For those not in the know, keyboard legend Rick Wakeman will release his new concept album A Gallery Of The Imagination on February 24th, 2023 via Madfish.

The conception of the album began at the age of five. Rick’s childhood piano teacher, Mrs Symes, taught him that musicians with instruments are like an artist with paint. Something that Rick carried through his life, creating sonic paintings through his composition.

Wakeman says: One of my great loves is going to museums and art galleries and seeing all the different types of art, so I thought, why not a music gallery? ... A Gallery Of The Imagination? People can paint their own mind pictures to the different types of music that are on the album. It is very diverse and for me it works very well because the concept holds it all together.

Just as you might find a vast array of styles in an art gallery, Wakeman presents a plethora of musical aesthetics throughout the record. Inspired by the menagerie he created, Rick recalled the advice of his beloved teacher and has presented these tracks as pictures in a gallery: A Gallery Of The Imagination.

The line-up on A Gallery Of The Imagination - as with Rick’s previous album The Red Planet - features The English Rock Ensemble: bassist Lee Pomeroy, guitarist Dave Colquhoun, drummer Ash Soan and on vocals Hayley Sanderson, famous for her work as a vocalist on Strictly Come Dancing with each artist recording their individual parts their own studios.

Join Rick for a stroll around A Gallery of the Imagination, for, as he himself says, it is a gallery that belongs to everyone.

1. Hidden Depths
2. The Man In The Moon
3. A Mirage in the Clouds
4. The Creek
5. My Moonlight Dream
6. Only When I Cry
7. Cuban Carnival
8. Just A Memory
9. The Dinner Party
10. A Day Spent On The Pier
11. The Visitation
12. The Eyes of a Child

This quite magically abundant new concept album from the renowned, and globally-adored keyboard legend, opens on the free flowing prog of Hidden Depths and the beautifully vocalized The Man In The Moon and then serves to bring us the truly scintillating Mirage in the Clouds, the paino balladry of The Creek and then we get both the vocalized, ’80s-imbued My Moonlight Dream and the lushly vocalized Only When I Cry.

Up next is one of my own personal favorites on this wondrous new recording, the joyful, and veritably uplifting Cuban Carnival, which is itself is backed seamlessly by another dulcet piano work in the form of Just A Memory, then comes the Renaissance-tinged euphoria of The Dinner Party, the playfully vocalized A Day Spent On The Pier, the ethereal, almost Kate Busheqsue vocalizations within The Visitation, before the recording rounds out on the atmospherically-charged piano ballad The Eyes of a Child.

Credits:
Keyboard engineering - Erik Jordan
Mixing & editing - Erik Jordan at The Nursery
Additional mixing - Toby Wood
Mastering - Simon Heyworth at Super Audio Mastering
Producers - Rick Wakeman & Erik Jordan
Executive Producer - Rob Ayling

www.rickwakemansmusicemporium.com