Andrew Everard published a simply outstanding review of our latest release “The Bowie Variations” on WhatHiFi.com yesterday. The review is incredibly thorough and paints a wonderful picture of Mike Garson’s history with David Bowie (including some insight into how he got the gig). We’ll give you some quotes from it here, but we can not encourage you enough to read this fantastically entertaining review on WhatHifi.com.
Excerpts from “Spiders, the Disklavier and Aladdin Sane – Mike Garson’s Bowie Variations“:
By Andrew Everard
“So, The Bowie Variations, then: a series of short piano works based on tracks such as Space Oddity, Life on Mars, John, I’m Only Dancing, Ashes to Ashes and, of course, variations on the song that started it all, Changes. And each and every track is surprising, involving, and just superb.”
“The music was recorded at the Oxnard Centre for the Performing Arts in California, which Reference Recordings has used several times in the past – and what a recording it is!
In the hands of engineer ‘Prof’ Keith O Johnson (left), Reference Recordings’ chief engineer and technical director and fresh from his success in the most recent Grammy Awards, this HDCD-encoded disc is perhaps the best-sounding piano disc I have ever encountered.”
“I’ve only ever really heard a piano sound much better than this once, and that was when I sat up close and personal at a very small, intimate recital given in the Bosendorfer Hall in Vienna last year, after a day spent touring the company’s piano factory.
Yes, this recording is that good.
If you’re a Bowie fan, you should hear this disc. If you’re a fan of jazz you should, too.
And even if you just want to hear just how good a CD can sound, with a disc able to push your system to its limits, this is one you should have.”