Fanfare for the Common Man by Dan Dean

Various composers

Dan Dean

Fanfare for the Common Man

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Origin Classical
UPC: 0805553302621
Catnr: OC 33026
Release date: 03 September 2021
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Label
Origin Classical

UPC
0805553302621

Catalogue number
OC 33026

Release date
03 September 2021

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

One has come to expect the unexpected from multi-talented artist Dan Dean. In the midst of a successful forty-year career as a bassist, composer, producer and recording engineer, Dean has in recent years delved into classical vocal works. What began as a project for electric bass and orchestra, 2017's Songs Without Words evolved into a multi-layered, highly ambitious choral work, with Dean himself supplying vocals on arrangements of pieces by Bach, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky. Shortly after its release, he began arranging more classics that inspired him and returned to the studio for this second volume. The result is Fanfare for the Common Man, featuring much-loved works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Elgar, and Debussy. From Bach's Baroque masterpiece, “Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G Major," to Holst's broadly cinematic "Mars: The Bringer of War," Dean masterfully renders timeless orchestrations with the rough hewn timbre of the violin family expressed through the resonance of the human voice. Both admirably and remarkably, he achieves the tonal character of violin, viola and cello, in terms of amplitude, spectral sound and emotive objective.

Von dem multitalentierten Künstler Dan Dean erwartet man immer wieder Unerwartetes. Inmitten einer erfolgreichen vierzigjährigen Karriere als Bassist, Komponist, Produzent und Tontechniker hat sich Dean in den letzten Jahren in klassische Vokalwerke vertieft. Was als Projekt für E-Bass und Orchester begann, entwickelte sich 2017 mit Songs Without Words zu einem vielschichtigen, höchst ambitionierten Chorwerk, bei dem Dean selbst den Gesang bei Arrangements von Stücken von Bach, Rimsky-Korsakov und Mussorgsky beisteuerte. Kurz nach der Veröffentlichung begann er, weitere Klassiker zu arrangieren, die ihn inspirierten, und kehrte für diesen zweiten Band ins Studio zurück. Das Ergebnis ist Fanfare for the Common Man, mit beliebten Werken von Mozart, Mendelssohn, Elgar und Debussy. Von Bachs barockem Meisterwerk, dem "Brandenburgischen Konzert Nr. 3 in G-Dur", bis hin zu Holsts cineastischem "Mars: The Bringer of War" gibt Dean meisterhaft zeitlose Orchestrierungen mit dem rauen Timbre der Geigenfamilie wieder, das durch die Resonanz der menschlichen Stimme zum Ausdruck kommt. Auf ebenso bewundernswerte wie bemerkenswerte Weise erreicht er den Klangcharakter von Violine, Viola und Cello in Bezug auf Amplitude, Spektralklang und emotionale Zielsetzung.

Artist(s)

Dan Dean (vocals)

Truly a multi-talented artist, Dan Dean has achieved national and international recognition as a Bassist, Producer, Composer, and as an audio and recording Engineer. Dan has performed with the some of the finest musicians and musical organizations of our time, including: Shelly Manne, Howard Roberts, The Great Guitars (Herb Ellis, Charlie Byrd, Barney Kessell), Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, B.B. King, Eddie Harris, Blue Mitchell and Harold Land, Buddy DeFranco, Donny Hathaway, Tom Scott, Dave Grusin, Don Grusin, Ernestine Anderson, Bill (William O.) Smith, Ernie Watts, the Seattle Symphony, Walt Wagner, Seattle Opera, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Mays, Della Reese, Emil Richards/Joe Porcaro and many others. Dan has received numerous broadcast and film awards including the Cannes Golden Lion, Addy Awards, Telly Awards, Best of the West Awards, Clio Awards, IBA Awards, IBA "Spike" Award, NEA Composition Award recipient in Jazz Composition, One Show Silver Pencil, a Seattle Symphony Orchestra commission to compose "Piece for Electric Bass and Vibraphone", National Jazz Educators Award of Excellence, Rosie Awards and others. The Dan Dean Sample Libraries have thus far won 3 Keyboard Magazine's "Key Buy" awards, Electronic Musician Magazine's "Best Buy", and over the past year an a half have earned a total of 35 stars in Sound On Sound Magazine. Dan has been a major contributor to music education. He is the author of the widely successful Hal Leonard Series for Electric Bass Method Books 1, 2 and 3, Hal Leonard Electric Bass Studio Series Books 1, 2 and 3, Bass Trax and other related projects. He has been a member of the teaching faculties in Jazz studies and Electric Bass, of Western Washington University, Olympic College and Shoreline College. Dan received his B.A. in 1975 from the University of Washington where he majored in English Composition and Literature. He is also an FAA rated commercial pilot. Dan is also a member of several professional organizations. He is a member of ASCAP (as a Writer and Publisher), the Society of Composers and Lyricists, AES (Audio Engineering Society) and an AFM member.

