Two of legendary DEEP PURPLE keyboardist Jon Lord‘s more iconic songs from the “Pictured Within” album have been newly edited and reconstructed in full scores and piano/vocal scores by conductor Paul Mann.
“When we were preparing the score for Wait a While for the 1999 Royal Albert Hall concerts, we had a discussion about the instrumentation,” explains Mann. “Jon‘s revised version deploys the full forces for only a single moment (at the final appearance of the words ‘you should know by now, I love you’), and this restraint makes the song all the more deeply affecting.”
Read his and Jon‘s full notes for each piece in the “Shorter Works” section of Jon‘s official web site.
The expanded edition of Lord‘s Concerto For Group And Orchestra — which includes a CD, documentary DVD, and 80-page book — was released on December 7.
On July 16, Lord passed away in London at the age of 71. This album is a joyful testament of a great musician and fantastic man.
According to Classic Rock magazine, British hard rock legends DEEP PURPLE will release their 19th studio album in April 2013. The CD which was produced by Bob Ezrin (KISS, PINK FLOYD, PETER GABRIEL, ALICE COOPER, KANSAS) in Nashville, Tennessee, will contain 13 tracks, including “Out Of Hand”, “Hell To Pay”, “Weirdistan”, “Uncommon Man” and “Above And Beyond”. The latter song references the band’s late keyboard player, Jon Lord, in the lyric “Souls having touched are forever entwined.”
Regarding the album title, Gillan offered the following cryptic comment to Classic Rock: “There’s a big question mark over the name at the moment. And possibly an exclamation mark as well. You can read what you like into what I’ve just said. All will become clear — as mud — later on. That’s all I’m allowed to say. The question mark and the exclamation mark might get you intrigued.”
DEEP PURPLE‘s 18th studio album, “Rapture of the Deep”, was released in November 2005. It was the fourth studio CD from DEEP PURPLE since guitarist Steve Morse joined the band in 1994. It was also the second album to feature veteran keyboardist Don Airey.
“Rapture of the Deep” was produced by Mike Bradford, who also worked on the band’s previous release, 2003’s “Bananas”.
A promotional video for the very limited mediabook edition of JON LORD‘s Concerto For Group And Orchestra, which includes a CD, documentary DVD, and 80-page book, can be viewed below; the release date is December 7th.
With his legendary organ blues-rock sound, DEEP PURPLE‘s founder and soul, Jon Lord has influenced decades of rock music. He is with no doubt the pioneer of fusing rock and classical/baroque forms and became one of the most important composers of the last decades while having a major impact on the music business. On July 16th, he passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Jon Lord co-wrote many of Deep Purple’s legendary songs like ‘Smoke On The Water’ and played with many bands and musicians throughout his career (WHITESNAKE, to mention one out of many). Best known for his orchestral work Concerto For Group And Orchestra, first performed at Royal Albert Hall with Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969 and conducted by the renowned Malcolm Arnold – a feat repeated in 1999 when it was again performed at the Royal Albert Hall by the London Symphony Orchestra and Deep Purple.
Jon Lord always wanted a studio recording of the concerto. Irony of fate: he made his desire real only most recently. Hefinalized his very last mission – the first and only studio recording of the famous Concerto For Group And Orchestra, representing the definitive performance of a unique work.
Lord assembled guest musicians such as IRON MAIDEN’s Bruce Dickinson, Joe Bonamassa or Steve Morse in the Abbey Road Studios, to work with his trusted partner, director Paul Mann, on the 2012 version of the legendary concert.
“Over these last years since leaving Deep Purple, I’ve played it over 30 times with different orchestras and conductors all over the world, and, of course, in 2000 I did it well over 30 times with Purple on the Concerto tour, so I’ve been honing the piece live on stage, and I’ve had the opportunity to change things in the score that weren’t sounding quite right. It is therefore a marvellous and exciting prospect to have the definitive recording of the defi nitive version of the score.”(Jon Lord May 2011)
Already available in 2 different formats (CD and CD+DVD including a 5.1 audio mix) now comes a very special edition of the Concerto For Group And Orchestra. Conductor Paul Mann has written a personal history of his association with the Concerto and also detailed the full story of the work and the new recording.
The in-depth text about the person behind the Concerto also features a text from Jon Lord telling about his personal approach to the Concerto as well as a statement of Marco de Goeij, telling how he was able to reconstruct the lost musical score for the Concerto For Group And Orchestra by watching videos of live performances and listening to audio recordings.
