From the popular Lifescapes Music label comes the
Celtic Romance Collection, a collection of both traditional songs and original, Celtic-oriented music played in the new age style. Drawing on multiple recordings from the label's archives, this two-disc collection brings together two different approaches to the evocative music of the British Isles. The first disc focuses largely on atmospheric, Celtic-themed music from composer and performer
Jeff Victor. These pieces generally involve a haunting synthesizer background mixed with fiddle, piano, guitar, and flute melodies. The second disc is the more traditionally minded of the two, featuring a variety of artists playing traditional jigs, reels, and songs on fiddle, uilleann pipes, flutes, and bodhran, with occasional wordless vocals mixed in. While not a proper Celtic folk collection, this music has been softened and arranged to appeal as more of a relaxation/meditation-type album. ~ Timothy Monger