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Composer(s)

Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with impressionist music, though Debussy disliked the term when applied to his compositions. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed. Debussy's music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of non-traditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant Among his most famous works are his Clair de Lune, his Three Nocturnes...

Claude Debussy was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with impressionist music, though Debussy disliked the term when applied to his compositions. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed.
Debussy's music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of non-traditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant Among his most famous works are his Clair de Lune, his Three Nocturnes and his orchestral piece La Mer.

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Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn is often compared to Mozart. Both of them were child prodigies, both had a talented sister and they both died at a young age. Mendelssohn, who as a child also painted wrote poetry, was born in small family which converted to christianity from judaism. As a composer he preferred looking back, rather than forward: his main examples were Bach, Handel and Mozart. It was Mendelssohn who retrieved Bach from oblivion and pushed for a revival of his music, which still lasts today. One century after its premier, Mendelsson performed the St Matthew Passion for the second...

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period.

Mendelssohn is often compared to Mozart. Both of them were child prodigies, both had a talented sister and they both died at a young age. Mendelssohn, who as a child also painted wrote poetry, was born in small family which converted to christianity from judaism. As a composer he preferred looking back, rather than forward: his main examples were Bach, Handel and Mozart. It was Mendelssohn who retrieved Bach from oblivion and pushed for a revival of his music, which still lasts today. One century after its premier, Mendelsson performed the St Matthew Passion for the second time ever, in 1829.

Three years, earlier, on his 17th, he had already composed his masterfully overture A midsummer night's dream op. 21, based on Shakespeare's play. Today, it is still considered as one of the absolute masterpieces in all of the orchestra reperoire. His Violin Concerto op. 64 belongs to the most beautiful works of the 19th century as well. During his travels through Europe, he wrote his brilliant Italian Symphony, Scottish Symphony and the overture The Hebrides.

Although Mendelssohn had a prosperous career, his weak physique made him emotionally vulnerable. The death of his favourite sister Fanny became fatal: Mendelssohn died in the same year, at the age of 38.

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Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland was an American composer, pianist, conductor and music pedagogue, who is regarded as the most important representative of the American modern composers, who are known for their preference for theatre music. Critics and peers referred to him as ‘the Dean of American Composers’.
During the 1920s Copland studied three years with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Her total grasp of classical music became his most important influence, and led him to compose music in various genres and numerous settings, including opera, ballet, music for film, theatre, orchestra, piano and small ensemble. During his studies in Paris Copland encountered the music of Ravel, Satie, and the members of Les Six, which impressed him. However, his greatest hero and favorite 20th-century composer was not French: it was the Russian Igor Stravinsky. Copland admired him for his typically Russian music, and wanted to express the music of his native country in his compositions just like him. For that purpose he drew inspiration from jazz, which rhythms and harmonies can be found in his early compositions.
During the 1930s and 1940s, when Copland had returned to America, the jazz gave way to (Latin) American folk tunes, which he arranged in a number of accessible compositions , which made him well-known to a wide audience: the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, the Third Symphony, El Salón México and the Fanfare for the Common Man. These are Copland’s best known works, which are still regularly performed and recorded.
During the 1950s Copland distanced himself from the popular tendencies in his compositions, and began to use serialist and twelve-tone techniques in his music in an attempt to join the modern composers.
From the 1960s onwards Copland began to focus on conducting, since he did not have any new ideas for compositions. He became a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the United States and made a series of recordings of his music.

