13 September 2008
Newsdesk
David Gilmour Live In Gdañsk is a double live album plus concert DVD to be released on September 23rd on Columbia Records.
David Gilmour Live In Gdansk, the first solo live album from Pink Floyd’s singer / guitarist, captures the magic of his concert held in front of 50,000 in the Gdansk shipyards, the final performance of his critically acclaimed 2006 On An Island tour. It also features the first ever recording of selected Pink Floyd classics performed with an orchestra. Please let me know if you’d like a copy of the double album/DVD for review on Music News.
The double live album David Gilmour Live In Gdañsk, produced by David Gilmour and Phil Manzanera, features the Gdansk concert and demonstrates a musician and his band playing at the very peak of their musical brilliance. The six piece band is accompanied for the only time on the On An Island tour by an orchestra: the 40-strong string section of the Polish Baltic Philharmonic conducted by Zbigniew Preisner, orchestral arranger on David Gilmour’s On An Island album (multi-platinum around the world, number 1 in Europe, number 1 in the UK and number 6 in the U.S.). It is the first ever live recording with an orchestra of Pink Floyd’s ‘High Hopes’ and ‘A Great Day For Freedom’, the latter performed here as a one-off for this special Solidarity anniversary.
The two and a half hour DVD which accompanies the live album evocatively portrays the drama of the Gdansk concert, set against the urban landscape of the shipyard and crane-filled skyline. As well as 113 minutes of concert footage, The DVD includes a riveting 36-minute documentary which includes Gilmour’s private meeting with former President Lech Walesa, chats with the band and crew, concert rehearsals and a moving wreath-laying with Walesa at the Memorial to the shipyard workers killed in the 1970 uprising.
