The Sony Legacy issue features completely remastered sound and Margolin's candid notes, but it also hosts two bonus tracks from the King Bee sessions that Winter didn't see fit to release the first time. There's a redo of "I Won't Go Down," a cut from the '50s that Waters sings in his lower baritone roar, and "Clouds in My Heart," a deep, long, sad blues that is one of the great unearthed treasures in Waters catalog. This cut alone with all of its deep emotion and the sound of a band trying to hold the storm of emotions in check and failing is a masterpiece and one of the most amazing blues tunes of the last 30 years.

The first time I came across Roger Woodward and his playing was back in 1969 when I attended the Musica Viva Concerto in Australia, Woodward's birthplace. I was tremendously impressed by him, and promised I would compose a piece for him. I am extremely happy now that I have been able to keep my promise. I must also add that his playing on this record impressed me greatly.

Tôru Takemitsu

As with a handsome, persuasive architectural plan, this suite of pieces is far from haphazard in its design. The web of associations and connections which have led Michelle Makarski to bring them together is the key to the whole enterprise. Italy is, of course, the common ground, but not the Italy of Rossini and Bellini, nor even of Verdi and Puccini, but rather of Tartini, the true spiritual inheritor of the intellectual musical tradition of the Florentine Camerata. Dallapiccola, Petrassi and Berio are all 20th century avatars of this same tradition, while the Americans Carter and Rochberg, both of them having close personal ties to these three, spent crucial formative time in Italy, absorbing the purity and elegance of its art and culture. The final piece on the program, the anonymous 14th century Lamento di Tristano, is one of the earliest surviving pieces of Italian instrumental music, an unassuming yet highly moving forerunner of the whole corpus of italian music. It is - to return to the architectural analogy - a small, ancient garden now standing in the shade of the villa erected alongside it.

from the CD booklet