Aurora Borealis

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Finland has turned out a remarkable number of great composers in the past 100 years, and this collection is a terrific introduction to several of them. From Rautavaara's Concerto for Birds and Orchestra through Nordgren's glowing and homespun "Fiddler's Favorite Tune" to Sibelius's stormy "Storm" and Merikanto's lushly Romantic Lento, this CD enchants consistently. Nature is omnipresent in Finnish music, and that's about the only stereotype one can find here, although all of these composers were obviously well-schooled in the music that preceded them--one can catch a bit of Debussy here, a hint of the Russian romantics there. In any case, this is ravishing and highly recommended. --Robert Levine

Tracks:

Beginning
Wind Journey 1
Blue Moon
Dream Lines
Going North
Awakening
Insula
Wind Journey 2
Sea
Open Land
Spring Poem
Rain
Distant View
Huldra 2
Early Autumn
Frost
Winter Shine
Winter Lake
Passage Of Time
Destination
Aurora Borealis
Cloudscapes
Home

Amazon.com

Erik Wollo's works are overlooked gems of modern instrumental music. From his home in Norway, Wollo's been sending out missives of mood and ambience since the mid-1980s with albums like Silver Beach and Solstice. Last year's U.S. release of Guitar Nova explored the acoustic-guitar side of this musician in multilayered, overdubbed soundscapes that retained the ambience and structure of his electronic works. With Wind Journey, he returns to synthesizers but keeps his electric guitar at hand for some gloriously heroic solos, especially on "Dream Line." A subtle, tugging ostinato pattern builds into layers of keyboard orchestrations topped by guitar, which starts out in a pastoral, acoustic mode but segues into a soaring lead solo that recalls Steve Hackett during his Spectral Mornings era. Wind Journey is centered by Seasons Suite, a 10-part sequence of moody vignettes. Erik Wollo's roots in progressive rock are clear and he uses them to articulate a cinematic music. While Wollo lives in a country with some of the most awe-inspiring landscapes in the world, he composes much of his music in a basement studio. The worlds he creates are strictly from the imagination, and what a vivid imagination it is. --John Diliberto

Customer Reviews:

Ambient music that takes me far, far away!.......2003-04-24

I have purchased cd in the summer of 2002. Back then, all I could think of doing was listen to 88.5 on the radio and hope that they will play music from Erik Wollo. The first song I heard was "Dream Lines". The music didn't seem familiar to me at first. I didn't consider it really ambient but it turned out that it was. After listening to it, I was into it very much. I never heard such a song played like that before and I knew it was something I would like. Wollo plays the guitar in a way that the sound echoes in my head and makes me feel like Im somewhere far and distant. In a short time, I heard "Wind Journey 1". That was amazing. After I listened to it few more times, I was into it so much that I couldn't help buying it from Amazon.com. Just about every beat and sound seems to echoe as if it was played outside where nothing surrounds you and where the music can travel and be heard. Listen to the samples and decide. Buying this cd is something to consider.

What a surprise and completely different from the last CD.......2001-09-27

The last Eric Wollo CD featured wonderful virtuoso guitar, most closely akin to a "fingerpicking" style. Each piece was different, almost like a "best of" CD. This CD is completely different in that the artist uses the guitar as part of a series of thematic atmospheric tone poems based on the idea of wind and its forms and effects. The overall feel of the music is very ambient, with the guitar used less as a melody-maker, and more as a symphonic, electronic instrument, almost like a timescape. The orchestration includes atmospheric electronic soundscapes within which the artist creates mood music of the highest quality. I was absolutely fascinated by the CD on first hearing it, and it only gets better with each re-playing as I discover new nuances to the music. What a master of the guitar this man is. I highly recommend that you take a listen to this CD, and take a journey into the wind with Mr Wollo. This is a thinking person's delight!!!

