Marco de Goeij, a Dutch composer. A music genius, as his feat will always be remembered in the history of rock music, as he reworked & completed <Gemini Suite>a rock fusion by John Lord/Deep Purple and conductor Malcolm Arnold, which was lost way back in 70s!.
I am currently reading Deep Purple’s biography <Smoke on the Water: The Deep Purple Story> by Dave Thompson.
It seems Gemini Suite was commissioned by BBC who paired John Lord with conductor Malcolm Arnold to compose and perform.
The band Deep Purple was very much sidelined during the actual writing of this piece. Lord later admitted he didn’t want his band mates to be involved, but the BBC had insisted that they participate. It turned out to be the correct decision. Lord had conceived a single across five movements, and was devoted to the musical personalities of each of the group’s members and each titled for its inspiration’s star sign.
However due to hectic scheduling of the band as they toured throughout the spring and summer, much of the <Gemini Suite> was composed on the road, in the back of the bus or late night in hotel rooms.
In 1970, the publicity and media furor around this piece was muted. As journalists regarded it as ‘another” of Deep Purple’s little deviations, & undertaking such extravaganzas every day of the week was a regular feature for them, and after their performance at Royal Albert Hall, the public perception was, “the band that does stuff with orchestras, and there are many bands who tried their hands to fuse rock and classical music before Deep Purple!.
But, as the author writes, “was the best of two musical disciplines that hung over the proceedings at the concerto”. Sharp ears can pick up more than a handful of archetypal Purple passages within the piece, including several ghosts recalled from the symphonic “Child in Time”. Blackmore’s guitar-led movement that opened the suite readily echoed some of the spectacular moments of the show……
and soon <Gemini Suite> emerged as absolute triumph!.
In 1999, Marco de Goeij presented the complete score to John Lord, and the two worked with conductor Paul Mann to piece the concerto together.
Marco de Goeij truly is a rock star.
This article was written by Steve Creedy for the The Australian, dated Friday March 9, 2001.
