Jon Lord

Founder member of Deep Purple, keyboard player Jon Lord needs little introduction to rock audiences. Yet classical music had been a huge part of his musical education, and echoes of his love for the genre imbued the early Deep Purple albums. His interest was then channeled into a series of classical/rock experiments which lasted throughout the seventies. They began with the famous Concerto For Group Orchestra (released in 1970), followed by the studio project Gemini Suite in 1971. A third attempt to further the cause was the experimental Windows album in 1974, and the series culminated in 1976 with the subject of this reissue, the superb Sarabande, issued just as the band Deep Purple were on the verge of splitting. Purple Records was the original home of most of these albums, and Sarabande is the first of their collectors editions, digitally enhanced and in its original sleeve.

For this album, Jon Lord based his material on a set of dance suites, interpreted with a string orchestra and modern rock instrumentation. His own keyboard playing was stunning, ranging from gentle piano work to heavy Hammond organ riffs. The guitar was played by Andy Summers, just prior to his joining The Police, and is some of the best material he ever laid down. Needless to say the original album got lost in the storm of Deep Purple's 1976 UK tour and the split, and was quickly deleted. Now a collectable piece of vinyl, the recording has never been issued on CD in the UK before, and is here carefully remastered from the original quarter inch masters discovered at Abbey Road. Jon Lord's classical forays have never been fashionable, but they have been influential and today they are widely studied at colleges and universities around Europe. For this reissue we have comprehensive notes which tackle the music from a scholarly perspective, backed by contemporary reviews, pictures and memorabilia, as well as a discography.

Sarabande A review by Göran Nilsson We highly recommend the remastered version of Sarabande, available from Purple Records. (...) The album is based on the theme of a baroque dance suite and it contains eight ‘dances’ in different tempos. I am not the right person to judge how much this form has influenced the music, but I think that I can hear influences from other sources that are at least as strong as those from Bach & co. I would describe the music as a wonderfully integrated mix of romanticism, jazz and rock, all flavoured with what we today might call world music. One possible influence that the dance concept might have had is that the album is more focused on rhythm than Jon’s work usually is. Some of the tracks are built around rhythmic figures and there is a lot of percussion involved in the music. Just like Windows this is a collaboration with German conductor Eberhard Schoener and the featured orchestra is the Philharmonia Hungarica. The record starts off with a very powerful intro reminiscent of the romantic period that dominated the charts a hundred years ago. For some reason it reminds me of the sunset in Richard Strauss’ ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’, a theme that Jon keeps coming back to. After the intro the music stops for a second before this dance, Fantasia, continues with the most subtle and beautiful woodwinds. Eventually the music becomes more powerful again and there is a string riff that reminds me of ‘Big Country’ (the cowboy tune – not the highland band). The first dance of the album is also one of the best, even if I might choose something slightly more funky to dance to! http://www.picturedwithin.com/sarabande.html

A ver si no la riego: Jon LORD es el líder de DEEP PURPLE, un grupo de rock duro, pero como solista su tendencia es hacia la música clásica y la combina con el rock…   http://www.manticornio.com/rock-progresivo/L/LORD-Jon/lord-j.html   Translation: Let me see if I don't ruin it; Jon Lord is the leader of Deep Purple, a Hard Rock group , but as a soloisr his tendency is towards CLASSICAL music blended with Rock.

1. La Caja de Musica, another reliable Prog site in Spanish .
2. Progressicve Ears
3. GEPR 
4. DPRP  (Dutch Progressive Rock Page)
5. Progressor
6. Ground & Sky
7. Gnosis should better not mention him, because out of 84 possible ratings, only an average of 7 per album give Jon Lord a rating superior to 0.in a 15 system.

Most reliable sites don't even mention him, so again his Prog credentials are weak.

Bilek wrote:

I'm not very hopeful, because I don't think Symph team would be willing to add dubious items to their already overblown list! Not to mention Ivan's negative attitude towards all bluesy/classic rock based artists/bands!!! (I wonder whether he approved Doors' addition...)

I will thank you not to make assumptions that are false Bilek, I have nothing against Blues based rock, as a fact I was one of the first, (if not the first) to ask for the inclusion of The Doors in Prog Archives because I believe they were a Psychedelic band (If I remember well your team opposed to that), by the contrary, I received some negative feedback in the case of The Doors as when I supported the inclusion of Iron Maiden.

If I don’t add Blues based bands to Symphonic Prog is because BLUES BASED ROCK IS NOT SYMPHONIC PROG, something that is obvious.

I didn’t accuse your team of having a negative attitude against Santana because you didn’t accepted their inclusion in Psychedelic despite ecerybody knows they were part of the San Francisco Psyche movement, simply understood (but disagreed) that you don’t believe Santana was a Psyche band.

As a fact I don’t believe Jon Lord is essentially a Blues oriented artist either, I believe his albums are closer to Neo Classical, so your comment is totally out of place.

Just to finish, Deep Purple, Jon Lord, The Who, Mountain, etc are among my favorite bands so please don’t say I have a negarive attitude against any kind of Rock because it’s false, you should  inform yourself better before making this kind ofstatements.

As a team we take care of what is added to Symphonic, but not adding a band because they don’t belong in Symphonic, doesn’t mean we have a negative attitude against anybody, they may belong in other sub-genre or simply be excelent bands that simply are not Prog.

Bilek wrote: I mean; which subgenre would you assign to them (seeing that no such subgenre as "prog-related rock" exists in the real world!!!) if you deny their progressiveness??? Blues? Jazz? Fusion (in which case another progressive subgenre would be justified for Lord anyway!)? Reggae? Classic Rock? Hard Rock????

We can wonder for years, but the fact is that PROG RELATED exists.

But lets imagine what could had happened.

We had to clean Symphonic and move 156 bands because many people thought like you, “If they don’t fit anywhere, lets send them to Symphonic” so at the end we had 519 bands from which almost 33% were Neo Prog, Folk, Art Rock, Prog Related and even Prog Metal and Avant Garde, without mentioning 4 or 5 New Age bands that were moved to Prog Related.

I don’t believe Blues bands are Symphonic, so I won’t add them to the genre, as I wouldn’t add Los Jaivas or Henry Cow but doesn’t mean I have a negative attitude against them, just that they belong in Prog Folk and RIO in each case.