POSTHUMOUS JON LORD ALBUM DUE

When John Lord, erstwhile keyboard maestro for Deep Purple died earlier this year, it was a sad day for music. However, the music lives on, and in October, the third version of his groundbreaking Concerto for Group and Orchestra is released. I heard version one when I was a schoolboy, a few years after its release in the early 1970s, and I received a copy of v2 when I was the music editor of the short-lived Planet on Sunday newspaper in 1999/2000. Now there is a third version, and in my lunchtime pootling about the internet I found an interesting article about it...

We were sent the official details for Jon Lord's "Concerto For Group And Orchestra" which will be released on October 1st by earMUSIC:

"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 definitive version of the score." (Jon Lord May 2012)

Jon Lord recorded the marvellous rhythm section - Guy Pratt (Pink Floyd, Madonna) & Brett Morgan (Jon Anderson, Sting) and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (with whom Jon had recorded twice before) in June 2011 in Liverpool - conducted by Paul Mann. The production then moved to Abbey Road Studios in London to record Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson (on vocals with Steve Balsamo and Kasia Laska) and Joe Bonamassa, Darin Vasilev and Steve Morse on guitars.

Read on...