It’s Annie Haslam’s birthday today – she was born in 1947, in Lancashire England.
Gifted with an absolutely effortless 5 octave range, she has a distinctive and super clear voice IMHO – even in later life. She sings in a classical style I’d say, with very little embellishment - dead true. Lead vocalist for Renaissance in their heyday which was the early to late 70’s, the band was in hiatus for many years but found a new lease of life in the noughties releasing Tuscany in 2001 and Symphony of Light in 2013. She’s also had a solo career and contributed her considerable vocal talents to a number of albums by various artists. I was curious about her rendition of “Turn of the Century”, with Steve Howe – here is it … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbwBwTVN0YY … it doesn’t have the shimmering celestial choir quality of Jon Anderson and Yes, but it’s pretty good, I thought. Having Mr Howe playing and producing no doubt helped!
I don’t have any Renaissance albums but she sings on two other albums I own – David Minasian’s Sound of Dreams (2020) and David Sinclair’s Stream (2015).
However, staying with flipping things over, I chose to listen to the full Renaissance album Turn of the Cards, from 1974 …
This, the final track, is a tribute to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The lyrics of the song were written by Michael Dunford and Betty Thatcher (she wrote most of Renaissance's lyrics from what I gather) who were inspired by Solzhenitsyn’s autobiographical ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Dinesovich’ …
Gifted with an absolutely effortless 5 octave range, she has a distinctive and super clear voice IMHO – even in later life. She sings in a classical style I’d say, with very little embellishment - dead true. Lead vocalist for Renaissance in their heyday which was the early to late 70’s, the band was in hiatus for many years but found a new lease of life in the noughties releasing Tuscany in 2001 and Symphony of Light in 2013. She’s also had a solo career and contributed her considerable vocal talents to a number of albums by various artists. I was curious about her rendition of “Turn of the Century”, with Steve Howe – here is it … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbwBwTVN0YY … it doesn’t have the shimmering celestial choir quality of Jon Anderson and Yes, but it’s pretty good, I thought. Having Mr Howe playing and producing no doubt helped!
I don’t have any Renaissance albums but she sings on two other albums I own – David Minasian’s Sound of Dreams (2020) and David Sinclair’s Stream (2015).
However, staying with flipping things over, I chose to listen to the full Renaissance album Turn of the Cards, from 1974 …
This, the final track, is a tribute to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The lyrics of the song were written by Michael Dunford and Betty Thatcher (she wrote most of Renaissance's lyrics from what I gather) who were inspired by Solzhenitsyn’s autobiographical ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Dinesovich’ …
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." ~ Bill Watterson