Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl [PA] [Digipak]

Performer: Van Morrison
Engineer: Mick Glossop
Producer: Van Morrison
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Van Morrison (vocals, guitar, harmonica, Hammond b-3 organ); Sarah Jory, Jay Berliner (guitar); Tony Fitzgibbon (violin, viola); Nancy Ellis (violin); Terry Adams , Michael Graham (cello); Richie Buckley (flute, saxophone); Paul Moran (trumpet, harpsichord); Roger Kellaway (piano); David Hayes (upright bass); Robbie Ruggiero (drums). In 2008, Van Morrison decided to revisit his classic ASTRAL WEEKS album on the occasion of its 40th birthday by performing it in its entirety at a couple of L.A. concerts. Fortunately, the event was documented for posterity. Accompanied by a band that includes a couple of the original musicians from the ASTRAL WEEKS sessions, Morrison digs as deep into the mystic as ever, stirring up a soulful, all-acoustic mix of folk, rock, and jazz that sounds as ground-breaking now as it must have in 1968. If anything, the years in between have only added to Morrison's vocal gravitas, and allowed the Irish troubadour to to dig even further into these poetic, richly evocative tunes and bring out their innate transcendent qualities.

Rolling Stone (p.64) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "The album is still like nothing else in rock, a quiet union of breathtaking opposites: Morrison's soul-trance reflections on his early life in Belfast and the tension of the chamber-jazz arrangements." Entertainment Weekly (p.55) - "The strings, flute, etc., are all present...The deceptively timeless fluidity induces a wonderful mystic fog..." -- Grade: A- Down Beat (p.76) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he singer is in fine fettle returning to his 1969 triumph following forays into country, blues and Mose Allison-inspired jazz." Billboard (p.37) - "Morrison uses the performance to breathe new life into the songs with a band that can follow anywhere he leads -- jazz, folk or soul." Mojo (Publisher) (p.99) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]his is a tour de force, heady, joyful, ambitious, elegiac and -- as with the 1968 original -- unlike anything else." Blender (Magazine) (p.63) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[B]y the time Morrison hits the guttural moans of the bonus track 'Listen to the Lion,' the songs have opened up like a source of eternal life."

Van Morrison first came to notice as the powerful vocalist of the mid-1960s group Them ("Baby Please Don't Go," "Gloria"), and then with the solo hit "Brown-Eyed Girl." Morrison followed this success with two landmark albums, ASTRAL WEEKS and MOONDANCE, which masterfully combined folk, gospel, rock, and jazz. As complex a performer as any that rock & roll has produced, the soulful Irishman has produced numerous outstanding recordings in his long career, mixing his pensive and passionate R&B-inflected rock with a decidedly mystical bent.

Click Here for Shipping Options and Policies

Shipping or Dimension weight in pounds: 0.25