Full Circle

Description

Adrian Munsey and Andrew Powell: Performed by The Philharmonia Orchestra, Featuring Elin Manahan Thomas Full Circle is a masterpiece by two friends who bonded through a shared passion for a wide range of music. The 19 track album, performed by The Philharmonia Orchestra and featuring Soprano Elin Manahan Thomas as soloist, sees Adrian Munsey and Andrew Powell collaborating 45 years after they first met. Adrian Munsey and Andrew Powells friendship dates back to the late 1960s when they were both undergraduates at Kings College, Cambridge. After university the two worked together briefly on several recording sessions, and then went their separate ways to pursue successful, multi-faceted careers. Adrian has enjoyed a long, wide-ranging career as a film and TV producer as well as working within music as a composer, writing and producing albums to great critical acclaim. Andrew is a renowned composer, arranger, conductor, performer and producer who has worked with musical greats as diverse as Pierre Boulez and Kate Bush, David Gilmour and Stockhausen. He worked as arranger for Al Stewart (The Year of the Cat, Time Passages et al.,) Chris Rea, Mick Fleetwood, John Miles (Music), Cliff Richard (Miss You Nights) and produced Kate Bushs landmark 1978 album The Kick Inside and her follow up album, as well as composing several Arts Council commissions in the Classical world. At the beginning of 2011 Andrew and Adrian got back in touch; almost five decades after they first met, Andrew and Adrian decided to work together on a joint album. Andrew had heard some of Adrians music, which he found intriguing and it was then Adrians turn to be intrigued when he heard the result of Andrew developing his music and combining it with his own. It seems like only 24 hours ago that I first met Andrew, says Adrian. In a curious way those far-off days seem more real than the present. Working together on such a fascinating collaborative project proved to be the ideal way of bridging the gap. They decided to record at the world-renowned Abbey Road Studios, where Andrew has often worked, and with Andrews favourite London orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra. Both Andrew and Adrian were very keen to involve Elin Manahan Thomas in the recording, and were delighted when she agreed. They also decided to record on analogue multi-track tape, and to mix at Mark Knopflers British Grove Studio 2 on the valve API legacy desk and onto half-inch analogue tape, using the skills of Kirsten Cowie, who had engineered the sessions at Abbey Road.