Average customer rating:

Ceci n'est pas un review

Aurora Borealis
Cloud Cult
Manufacturer: Earthology Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music

General | Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B0002E34IE
Release Date: 2004-06-08

Tracks:

Breakfast with My Shadow
Alone at a Party in a Ghost Town
Princess Bride
As Long as You're Happy
Chandeliers
Buried Poetry
All Together Alone
My Fictitious Life with Amily
Grappling Hook/ Northern Lights
Lights Inside My Head
The Sparks and Space Between Your Cells
Beautiful Boy
I Guess This Dream is for Me
State of the Union

Album Description

Pop Matters (Chicago,IL): Confident, mature, honest, inventive, eclectic, and unremittingly catchy: Minowa's fourth release deserves all the adjectives befitting a classic album. Genius. Sincerely groundbreaking indie rock. Planetary (MA): Cloud Cult has literally become a cult phenomenon. Dallas Observer (TX): A Cloud Cult show is an aura. You go for the music, but you come out wanting to save the world. City Pages (MN): A solar flare. Stunning. Two-minute excursions into sonic radiance that keep your brain whirring for days. National Public Radio: Cloud Cult is taking environmental activism to new forms, from the way they package their CDs, to the flyers they distribute at concerts. Team Clermont (GA): An addictive skyscape of guitar, cello, tape loops, and speed manipulations.

Customer Reviews:

Ceci n'est pas un review.......2005-02-21

Cloud Cult has adapted and modified the indie experimental guitar rock sound of the last decade and crumbled like a phoenix to rise again as a beautiful requiem for the band's founder's two year old son. Cloud Cult uses sparse vocals and understated melodies in contrast with screaming Crazy Horse guitars, Roland beats, and Psychpop. If you like the experimentation of the Flaming Lips, the psychotic ambiguity of Neutral Milk Hotel, the voice of one on the edge of life and death (a la Nowell, Cobain, Joplin), or ambient brilliance, check these sick Minnesotans out.

Average customer rating:

Relinquish
Aurora Borealis
Manufacturer: Night Sky Prod.
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Death Metal | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000R2GESI

Product Description

Fast blackened death metal featuring Tony Laureano on Drums (1349, Acheron, Angelcorpse, Astaroth, God Dethroned, Internecine, Malevolent Creation, Nile, Devolution, etc...).

Average customer rating:

Highly recommended!
Moment of Discovery: Treasures Hidden by Time, Accident, and Memory Lapse
Mind-blowing music!
Tviett Rules

Piano Concerto 4
Tveitt , Gimse , Sussmann , Engeset , and Rsno
Manufacturer: Naxos
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

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4-for-3 Classical | 4-for-3 Music | Stores | Music

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Tveitt: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 5
Tveitt: A Hundred Hardanger Tunes, Suites Nos. 2 & 5
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Gernsheim: Complete Symphonies
Camargo Guarnieri: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 2 and 3

ASIN: B00006GO45
Release Date: 2002-10-22

Tracks:

Variations On A Folksong From Hardanger For Two Pianos And Orchestra
The Northern Lights Awakening Above The Autumn Colours
Glittering In The Winter Heavens, And...
Fading Away In The Bright Night Of Spring

Customer Reviews:

Highly recommended!.......2005-12-31

I am not a musician, so I can not elaborate in technical terms what makes the 4th piano concerto so special. However, as a lover of the medium, I feel it is one of the best from the later half of the 20th century. The title of "Aurora Borealis" seems particularily apt to me, as the work seems less an expression of nature through a human's eyes, as it is a sheer force of nature in itself. It is somewhat modernistic, and I think if Bartok doesn't make you squeamish, you'll enjoy this greatly. Tveitt's earlier piano concertos (with more touches of Rachmaninov and Prokofiev) , while not as distinctive, are very worthwhile as well. But the 4th concerto is the real gem! I hope this doesn't go out of print!

Moment of Discovery: Treasures Hidden by Time, Accident, and Memory Lapse.......2005-10-23

Just when you think you are up on all aspects of contemporary music and the vast amount of compositions of the 20th Century, up pops a composer brought to your attention through the auspices of Classical Public Radio to prove there are many more hidden treasures to discover. Driving home from a LA Phil concert the car radio music on KUSC was so exciting, so fresh, and so defiant of classification that it demanded investigation. It happened to be a performance of Geirr Tveitt's 'Baldur's Dream: Symbolic Play for Dance and Orchestra' and the three voices were enmeshed in a score of wide percussive entanglements and pulsating rhythms, a work that was so excitingly strange and beautiful that it drove me to explore this newly discovered composer Geirr Treitt.

