Keyboard legend Rick Wakeman will be releasing his new concept album ‘A Gallery Of The Imagination’ on 24th February 2023 on Madfish Music. It coincides with his dates on 22nd and 23rd February 2023 at the London Palladium.
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The first track from the album ‘The Dinner Party’ is released today.
The initial idea for ‘A Gallery of the Imagination’ stems from Rick’s first piano teacher, Mrs Symes, with whom he studied from the age five until his time at the Royal College of Music. She taught him that music was like painting pictures: that when you play, you are painting pictures through music, an important lesson that Rick never forgot.
Having written a vast array of new music recently, all of different styles, Rick recalled the advice of his beloved teacher and decided to present the tracks for the new album as if they were pictures in a gallery. Just as there are many different styles in an art gallery, so there are many different musical styles on ‘A Gallery of the Imagination’. It contains many clear prog influences, especially in the Moog solos and there are also two solo piano numbers, which reflect Rick’s classical roots and show influences from the Romantic period. Equally important is the strong song and melodic influence on ‘A Gallery of the Imagination’ with eight unconventional vocal tracks, with Rick’s distinctive descriptive music carefully arranged around the lyrics.
Examples of the variety contained within the album are the fun yet wistful elements in ‘A Day Spent on the Pier’, a track describing time spent at the seaside, written in Southwold and evoked by Rick’s own memories of happy childhood days spent on the helter skelters in Brighton and Clacton and on the pier in Southsea. Rick wrote ‘The Eyes of a Child’ with his thirteen grandchildren in mind, aware of the responsibility of trying to fix the world for following generations whereas ‘Cuban Carnival’ celebrates the light-hearted fun times Rick spent in Cuba with his band, the English Rock Ensemble. As listeners take a musical walk-through Rick’s ‘Gallery’, they will find more than enough to fire the imagination and come up with their own mind paintings whilst listening to his new album.
Says Rick: “One of my great loves is going to museums and art galleries and seeing all the different types of art, so I thought, why not a music gallery… the Gallery of the Imagination? People can paint their own mind pictures to the different types of music that are on the album. It is very diverse and for me it works very well because the concept holds it all together”.
One of the ideas Rick Wakeman would like to pursue around album release is for listeners to draw or paint their own pictures or even create sculptures to the music which, in turn, could be displayed. “It is a very tactile album” Rick explains. “I’d like to feel that people can actually touch the music.”
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