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Rock Orchestra

Artist Esperanto
Title Rock Orchestra
Release Date Saturday, January 27, 2018
Genre Rock > Rock > Progressive Rock
Copyright © Si Wan
Country GERMANY

Promotion Text

An early prog rock gem from Belgo-English 12 piece rock orchestra

It all started at the end of ’71 when the Belgian violinist Raymond Vincent, leader of the Wallace Collection wanted to embark on a more adventurous musical endeavour (in spite of his surprising predilection for hard rock) after his band had broken up. After playing for a short period with Daniel (Dany) Lademacher and Roger Wollaert (who had left Kleptomania), then with Dirk Bogaert (of Waterloo), he got in touch with Bruno Libert who was completing his musicology studies and playing piano every night in Brussel’s theatres that were putting on “off Broadway” musicals, which were quite fashionable at the time. Raymond told Bruno about his new project and showed him some musical ideas. He also played him a promotional album, Metronomics, that he had written for an advertising campaign. The two musicians agreed to launch the project and started to look for other musicians. They discovered the Malisan brothers, two Italo-Belgians of the Mons area: Gino, bass player and Tony, drummer. They started to rehearse in the back room of a small cafe, wrote a series of new numbers and recorded a first demotape at “Cathy” studio in the Brabant Wallon region, owned at the time by Marc Aryan (Belgian singer successful at the beginning of the 70s).
The four musicians took their demo to England, where they met David Mackay who had produced the Wallace Collection and The New Seekers and later produced part of Esperanto’s first album. David was interested.The producer rented a farm for several weeks in Cornwall and the twelve musicians, some of whom barely knew each other, or having just met, began to rehearse. The results were excellent. The group then moved to a farm in Houyet, in Belgium, to further work on the repertoire. They went back to London, and David Mackay took everybody to Morgan studios to record the first album. Several new pieces were written, among which “Black Widow” and “Publicity”, which would be released as a single but was not included on the first album. After the recording, the producer went in search of a contract. Polydor was quite enthusiastic about the music but, because of a small disagreement on contract details, the negotiations failed and the contract was never signed. In fact Polydor did invest in another group which had quite a career: Slade. Finally, after months of prospection and a meeting with Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, a contract was finally signed for three albums with A&M. The first album “Esperanto Rock Orchestra” was released in 1973.
1st LP: Esperanto Rock Orchestra
· Bridget Lokelani Dudoit: Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
· Tony Harris: Viola, Sax
· Brian Holloway: Guitar, Piano
· Timothy Kraemer: Cello, Piano
· Bruno Libert: Keyboards
· Gino Malisan: Bass, Flute
· Tony Malisan: Drums
· Godfrey Salmon: 2nd Violin
· Glenn Shorrock: Vocals, Guitar
· Janice Slater: Vocals
· Raymond Vincent: 1st Violin
· Joy Yates: Vocals, Flute

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