All this resulted in a fascinating 80 page story highlighted with rare pictures that will now be released in a mediabook featuring the full Concerto on CD as well as a DVD containing the Making Of as well as exclusive interviews with Paul Mann and Marco de Goeij. So, to paraphrase an early Deep Purple lyric: “Listen, Learn and Read On…”
On October 1st, The Highway Star conducted an interview with Paul Mann. Being the conductor of the 1999 Concerto For Group And Orchestra performance, and the subsequent DEEP PURPLE world tour, Paul became a close friend to late Deep Purple keyboardist, JON LORD.
In an excerpt from the interview, Paul Mann discusses recording with IRON MAIDEN frontman BRUCE DICKINSON:
“I was really impressed with Bruce both as a singer and as a person. I spent the day with him at Abbey Road and although Jon was there, he wasn’t well that day and he went off to rest at a certain point and left me to work with Bruce. Later in the day Jon re-emerged and we played him what we’d done.
We started out with me playing it on the piano while Bruce learned it and I straight away noticed how analytically and thoughtfully he was working. Every take he did, he listened to it and registered something and then went back down and tried something different or said: ‘What is it about that? Why isn’t that working? Can you tell me something about that?’ So there was a constant analysing going on and one of the things he said on that day was how much he was enjoying doing something so “musically pure”, just about making the best music rather than there being any other agenda to it.
When you hear him on the recording, that very last thing when he goes to the top of the register, on the very last phrase, he searched and searched and searched to find exactly the right shape for it. Somehow I wish I kept all takes so we could hear how he arrived at it. He did it so thoughtfully and with such artistry, he’s just a fascinating guy and was a perfect choice for this.”
Jon Lord’s Concerto For Group And Orchestra was released by Eagle Rock Entertainment on September 25th. The album entered the Classical Album charts in several countries. In Belgium it entered at #15 and has since climbed to #3.
Other chart positions:
Germany: #37
Austria: #44
Lord assembled guest musicians such as Bruce Dickinson, JOE BONAMASSA (BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION) and Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse in the Abbey Road Studios, to work with his trusted partner, director Paul Mann, on the 2012 version of the legendary concert.
“Over these last years since leaving Deep Purple, I’ve played it over 30 times with different orchestras and conductors all over the world, and, of course, in 2000 I did it well over 30 times with Purple on the Concerto tour, so I’ve been honing the piece live on stage, and I’ve had the opportunity to change things in the score that weren’t sounding quite right. It is therefore a marvelous and exciting prospect to have the definitive recording of the definitive version of the score.” (Jon Lord May 2011)
On July 16, 2012, Jon Lord passed away in London at 71 years old. This album is a joyful testament of a great musician and fantastic man.
“His dignity and graciousness touched us all. His music was an inspiration and took us to places beyond our imagination… A truly great man. We humbly express our eternal love and great respect.” – Tribute from Deep Purple upon the passing of Jon Lord.
Jon Lord’s Concerto For Group And Orchestra features the following tracklisting:
Jon’s family have been informed that someone has been selling unofficial T-shirts at gigs and online regarding Jon’s passing.
They would like to make it very clear that this has nothing to do with the family or DEEP PURPLE, and they are upset that anyone should profit from this tacky endeavour – unless the money is given to charity, which seems very unlikely.
They ask that you respect their feelings and not encourage this behaviour.
Jon Lord, the legendary keyboard player and composer passed away on 16th July 2012 following a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
A week before he died this past July, former DEEP PURPLE keyboardist Jon Lord gave his last-ever interview, to Classic Rock, for the U.K. magazine’s September 2012 issue. During the chat, Lord seemed optimistic about his prognosis a year after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
“When you get to my age, the cancer is very slow moving,” he said. “It’s containable. My oncologist has had patients who were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 15 or 16 years ago. They still have treatment and they still have cancer — but, crucially, they’re still here. They found my cancer early and the size of the tumor has reduced.”
Lord was resigned to the fact that he might not ever be cured him and was aiming for containment. At the time of the interview, the treatment appeared to be working.
“I’d like to get to my father’s age,” he said. “He was in his late 80s and he’d led a good life. I don’t want to limp to that milestone. I don’t want to drag myself over that line. I want to be active and well.”
Lord revealed that somewhere, buried in the mountain of cards and emails and get-well messages he received after being diagnosed with cancer, was one from a long-lost friend now living in Long Island, New York: a certain guitar player called Ritchie Blackmore.
“He sent me a very nice letter and it was lovely to hear from him,” Lord said of his former DEEP PURPLE bandmate. “My life and Ritchie‘s life have departed from each other so radically in the past 20 years. He’s gone his way and I’ve gone mine. But we went through a lot together. We will always have that.”
He continued, “Would I like to play with him again? I’d love to — there’s a legion of people out there who want him to pull on that white Strat again — but I’m not holding my breath. Besides, I know more than most you should do what you want to do. Ritchie is doing that. Good luck to him.”
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