyond anything she did earlier when she was with brother Richard Seguin in the folk band called Seguin (not pluralized).  Those 2 albums are perhaps the single most under-rated incredibly strong progressive songwriting albums that I know of.  The music that they wrote goes so far ordinary seventies pop that it takes my breath away.  So if you didn't know anything about Canadian prog, already you have tons of interesting material to look into: four LPs from the Seguin franchise, 3 from Harmonium, plus the follow-up by Fiori-Seguin makes 4, plus the 2 by the sister solo, plus the 2 Neil Chotem made 'on his own.'  Actually, on his 1979 Live at El Casino, Neil worked with Serge Fiori from Harmonium and Marie-Claire both so this one really complements all the rest, and it's really really beautiful too.  It features an unforgettable arrangement of Rachmaninoff's classic Vocalise composition, pretty much THE interpretation of that piece of late classical music-- you can watch a lovely TV clip of the live performance here on youtube which I think includes all the aforementioned artists.

But the tune Neil wrote regarding his city of birth, Saskatoon, really blows me away each time with the mix of progressive fusion and bluesy harmonies:





Just prior to this Live album Neil made a purely solo grand piano work called Vers L' infini whose title track, really beautiful, is played again on the later album with full fusion band backing and therefore is more interesting over there.  As well, he oddly put a bunch of Chopin compositions on side b, and I'll never understand why.  Normally I just delete all those from my mp3 player.

Earlier still Neil made library albums as arranger and/or composer and that's why I'm posting today, I bought two of them out of curiosity, given the history of his progressive work from the later seventies.  Unfortunately the music for these was composed by another person, namely Marc Huard and it's really just orchestral easy listening with wordless female vocals.  It's really odd that the producer, Angele Renaud, is featured as the model on the cover of some of these records (she appears at the top here on this post).  The discogs information, accurately enough states:

Canadian (Quebec) composer Marc Huard conceived and composed the music (with Angèle Renaud) for an obscure four-volume collection of original material.....easy-listening ("Library" music)....released between 1974 & 1978, with arrangements/orchestras by two of Quebec's giants...Roger Simard and Neil Chotem.

The track called Go Away, from the first album:





The oddest thing here is the 'long' track (actually it's only 6 minutes long!), ostensibly a suite, called Of People, Times and Places, reappears with different melodies on both the first and second in this series, the second time split into individual compositions with different names.  The first part:





Anyways, there you go.