Post by drew on Nov 23, 2006 7:33:36 GMT
From the Telegraph:-
'Tis the season for treacly sludge
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 23/11/2006
From a Welsh male-voice choir to a teenage 'supergroup', the stars of 'classical crossover' are warming up for their biggest sales of the year. Adam Sweeting on the acts vying to be top of the Christmas tree
Audio: the Fron Male Voice Choir sing We Are Sailing
Watch the video of All Angels singing Songbird
Watch the video of Angelis's single, Angel
It's hardly news that Christmas is the most profitable season for record companies, and this seems especially true of the "classical crossover" sector. In 2005, 46 per cent of the year's total sales of top 100 classical and classical crossover artists occurred in December. This year, recognising Christmas's traditional associations with choirs and carol singing, the music industry is peppering its year-end schedules with celestial harmonies.
Heavenly music: classical supergroup, All Angels
Nobody aspires to become a manufactured novelty designed by a manipulative Svengali, but there's no other way to describe Angelis, the latest invention from Simon Cowell and his Syco label. The success of his operatic boy band Il Divo (whose new album, Siempre, arrives next week) has alerted Cowell to the prairies of lucre waiting to be harvested from the pseudo-classical sector.
For an encore, the perma-tanned guru has assembled six adolescent choristers aged between 11 and 14 (three boys and three girls), hooked them up with producer Steve Mac, and concocted an album so epically cloying that it will ooze across your carpet like warm chocolate sauce.
"Angelis have made one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard," Cowell swoons, and doubtless it's more beautiful still when accompanied by a heavenly chorus of beeping cash registers.
How sad that even such chaste and wholesome young artists aren't insulated from the biz's naked hype.
In the opposite corner, Universal Classics & Jazz have come out swinging with All Angels, four teenage choirgirls brazenly billed as "the world's first female classical supergroup". However, while they sing arrangements of such TV-commercial classics as Offenbach's Barcarolle or the Flower Duet from Lakmé, plenty of sugary crossover pop has been shovelled into the mix, including versions of Robbie Williams's Angels and Fleetwood Mac's drippy Songbird.
With marketing aforethought, not only do All Angels have a link to Tesco's online store on their website (because the big supermarkets are in the process of swallowing the retail music market whole), but they've been conceived as a strategic follow-up to last year's junior-classical offering from UCJ, the Choirboys, a trio of 10- to 12-year-olds plucked from the choirs of Southwell Minster and Ely Cathedral.
They'll have to beat off opposition from Libera, EMI Classics' 24-piece ensemble of adolescent South London choirboys, whose latest album Angel Voices is yet another feast of "shimmering mystical chords and ecstatic harmonies".
Hence there's something reassuringly old-fashioned about another UCJ signing, the Fron Male Voice Choir. The group hail from Froncysyllte in the Vale of Llangollen and, somewhat to their own amazement, have released an album called Voices of the Valley.
Though tickled up with vintage hits such as Unchained Melody and Sailing (the Rod Stewart one), the disc relies mainly on the traditional sonorities of the 60-strong Fron choir, who enjoy an impressive international reputation and have collected a shedful of prizes since their formation in 1947. When the massed boyos are at full gallop, as in Abide With Me or All Through the Night, they can generate spine-tingling power, though the choir remains a strictly amateur operation.
"We take people on and see if they've got a voice," says Dennis Williams, a survivor of the choir's original line-up and still singing in his seventies. "We're a community choir, and nobody is barred."
They may even end up in Hollywood. Plans for a feel-good movie are being laid by film producer Zygi Kamasa, who is fascinated by the choir's eventful 60-year history and larger-than-life characters, as well as by the Fron's flukey route to a record deal.
This most un-manufactured of ensembles was spotted singing at a wedding by Daniel Glatman, former manager of boy band Blue. "It absolutely moved me, the sheer passion and pride of these chaps," Glatman sobbed. Now he can claim credit for launching the world's first old-boy band.
www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/11/23/bmchoir23.xml
You will need to connect to the Telegraph for the blue links above.
