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Katie Melua: In Winter

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: BMG Records
Released: 2016.10.14
Time:
 35:22
Category: Pop
Producer(s): Katie Melua, Adam "Cecil" Bartlett, Dom Monks
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: KatieMelua.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2016
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] The Little Swallow (Traditional) - 1:46
[2] River (Joni Mitchell) - 3:25
[3] Perfect World (Joel Harries / Katie Melua) - 4:24
[4] Cradle Song [Leganelul Lui Lisus] (Traditional) - 1:43
[5] A Time to Buy (Katie Melua) - 3:31
[6] Plane Song (Don Black / Katie Melua) - 4:07
[7] If You Are So Beautiful [Tu Ase Turpa Ikavi] (Anzor Erkomaishvili / Natela Gelashvili / Traditional) - 3:43
[8] Dreams on Fire (Don Black / Katie Melua) - 4:05
[9] All-Night Vigil - Nunc Dimittis (Sergey Rachmaninov) - 4:15
[10] O Holy Night (Adolphe-Charles Adam / John Sullivan Dwight) - 4:23

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Katie Melua - Acoustic Guitar, Mixing, Pianino Harmonica, Producer
 
David Coulter - Violin
Neil Cowley - Piano
Joel Harries - Drums, Acoustic Guitar, Percussion
Tim Harries - Bowed Double Bass, Double Bass, Pianino Harmonica
James Toseland - Whistle
 
Gori Women's Choir - Choir
Teona Tsiramua - Arranger, Conductor 
 
Adam "Cecil" Bartlett - Engineer, Mixing, Producer
Dom Monks - Mixing, Producer
Sumit Bothra - Executive Producer
Zurab Melua - Assistant Engineer
Dani Spragg - Assistant Engineer
Glenn Kerrigan - Mastering
Bob Chilcott - Arranger
Rob Crane - Layout
Placide Cappeau - Original Lyrics
Leganelul Lui Lisus - Inspiration
Niroot Puttapipat - Illustrations
Anzori Shomakhia - Vocal Coach
Giorgi Tsiramua - Choir Coordinator

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


A gorgeously rendered holiday-themed effort, In Winter finds singer/songwriter Katie Melua backed by the 25-member Gori Women's Choir. The album is Melua's seventh studio production and first since parting ways with longtime collaborator Mike Batt. Recorded in her native country of Georgia (Melua left with her parents at age nine), In Winter is a lushly produced, thoughtfully conceived album featuring arrangements by esteemed choral composer Bob Chilcott. An acclaimed institution, the Gori Women's Choir are famous for their haunting classical harmonies. They prove a superb match for Melua, who both sings along with the choir and frames herself against its angelic, delicately layered harmonies. Although the album is technically a holiday-themed work, it's not a cheery collection of yuletide favorites. Instead, Melua delivers a handful of ruminative and lyrical originals, many inspired by her memories of growing up in what was then the Soviet Union, as well as the complex and often heartbreaking history of Georgia's civil war. She also weaves in several well-curated covers, including poignant renditions of Joni Mitchell's "River," Sergey Rachmaninov's "All-Night Vigil-Nunc Dimittis," and the hymn "O Holy Night." Melua even finds room to sing in Ukrainian, opening the album with a magical rendition of the traditional song "The Little Swallow," whose melody is better recognized to Western audiences as "The Carol of the Bells." These are warmly arranged, beautifully executed recordings that capture the stark, introspective beauty of a rural Eastern Europe in winter.
 
Matt Collar - All Music Guide
 
 
 
In Winter is truly unique collection of songs centered around the theme of winter, performed by multi-award-winning recording artist Katie Melua and featuring the astounding voices of Gori Women's Choir. Ranging from original works inspired by Melua's childhood in Georgia, to new interpretations of traditional carols, the album features arrangements of world-renowned choral arranger Bob Chilcott. In Winter opens up with the traditional Ukrainian Carol introduced to the West as Carol of the Bells, and closes with a show-stopping rendition of O Holy Night.
 
Amazon.de
 
 
 
Katie Melua’s disastrously misjudged 2012 orchestral album Secret Symphony and 2013’s lacklustre Ketevan marked the end of her eventually suffocating six-album collaboration with Mike Batt.
 
Free at last, she’s plumped for a seasonal concept album and it works almost as well as her edgiest and best album, The House.
 
The most famous Georgian since Stalin returned home and recruited the 24-stron Gori Women’s Choir, whose layered warmth adds as much to Joni Mitchell’s River as it does to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, the Georgian Tu Ase Turpa Ikavi and a clutch of English originals.
 
Better still, they work a treat against Melua’s endearingly brittle vocals, especially on the moody standout Dreams On Fire.
 
