The Tune: Tony Banks - Six Pieces For Orchestra

I wanted to share my latest musical crush with you.  Tony Bank's Six Pieces For Orchestra has been on repeat-play on my iPod for a couple of days now, specifically the third piece entitled Blade - which I've included below for your listening pleasure.  Tony Banks is one of the founding members of the British rock group, Genesis - but I didn't know this until after I'd purchased the cd on a whim.  If I had known, I might not have bothered, because for me Genesis associates too strongly with 'Dad rock' and Phil Collins.  Tony Banks isn't the only former rock musician to go the classical route; Paul McCartney, for example, has similarly composed classical works - Liverpool Oratorio (1991) and Standing Stone (1997) - as well as The Frog Song ;)

Banks' Six Pieces For Orchestra is filmic and very accessible and maybe its immediate ease on the ear and slight sense of 'movies-I've-seen-before-deja-vu' will undermine its staying power in musical terms, but have a listen to 'Blade' and tell me you don't feel your heart soar a little bit as the violin soloist takes flight.  In these moments, Banks' music recalls Ralph Vaughn William's The Lark Ascending - that exquisite sound-image of a bird in flight above a world war one battlefield, moving ever higher into the sky.  At other times, we could be at the beginning of a film by Christopher Nolan.  This is definitely music by which to speed paint something loose and lyrical and uplifting!  Enjoy.

Tony Banks

Blade from Six Pieces For Orchestra by Tony Banks