PRNewsFoto/UMeEx-Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman‘s new solo album, Piano Portraits, gets its release today on CD and as a digital download. Amazingly, the 15-track collection is the 100th solo album Wakeman has released.
Piano Portraits features instrumental versions of a number of well-known rock and pop songs, including covers of three tunes he played on as a studio musician — Cat Stevens‘ “Morning Has Broken” and David Bowie‘s “Life on Mars” and “Space Oddity.” The album also features renditions of The Beatles‘ “Help!” and “Eleanor Rigby,” Led Zeppelin‘s “Stairway to Heaven,” 10cc‘s “I’m Not Alone” and Yes’ “Wonderous Stories,” plus a few classical pieces of which Rick is fond.
“I’ve been wanting to do a piano album for years of classic songs, a mixture of music, some classical, all done in the only style I know how to play,” Wakeman says in a video promo for the album. “I spent quite a bit of time looking at everything from almost straight classical pieces to some stuff that I’d played on in the past…plus pieces of music I thought would work really, really well, like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and some of the great classics like ‘Claire de Lune.'”
You can check out some video of Rick performing some of the songs on Piano Portraits on his official VEVO YouTube channel. The album also will be released as a two-LP vinyl set on February 3.
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