Prog legend Rick Wakeman has announced that he will release a new studio album, Melancholia, in October.
Melancholia is the third in Wakeman's recent run of popular piano-based albums, which began with 2017’s Piano Portraits and continued in 2018 with Piano Odyssey, and will be released through Madfish Records on October 17.
"The album began, as so much of Wakeman’s finest work has, with a quiet moment at the piano," Wakeman's new label relate. "One afternoon, his wife Rachel overheard him playing a contemplative piece that would later become the track Garo - and was struck by its quiet emotional power. As she knew well that he often turned to the piano in times of sadness or inner turbulence, using music as a kind of emotional compass, she encouraged him to share it."
Although not a conceptual record in the traditional sense, Melancholia forms a deeply cohesive suite, written intuitively at first and later shaped in collaboration with long-time producer and engineer Erik Jordan at The Granary Studio in Norfolk and recorded on a beautiful Steinway Model D.
Melancholia will be available as a special edition 2-disc CD and DVD set which includes hi-res stereo and an Inside Melancholia short film, on both silver and black vinyl, on CD and as a digital album. You can see the new artwork and tracklisting below.
Rick Wakeman: Melancholia
1. Sitting at the Window
2. Reflection
3. Pathos
4. Dance of the Ghosts
5. Alone
6. The Morning Light
7. Garo
8. All in the Mind
9. Sea of Tranquility
10. Missing
11. Watching Life
12. Melancholia