What a revelation! This recording of two works for pianos/piano and orchestra is an excellent starting point. Treitt is an uncommonly interesting composer from Norway whose rather large and very important output of scores were destroyed by fire in 1970. Due to the diligence of scholars, many of these scores are being reconstructed (the 'Baldur's Dream' I heard was reconstructed based on a live radio performance!), so hopefully we will begin to hear this amazing body of work.

Treitt has the same passion for folksongs that so influenced Mahler, Bartok, Kodaly, Grieg and now Golijov, Gorecki etc. His orchestral writing (it seems from the small amount I have begun to collect) emphasizes imaginative percussive elements while his use of the piano as a solo instrument in a concerto goes beyond the usual format: his drive seems to have been one of creating rich colors and ethereal moods. The results are exquisitely beautiful music. The performances on this recording by Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Bjarte Engeset with pianists Havard Gimse and Gunilla Sussmann are exciting. This recording, and especially this composer, are Highly Recommended! Grady Harp, October 05

Mind-blowing music!.......2003-09-09

I didn't have the slightest idea who Geirr Tveitt was when I bought this CD, but his music blew my mind into the land of Oz! The "Aurora Borealis" Piano Concerto is one of the most powerful and interesting pieces of music I've ever heard. Plus, the performance by the Håvard Gimse, Gunilla Süssmann, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra is absolutely SUPERLATIVE. It's right up there with Naxos' release of Vaughan Williams' "Antarctic Symphony", which is often called the most acoustically accomplished disc ever created.

Tveitt SHOULD rate among the 20th century's greatest composers, but due to devastating twist of fate, most of his music was destroyed in a fire at his home in Norway in 1970 (eleven years before his death). Three-quarters of his music and the manuscript of a monumental study of Edvard Grieg were obliterated forever. Fortunately, parts of his massive output (including 4 of his 6 piano concertos) have been reconstructed on the basis of surviving orchestral scores and Tveitt's stunning radio performances of his own works.

"Variations on a Folksong from Hardanger for two pianos and orchestra" dates from 1939. While obviously inspired by Tveitt's interest in Grieg and Norwegian folkmusic, you'll also be able to hear traces of Rachmaninov and Liszt, who were championed by Tveitt (a piano virtuoso) on tours throughout Europe. Still, the "Variations" are indisputably Norwegian and packed with the overwhelming emotional quality of the mystic northern landscape.

Even more overwhleming is the Piano Concerto No. 4 ("Aurora Borealis"), dating from 1947. At its first performance, the audience was so impressed that it "raised the roof". Just as the Northern Lights are many things -- beautiful, terrifying, dreamy, savage, erotic, always breathtaking -- so is this concerto. Tveitt was endlessly inspired by stars and the natural world, and this is his night-sky masterpiece. You can practically WATCH this music as you listen to the Lights awakening, glittering, and fading away in the music of Geirr Tveitt, punctuated by ferocious battles between the orchestra and the soloist in "The Winter Heavens" and melting away into a still-uneasy quietness in the "Bright Night of Spring".

The "12-year-old music fan" below was absolutely right. This CD will rock your socks off!

Tviett Rules.......2002-12-07

THis record is sure to rock your socks off!

Average customer rating:

incredible release

Time, Unveiled
Aurora Borealis
Manufacturer: Diehard Denmark
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Northern Lights

ASIN: B00008HTKD
Release Date: 2003-06-17

Tracks:

Triumph Again
Sky Burial
Searching
Transversing The Tides
Berserker
The Last Day
Reign
Sixteenth Chamber
Slave To The Grave

Customer Reviews:

incredible release.......2003-07-21

After listening to the amazing Northern Lights, I was thinking "how the hell can they top that?!". Well Aurora Borealis sure pulled out and did it. The amazing opener "Triumph Again" kinda starts out like "Thrice Told"(from Northern Lights) with it's light speed riffing and beats. The 2nd track "Sky Burial" is my personal favorite. During the chorus plays one of the best riffs I have ever heard. This whole cd is a concept album inspired by lots of history, and the song "Berserker" inspired the cover art. Included are also 2 bonus tracks (remade on the first cd Mansions of Eternity) by Ron's old band Lestregus Nosferatus. All in all, this album completely shreds with his own original mix of death metal, history inspired lyrics, and black metalic vocals.

