Tomorrow sees my final upload of the year, and I plan to make it an extremely memorable one, so perhaps best to calm the mood and soothe the spirit before I unleash that on you! There’s no point in my hiding it or trying to disguise it, but generally speaking I strongly dislike opera music. Occasionally however it finds it’s way into mainstream consciousness, so I never had a problem with Luciano Pavarotti & Joan Sutherland’s classic version of “Nessum Dorma”, or even Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballé’s rendition of “Barcelona”.
However, today’s choice hit me like a bolt out of the blue as it was certainly not something I was expecting to hear from a progressive rock musician. After leaving Genesis, Anthony Phillips went on to have an incredibly prolific career, and so far I’ve listened to more than one hundred of his solo albums! The majority of these have been library music album, which are compiled to try to bring potential TV and movie themes to the attention of that industry’s researchers. The song in question is “Credo In Cantus”, which although it was commercially released in 2012 on the “Seventh Heaven” album (with Andrew Skeet) was actually included a year earlier on Anthony’s “Timeless Scenes For Orchestra” library album. Both releases included an instrumental version of the track, and while I briefly considered uploading that to disguise the opera connection, in the end I had to admit defeat as Lucy Crowe’s amazing vocals simply don’t deserve to be suppressed.
If I had to make one minor complaint about the song though, at just two minutes and 20 seconds it’s far too short, so I’ve taken the liberty of creating this "best of both" extended version and I hope that you find it just as moving as I do.
Hopefully you’ll drop by again tomorrow when I plan to finish the year with a bang!