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Sarabande in Athens
Jon Lord’s Sarabande will receive a rare live outing in February in Greece. It will be a one off performance by the Camerata Friends of Music Orchestra, conducted by George Petrou, with special guest Gus G on guitar. Other memebers of the band include Giorgos Fakanas on bass, Stefanos Dimitriou on drums, and the conductor doubling down on Hammond organ. The evening will open with the performance of Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 4, Heroes (1996), based on the eponymous album by David Bowie and Brian Eno, with Sarabande as the main course.
Who: Camerata Friends of Music Orchestra, conducted by George Petrou;
What: Symphonic Rock Transformations: a performance of Jon Lord’s Sarabande and Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 4, Heroes;
When: February 19, 2025, at 20:30;
Where: Christos Lambrakis Hall, located inside the Megaron complex in Athens, Greece;
Tickets: €10.00 — €55.00, here.
Thanks to Ilias Nikolakopoulos for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
That’s wonderful to hear, there is something magic about the Sarabande album, it is/was immediately accessible even to people who find/found the Concerto, Gemini Suite and Windows hard going.
I remember a spat between DC and Jon Lord in German music papers in 1976 after the split. Jon Lord had mused that David’s alcohol intake hadn’t helped Purple in its last days and an enraged DC shot back that he hadn’t mentioned Jon’s cognac consumption either nor “evenings where Jon cried on my shoulder” and that if it wasn’t for him there would be no Sarabande and that he had “the cassette tapes to prove it”. Alas!, their argument settled down after a while and the mysterious Sarabande-inspirational DC demos remain consigned to the vaults and unreleased to this day. Maybe in one of David’s curated future reissue releases? 🤣
January 27th, 2025 at 11:56An interesting double billing & that should be a rather good performance. I just listened to the full Sarabande album and enjoyed it. I have always like Pavane and Bourée and a few other bits and pieces. It is a much more together album than the previous ‘solo’ albums. Excellent musicians all round including the conductor and orchestra. Cheers.
January 27th, 2025 at 12:24Didn’t that guitarist on it play with some reggaefied punk band two years later or so?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQb29dIHAas
Wonder what became of them. One of’em tried to save the rain forest IIRC.
January 27th, 2025 at 15:20I kinda liked what Gus G did with Ozzy though it wasn’t really popular at the time or after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9YPPtG4e0A
Ozzy channeling his inner Beatles/John Lennon once again … 😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLTLrG11Cl4
January 27th, 2025 at 16:35Sarabande is also very good in that there are NO Deep Purple members involved with it. Best to get away from the albatross at times and by that time, that ole albatross was sinking fast, the poor thing. Cheers.
January 27th, 2025 at 21:58Sarabande is probably Lord’s most mature orchestral album (also because chronologically it was the last one)
great musicians inside.
Mark Nauseef who we find with Big Ian and many others
and then Pete York.
#MacGregor
January 27th, 2025 at 23:35Pete York I forgot to mention when I was talking about Aston and Philips…
York collaborated with Hardin, and both with Lord and not only in the magic circle of the purple family
here, “magic circle” gives a good idea of all the great musicians around the orbit of the planet Purple!
Sarabande benefitted from the fact that for once there was ample time to rehearse with the complete orchestra (which had Central European roots and was thus sympathetic to the music on the Eastern-tinged album), a likewise sympathetic and even esoteric conductor open to anything fresh, namely Eberhard Schoener, and that nearly all of the musicians had prog experience or at least affinity (they had played with bands and artists such as Soft Machine, Mike Oldfield, Kevin Coyne, Rare Bird, Stackridge, Hardin & York). Mark Nauseef with his Middle East roots and percussive creativity also contributed greatly to the album sounding as good as it did.
It’s a pity that Sarabande wasn’t toured at the time with the line-up which had recorded it. It would have likely drawn more people into concert halls than the difficult to sell PAL (good as their music was). But I believe DP fans would have been more receptive to Jon’s classical side than to him playing all of the sudden in a horn-driven Rhythm & Blues band with another keyboarder.
January 28th, 2025 at 03:49Before anyone possibly decides to split hairs, that should be NO other past or present DP members involved with the Sarabande album. Cheers.
January 28th, 2025 at 05:13But we weren’t in doubt! Like with a lot of your posts, lieber Herr MacGregor, an exegetic approach while reading them aids comprehension. Roads to enlightenment can never be easy.
January 28th, 2025 at 13:05