Tracks:

Cantus Arcticus: 1. The Bog - Leipzig RSO/Max Pommer
Cantus Arcticus: 2. Melancholy - Leipzig RSO/Max Pommer
Cantus Arcticus: 3. Swans Migrating - Leipzig RSO/Max Pommer
The Tempest Ste No.1, Op.109/2: The Storm - Helsinki PO/Leif Segerstam
Lento Cantabile - Tampere PO/Tuomas Ollila
Four Compositions: Arietta - Tampere PO/Tuomas Ollila
The Ambush: Adagio - Karelia PO/Oleg Soldatov
Extinguished Torches - Finnish RSO/Sakari Oramo
The Iron Age, Op.55 Ste: Lemminki In Tuonela - Helsinki PO/Okko Kamu
The Thinker - Ostrobothian CO/Juha Kangas
Portraits Of Country Fiddlers, Op.26: The Fiddler's Favorite Tune - Ostrobothian CO/Juha Kangas
Angel Of Light (Sym No.VII): Come Un Sogno - Helsinki PO/Leif Segerstam

Amazon.com

Finland has turned out a remarkable number of great composers in the past 100 years, and this collection is a terrific introduction to several of them. From Rautavaara's Concerto for Birds and Orchestra through Nordgren's glowing and homespun "Fiddler's Favorite Tune" to Sibelius's stormy "Storm" and Merikanto's lushly Romantic Lento, this CD enchants consistently. Nature is omnipresent in Finnish music, and that's about the only stereotype one can find here, although all of these composers were obviously well-schooled in the music that preceded them--one can catch a bit of Debussy here, a hint of the Russian romantics there. In any case, this is ravishing and highly recommended. --Robert Levine

Average customer rating:

Marimba Dance

Manufacturer: Audite
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Her Greatest Hits
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Rhythm Song

ASIN: B00004U94A
Release Date: 2000-07-25

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Aurora Borealis

Manufacturer: Earthology Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Psychedelic Rock | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CA7G6E
Release Date: 2003-12-02

Tracks:

Breakfast With My Shadow
Alone At A Party In A Ghost Town
Princess Bride
As Long As You're Happy
Chandeliers
Buried Poetry (Live)
All Together Alone
My Fictitious Life With Amily
Grappling Hook/Northern Lights
Lights Inside My Head
The Sparks And Spaces Between Your Cells
Beautiful Boy (Live Performance On RadioK KUOM)
I Guess This Dream Is For Me
State Of The Union

Average customer rating:

Evelyn Stroobach: Aurora Borealis

Manufacturer: Evelyn Stroobach
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000GBE7FM
Release Date: 2006-01-01

Tracks:

Aurora Borealis - Ottawa Symphony Orchestra
Movement I Adagio - The Thirteen Strings
Movement II Allegro - The Thirteen Strings
Movement III Andante Espressivo - The Thirteen Strings
La Petite Danse - The Thirteen Strings
Movement I Contemplatively - Jan Jarvlepp
Movement II Intensity - Jan Jarvlepp
Movement III Lament - Jan Jarvlepp
Movement IV Angrily - Jan Jarvlepp
Petition - Garry Elliot
The Human Abstract - Kevin James
Dark Blue - Evelyn Stroobach
Crepuscule - Thomas Annand
Daydream - Gordon Slater
Fanfare - Thomas Annand
Movement I Adagio - Sara Lee
Movement II Allegro - Sara Lee
Movement III Andante Espressivo - Sara Lee

Album Description

Evelyn Stroobach's compact disc entitled 'Aurora Borealis' has just been released. 'Aurora Borealis' contains eleven of her compositions composed for a variety of different musical genres and her works are performed by some of Canada's leading musicians. This CD project was awarded funding by FACTOR (Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Records), the Council for the Arts in Ottawa and the Corel Endowment for the Arts. 'Aurora Borealis' is available through Amazon.com as well as a number of other internet sites and music stores.

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Aurora Borealis
Hapa
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Folk | Styles | Music

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Hawaii | Pacific Islands | International | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B000JI79JI

Product Description

13 Tracks 18 Instruments

Track Listings: