Russian River Records presents:
Spencer Brewer
and
Paul McCandless
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From the album Torches On The Lake
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Spencer Brewer
Spencer Brewer is a successful pianist, producing and composing in virtually all styles of music. Known as a cutting-edge performer as well as a consummate entertainer, Spencer dazzles with his impeccable piano skills while weaving memorable stories to standing ovations worldwide.Spencer has been in the forefront of contemporary music and composition for over 15 years, boasting numerous hits and impressive sales. The Piper's Rhythm reached #1 on all the NAC national radio charts: Radio & Records, The Gavin Report, The Mac Report, and sales earned an impressive Top 5 ranking in Billboard magazine. A prolific composer, spawning consistent musical gems, Spencer's Dorian's Legacy, also went #1 on the charts, lodging in Billboard's Top 10 chart for months.
Spencer has also received critical acclaim from his numerous other recording, including Portraits, Emerald (with Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel), Shadow Dancer, Romantic Interludes, Where Angels Dance, plus a dozen more compilations and collections on the Narada/MCA label. Spencer has just released Torches On the Lake with Paul McCandless on the Access Music label.
Paul McCandless
Paul McCandless has stood in the vanguard of contemporary instrumental music for more than two decades. The lyrical, insinuating sound of his reeds weaving through and tying together the myriad strains of what has become known as world music fusion. Best known, perhaps, as a member of the pioneering Paul Winter Consort and the relentlessly innovative quartet Oregon, McCandless has contributed his vision and virtuosity to ensumble and improvisational aesthetics that have been both widely influential and widely emulated in the 1980s and '90s.With the release of Premonition, marking his shift from the Windham Hill label to Windham Hill Jazz, McCandless moves another step forward in the establishment of his unique individual voice as composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist. "I never worked so hard on a project in my life," he says. "The challenge for me was to come up with music that was in one way simple and accessible but at the same time expressed my love of complexity."
That balance of priorities, which makes Premonition the most fully realized personal project of a career that includes among its credits more than 100 albums and scores of performance collaborations, runs like a theme, with variations, through McCandless' history. Born in the small town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, he inherited his artistic passion from his parents, who were both music teachers. Although his training was classical, McCandless was introduced to jazz during junior high school and was learning saxophone at the same time that he took up his primary instrument, oboe. As he continued his studies at Duquesne University and the Manhattan School of Music, McCandless embarked on his performing career; playing with the Pittsburgh Symphony at Carnegie Hall and the United Nations when he was only 19 and, at the recommendation of his oboe instructor, Robert Bloom, joining the Paul Winter Consort in 1969.