''Fresh Aire II'' is the second album that

new-age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consid ...

musical group

Mannheim Steamroller Mannheim Steamroller is an American neoclassical new-age music ensemble founded and directed by percussionist/composer Chip Davis in 1974. The group is known primarily for its '' Fresh Aire'' series of albums, which blend classical music with ...

originally released in 1977. Each of the first four ''Fresh Aire'' albums is based on a

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

; ''Fresh Aire II''s theme is fall. ''Fresh Aire II'' is unique in the series in that it is largely based on a single melody, presented consistently in the "Fantasia" music cycle (tracks 1–9) which starts off with 'Chorale,' followed by the seven "doors," ending with the piece 'Fantasy' and in the closing track 'Going To Another Place.' The same melody also occasionally appears in other albums in the series in a form closest to the first few notes in "The First Door."

Track listing

All songs written and arranged by Chip Davis #"Chorale" – 0:36 #"The First Door – Interrupted Thought" – 1:26 #"The Second Door – The Ugly Head of Greed" – 2:02 #"The Third Door – Pride" – 2:30 #"The Fourth Door – Relaxation" – 3:50 #"The Fifth Door – Frenetic Energy" – 2:59 #"The Sixth Door – Nostalgia" – 1:28 #"Door Seven – Thermal Inversion" – 1:57 #"Fantasy" – 1:24 #"Interlude V" – 3:37 #"Velvet Tear" – 2:44 #"A Shade Tree" – 4:57 #"Toota Lute" – 2:50 #"Going to Another Place" – 3:20

Personnel

* Jackson Berkey –

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a ...

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis ...

Fender Rhodes The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, th ...

, concert bells,

vocal The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...

chant A chant (from French ', from Latin ', "to sing") is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of note ...

*Eric Hansen –

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gu ...

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can re ...

, classical guitar *

Chip Davis Louis F. "Chip" Davis Jr. (born September 5, 1947 in Hamler, Ohio) is the founder and leader of the music group Mannheim Steamroller. Davis composed the music for several C. W. McCall albums, including the hit 1975 song " Convoy". He has also w ...

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...

, recorders,

dulcimer The word dulcimer refers to two families of musical string instruments. Hammered dulcimers The word ''dulcimer'' originally referred to a trapezoidal zither similar to a psaltery whose many strings are struck by handheld "hammers". Variants of th ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, vocal chant *Walt Meskell – rhythm guitar *Dave Kappy –

French horn The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most ...

*Gene Badgett –

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standar ...

*Bob Jenkins –

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. ...

*Melody Malec – harp *Milt Bailey – vocal chant *Hugh Brown, Dorothy Brown, Ginni Eldred, Merton Shatzkin, Joe Landes, Mortimer Alpert –

violins The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regul ...

*Alex Sokol, Lucinda Gladics, James Hammond –

viola ; german: Bratsche , alt=Viola shown from the front and the side , image=Bratsche.jpg , caption= , background=string , hornbostel_sachs=321.322-71 , hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded by a bow , range= , related= *Violin family ...

*Miriam Duffelmeyer, Beth McCollum, Jean Hassel –

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fresh Aire 2 1977 albums 2 American Gramaphone albums