'Tis the season for treacly sludge
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 23/11/2006
From a Welsh male-voice choir to a teenage 'supergroup', the stars of 'classical crossover' are warming up for their biggest sales of the year. Adam Sweeting on the acts vying to be top of the Christmas tree
Audio: the Fron Male Voice Choir sing We Are Sailing
Watch the video of All Angels singing Songbird
Watch the video of Angelis's single, Angel
It's hardly news that Christmas is the most profitable season for record companies, and this seems especially true of the "classical crossover" sector. In 2005, 46 per cent of the year's total sales of top 100 classical and classical crossover artists occurred in December. This year, recognising Christmas's traditional associations with choirs and carol singing, the music industry is peppering its year-end schedules with celestial harmonies.
Heavenly music: classical supergroup, All Angels
Nobody aspires to become a manufactured novelty designed by a manipulative Svengali, but there's no other way to describe Angelis, the latest invention from Simon Cowell and his Syco label. The success of his operatic boy band Il Divo (whose new album, Siempre, arrives next week) has alerted Cowell to the prairies of lucre waiting to be harvested from the pseudo-classical sector.
For an encore, the perma-tanned guru has assembled six adolescent choristers aged between 11 and 14 (three boys and three girls), hooked them up with producer Steve Mac, and concocted an album so epically cloying that it will ooze across your carpet like warm chocolate sauce.
"Angelis have made one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard," Cowell swoons, and doubtless it's more beautiful still when accompanied by a heavenly chorus of beeping cash registers.
How sad that even such chaste and wholesome young artists aren't insulated from the biz's naked hype.
In the opposite corner, Universal Classics & Jazz have come out swinging with All Angels, four teenage choirgirls brazenly billed as "the world's first female classical supergroup". However, while they sing arrangements of such TV-commercial classics as Offenbach's Barcarolle or the Flower Duet from Lakmé, plenty of sugary crossover pop has been shovelled into the mix, including versions of Robbie Williams's Angels and Fleetwood Mac's drippy Songbird.
With marketing aforethought, not only do All Angels have a link to Tesco's online store on their website (because the big supermarkets are in the process of swallowing the retail music market whole), but they've been conceived as a strategic follow-up to last year's junior-classical offering from UCJ, the Choirboys, a trio of 10- to 12-year-olds plucked from the choirs of Southwell Minster and Ely Cathedral.
They'll have to beat off opposition from Libera, EMI Classics' 24-piece ensemble of adolescent South London choirboys, whose latest album Angel Voices is yet another feast of "shimmering mystical chords and ecstatic harmonies".
Hence there's something reassuringly old-fashioned about another UCJ signing, the Fron Male Voice Choir. The group hail from Froncysyllte in the Vale of Llangollen and, somewhat to their own amazement, have released an album called Voices of the Valley.
Though tickled up with vintage hits such as Unchained Melody and Sailing (the Rod Stewart one), the disc relies mainly on the traditional sonorities of the 60-strong Fron choir, who enjoy an impressive international reputation and have collected a shedful of prizes since their formation in 1947. When the massed boyos are at full gallop, as in Abide With Me or All Through the Night, they can generate spine-tingling power, though the choir remains a strictly amateur operation.
"We take people on and see if they've got a voice," says Dennis Williams, a survivor of the choir's original line-up and still singing in his seventies. "We're a community choir, and nobody is barred."
They may even end up in Hollywood. Plans for a feel-good movie are being laid by film producer Zygi Kamasa, who is fascinated by the choir's eventful 60-year history and larger-than-life characters, as well as by the Fron's flukey route to a record deal.
This most un-manufactured of ensembles was spotted singing at a wedding by Daniel Glatman, former manager of boy band Blue. "It absolutely moved me, the sheer passion and pride of these chaps," Glatman sobbed. Now he can claim credit for launching the world's first old-boy band.
www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/11/23/bmchoir23.xml
You will need to connect to the Telegraph for the blue links above.