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Fiona Pears – Fire & Light (2008)


Good evening guys! In today's review I looked up for some music that had to help me through my sick day. Needed something that will not kill me with heavy beats or riffs. So I decided to find some peaceful and calming music. I found extremely talented New Zealand's artist Fiona Pears and her album Fire & Light. What was interesting to me that almost all the music was written and composed by her so it was my actual first time to listening a modern Classical music (as strange it sounds, that what it is).
Fiona Pears started her career when she was twelve and since then she’s been plying with countless groups, bands and orchestras. She went through a lot of different genres, from classical music to Celtic folk, Gipsy style, different sub genres of Jazz. But in the end she always wanted to create her original pieces and after many years she fulfilled that dream with Fire & Light where she wrote 12 original tracks and made arrangements to “Sabre Dance” (originally composed by Aram Khatchaturian) and “I Found New Baby” (originally created by Jack Palmer and Spencer Williams).
Classical music has this distinguish feature in my head that I see it as a whole, I can’t just divide albums on smaller parts focusing on individual tracks. For me in contrary to other genres it is a one long story that composer wanted to put together. And Fiona, with her talent, did exactly this. From “Tangissimo” to “Saying Goodbye” it is almost a seamless journey I and my mind enjoyed through difficult day. Violin is a main instrument that builds all the melodies and led me through more than 50 minutes of music. What is worth noticing, as Fiona had her influences from different genres, I found a lot of elements that tick out and do not sit as a typical classical music element. Guitar, folk instruments and many other that helped build unique vibes as spread all over album. And that was, I think, the strongest point in the whole recording. Fiona with her talent was able to blend and create a fresh mix of music, even in an a bit of unpopular genre like classical music. It is refreshing and shows that music in nowadays can surprise, it just a matter of talent and thoughts of an artist. On Fire & Light I found all the mixture of emotion that I could dream of. There are songs that are straight forward ballads, songs that are very much ready to be played on a folk parties (like “Memory of Home”). It is worth mentioning that two arrangements mentioned earlier are really good. My favourite will be Sabre dance as I knew this song already but in Fiona Pears versions they didn't loose any of the flavour and also gave me an energy boost I needed so badly today. Is also worth mentioning that whole album was recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic.
Conclusion: Fire & Light was my remedy for today, I found when I needed and fulfilled its role as a bring back to life in an easy way you can thing. Fiona Pears is one of not too many artists in our times that can help you bring to a classical music and also help you discover a lot of other genres you probably never knew about. I’m happy that this album was my companion through this Sunday and now I can share it with you!

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Location: Edinburgh, UK

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