Beautiful Joe 2000

The Beautiful Game (sometimes performed as The Boys in the Photograph) is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton about a group of teenagers growing up during The Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1969. The title of the musical is taken from Pelé's autobiography My Life and the Beautiful Game. The plot, which is centred on a local football team, focuses on the attempt to overcome the violence that has engulfed their community. The Catholic team has one atheist player, Del (who comes from a Protestant family) and the coach is a priest. The musical chronicles some of the key players during the emerging political and religious violence…

The Pavarotti and Friends Collection celebrates the internationally renowned charity concert series that brought together the world's greatest pop performers with the greatest international classical star, Luciano Pavarotti.

Joe Pass, Catch Me. One of the greatest jazz guitar albums of all time, Catch me captures guitar legend Joe Pass, with pianist Clare Fischer. The two were a match made in heaven. Mostly, this album just has Joe Pass and crew swinging standards, but they make them sound so fresh and new. The beautiful rendition of Catch Me, is so vibrant, bright, and melodic. Pass plays great at those up-tempo tunes. The group swings down home on Summertime. Pass struts his blues side of him on this one, and the outcome is tremendous.

Joe was an easy listening pop singer who died in the early eighties while still in his prime. This collection contains the best of his music from 1965 to 1979. Some of the songs are of French origin and it would appear from the credits that he co-wrote some of them. He sings one of the tracks here (The guitar don't lie) in English, although the other 45 tracks are all in French. Apart from the French songs, there are a number of other songs that he sings with French lyrics. It is clear from the titles that at least some of them have completely new lyrics rather than being translated from the original. I conclude this review with a list of some of the songs that might be familiar to you, to give you an idea of his range of material. Despite his easy listening style, the sources of the songs are diverse, including country and folk as well as mainstream pop songs.

As this lavishly boxed, four-CD distillation of his Pablo sessions proves, Joe Pass was probably the guitar-playing equivalent of Art Tatum on the Norman Granz roster – not only for his vast output, but also for the all-encompassing, almost orchestral way in which he got around his instrument. The set is divided equally into four sections – disc one for his astounding solo electric and acoustic guitar sides, disc two for studio recordings with various groups, disc three for various live recordings solo and with groups, disc four the delicate Ella Fitzgerald and other duo partner sessions and quartet pieces backing Sarah Vaughan…

Songwriter Joe Henry has recorded five albums in the 21st century; he’s also become a Grammy-winning producer. These more recent records (of 12) offer a mature view of an artist at his most musically ambitious and lyrically cagey. Reverie, as its title implies, contains 14 songs that seemingly center on the concept of time: the random glinting of memory as it perceives love, loss, spirituality, history, and culture refracted through the gaze of the human heart. Musically, it feels like the loosest album Henry’s ever recorded; its production techniques are organic, live sessions were cut in his home studio with the windows open, allowing the sounds of everyday life–barking dogs, mothers calling children, cars and trucks– to pour through, making them part and parcel of the album's fabric. Henry's lyrics and melodies do, however, contrarily reveal an exacting craftsman. He and his guitar are accompanied by longtime associates, drummer Jay Bellerose, pianist Keefus Ciancia, and bassist David Piltch, with cameos by Patrick Warren, Marc Ribot, Jean McLain, and Lisa Hannigan. His lyrics – scattershot, mercurial expressions of memory – are caught in exacting rhymes that reflect on the power, delight, and torment of desire (he admits as much at the end of his liner essay). The musical forms are more rhythmically inventive and slippery; they serve his ephemeral, evocative lyrics by opening them up to time’s uncageable nature.