She’s no stranger to a career misstep or an excess of saccharine, but when Katie Melua gets it right, she’s bewitching.
 
John Aizlewood - Friday 14 October 2016
EVENING STANDARD
 
 
 
 
Katie Melua’s 7th album, In Winter is an unexpected gem. The new album, her first release away from Dramatico and the masterly Mike Batt, has all the platinum selling singer-songwriter’s charm, but, with added power and delicacy, she is sounding more astounding than ever…perhaps the effect of a 24-strong, classically trained, all-female choir.
 
‘In Winter’ is a real passion project for Katie. Recorded in a small community centre in Gori, Georgia, she was inspired by the incredibly talented Gori Women’s Choir and the album was built around their stunning polyphonic sound. In Winter was not only creatively driven by Katie, she also took on the role of co-producer for the first time – and kudos to Katie, as one of the stand out elements of the record is its balanced and beautiful production.
 
The album reflects on Katie’s dual culture – ex-soviet country Georgia, where she was born, and the UK which has been her home since she was 9 years old. Ukrainian is the first language we hear, on stunning album opener The Little Swallow, a traditional Ukrainian carol which was adapted for the west as the instantly recognisable Carol Of The Bells. It is the non-English language songs on the record that are particularly special – Nunc Dimittus from Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, Tu Ase Turpa (If You Are So Beautiful, the only Georgian song on the record) and Leganelul Lui Lisus (Cradle Song, a Romanian Carol) – they boast the full skill-set of the Gori Women and give Katie a gentle and warm tone.
 
Not to say the English songs don’t deserve a hurrah. Katie’s minimalist take on River, originally by Joni Mitchell, is breathtakingly touching. Perfect World is so soothing it could have been hand made for a tear-jerking John Lewis Christmas advert. Dreams On Fire, the first single taken from the record, is lyrically clever and oh-so-smooth. Time To Buy is witty and playful – though vocally the weakest track, compared with the delicacy of others – and Plane Song is a vivid insight into Katie’s childhood imagination. The only fault I feel is that the choir were perhaps a little underused in some of the English songs, they add a whole new dynamic which could have just made them bigger and better.
 
This album is more than 10 songs, it’s a cultural insight, full of unheard stories. It has personality and style. In Winter truly evokes the season, it’s charming, warming and poignant. I think it will sit firmly in spine-tingling territory for many winters to come.
 
Babs Brown - 20 Oct, 2016,
Copyright Entertainment Focus 2016
 
 
 
Readers of a certain type of lifestyle blog will be familiar with the concept of hygge. The Danish word, which refers to a state of cosiness and good cheer in which to survive the winter months, is nothing new – but this year, it’s popping up everywhere badged as a lifestyle trend. Hygge in 2016 is grey-knit blankets that look homemade, but which retail for £100; it’s steaming, monogrammed mugs of hot chocolate and rose-gold pillows. And it’s In Winter, Katie Melua’s collaboration with the Gori Women’s Choir – basic, yes; but there’s a reason nobody can resist the tie-in candle collaboration and coffee table book.
 
The story goes that Melua, who was born and grew up in Georgia before moving to the UK at the age of eight, was inspired to create a winter-themed album after she discovered a recording of the 24-piece Gori Women’s Choir, based in the Georgian city of that name. It’s an album that finds as much inspiration in the frozen Soviet landscapes of Melua’s childhood as it does in the fairylit wonderland of a Western festive period, but which – thanks in part to the warmth of her choral backing, but also to a delicate, masterful hand in the production chair from Melua herself – promises to keep the listener company into December and beyond.
 
Melua’s vocals play no small role in the mix; the prodigy of the “Closest Thing to Crazy” years is now gentler, smoother – fit as much to reinterpret Joni Mitchell on a languid, if unnecessary, cover of “River” as to breathe otherworldly life into her sparse Georgian folk song “Tu Ase Turpa” (“If You Are So Beautiful”). Additional instruments are kept to a minimum: delicate melodies picked out on acoustic guitar (“Plane Song”, its melody adapted from a Romanian carol and its lyrics a wealth of sepia-toned childhood memories) and, of course, the multi-layered vibrato of the choir.
 
The mix of old standards and new material, bookended by two familiar festive compositions (albeit, in the case of the quietly stunning choral opener “The Little Swallow”, one that only became so by virtue of the Ukrainian song’s adoption as the basis of “Carol of the Bells”) gives the whole album the feel of something that will stand the test of time. Until then, let me recommend that you sling it on in the background to accompany your wintry hibernation.
 
Lisa-Marie Ferla - Monday, 10 October 2016
www.theartsdesk.com
 

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