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Aram Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian was a Soviet Armenian composer and conductor. He is considered one of the leading Soviet composers.
Born and raised in Tbilisi, the multicultural capital of Georgia, Khachaturian moved to Moscow in 1921 following the Sovietization of the Caucasus. Without prior music training, he enrolled in the Gnessin Musical Institute, subsequently studying at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Nikolai Myaskovsky, among others. His first major work, the Piano Concerto (1936), popularized his name within and outside the Soviet Union. His style is characterized by colorful harmonies, captivating rhythms, virtuosity, improvisations, and sensuous melodies.
During most of his career, Khachaturian was approved by the Soviet government and held several high posts in the Union of Soviet Composers from the late 1930s, although he joined the Communist Party only in 1943. Along with Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, he was officially denounced as a "formalist" and his music dubbed "anti-people" in 1948, but was restored later that year. After 1950 he taught at the Gnessin Institute and the Moscow Conservatory, and turned to conducting. He traveled to Europe, Latin America and the United States with concerts of his own works. In 1957 Khachaturian became the Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, a position he held until his death.
Khachaturian was the most renowned Armenian composer of the 20th century and the author of the first Armenian ballet music, symphony, concerto, and film score. While following the established musical traditions of Russia, he broadly used Armenian and to lesser extent, Caucasian, Eastern & Central European, and Middle Eastern peoples' folk music in his works. He is highly regarded in Armenia, where he is considered a "national treasure".

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Edward Elgar

Eward Elgar was a British composer, who stood on the forefront of the revival of English music around 1900. Many of his works have entered the international concert repertoire, although there are performed more often in Britain than elsewhere.
Although Elgar is often considered as a typically English composer, he has primarily been influenced by composers on the European continent. He was contemptuous of folk music and had little respect for English Renaissance and Baroque composers. Instead he was particularly inspired by Dvorák, Händel and Brahms, and the clarity of 19th-century French composers, which resonates through his orchestrations.
Elgar was autodidact, and learned to play the organ, violin and viola at an early age within the musical family in which he was brought up. He also composed and arranged music for various ensembles. He became somewhat well-known with his overture Froissart, but only gained international recognition after composing his Enigma Variations in 1899. Currently researchers are still trying to find out which melody Elgar has hidden within the variations.
Other famous works by Elgar are the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, the oratorio The Dream of Gerontinus and the Cello Concerto.

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Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst is a composer nobody seems to know, evne though everyone knows The Planets. This lack of relative fame is a mystery, because the quality of his works for choir and orchestra (including some amazing works for brass orchestra) is often high. Perhaps this can be explained by his aversion to public appearance. After the succes of The Planets he focused on more introvert topics, which resulted among others in his beautiful Hymn of Jesus from 1917. This is typically a work which upon first listening makes you wonder why it's not better known (even though allegedly the work was quite succesful during its own time). There is, however, also something up with the continuity of Holst as a composer, as if technical challenges stimulated...

Gustav Holst is a composer nobody seems to know, evne though everyone knows The Planets. This lack of relative fame is a mystery, because the quality of his works for choir and orchestra (including some amazing works for brass orchestra) is often high. Perhaps this can be explained by his aversion to public appearance. After the succes of The Planets he focused on more introvert topics, which resulted among others in his beautiful Hymn of Jesus from 1917. This is typically a work which upon first listening makes you wonder why it's not better known (even though allegedly the work was quite succesful during its own time). There is, however, also something up with the continuity of Holst as a composer, as if technical challenges stimulated him more than creating a consistent style. Grove music Online quoted Holst's daughter Imogen regarding this remarkable phenomenon: 'As soon as he made his point, he stopped'.

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