Renaissance
Symphony of Light
Red River

www.renaissancetouring.com
 

Perhaps England’s most symphonic-minded prog-rock band, Renaissance was one of the bands emerging out of the ashes of The Yardbirds in 1969. While Jimmy Page continued to plow similar ground with Led Zeppelin, Yardbirds lead vocalist Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty took a different approach with Renaissance, blending an orchestral sensibility with British folk traditions and hard-driving rock. Relf and McCarty departed after two albums, but Renaissance continued to evolve with replacements. Ex-Nashville Teens composer/guitarist Michael Dunford joined in 1970. Five-octave vocalist Annie Haslam arrived the following year, solidifying the band’s classic lineup. Over the next three decades, they would continue to build on their legacy with more than a dozen albums, including their 1975 masterpiece, Scheherazade and Other Stories, and such FM hits as 1978’s “Northern Lights.” Disbanding in 2002, they reunited to celebrate the band’s fortieth anniversary in 2009. They had barely embarked on their first tour in seven years when several vertebrae in Haslam’s spine collapsed. All but five shows were cancelled. Despite wearing a back brace, Haslam recuperated enough, after a few months, to begin recording with the reformed group that included Rave Tesar (keyboards), David J. Keyes (bass), Jason Hart (keyboards), Frank Pagano (drums), and Ryche Chianda (acoustic guitar), as well as Dunford. After releasing an EP, The Mystic and the Muse, in 2010, they embarked on a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to record a full-length album. Raising more than $92,000 dollars (from 860 donors), they released the album as an Internet download, Grandine il Vento, in the spring of 2013. A year later, they augmented its’ eight songs with two tracks from The Mystic and the Muse and added a new tune, “Renaissance Man,” written by Haslam and Tesar, in memory of Dunford (who had succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage the previous November). The title track opens the CD, celebrating the interplay between music and art, through the vision of Leonardo Da Vinci, the album goes on to lead listeners on a global journey with stops in the Brazilian rainforest (“Waterfall”), Paris (“Air of Dreams”), and Africa (“Porcelain”). The influence of fellow prog-rockers Jethro Tull is a recurrent theme. The title track interpolates flourishes of “Locomotive Breath,” while Ian Anderson adds a signature flute solo to “Cry to the World.” John Wetton (Asia, King Crimson) joins Haslam for a piano-accompanied duet, “Blood Silver like Moonlight.”

— Craig Harris