Having achieved great success with their first five albums, Procol Harum went on a North American tour with the thought of recording a live album. Having a full symphony with choir backing the sextet was a mutual interest of the Edmonton Symphony's music directors and Gary Brooker. So they went for it and made history. No symphony orchestra album ever went gold and platinum before (or maybe since?).
Recorded in November 1971, the Edmonton concert was released on LP the following year. I immediately picked it up and played it frequently. Side 1 includes four of the band's best songs: "Conquistador," "Whaling Stories," "A Salty Dog," and "All This and More." Side 2 consists solely of the suite "In Held 'Twas in I" from Shine on Brightly. The biggest hits (e.g., "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and "Homburg") were excluded in favor of the longer narrative songs. Reportedly, the album contained a few "fixes," enabled by a second performance that was further justified by the warm audience reception. The fixes are not audible in the released version.
It's tempting to compare Edmonton with the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed since both include symphony orchestras. But Edmonton is a live concert, and Days is a studio album, and that makes any comparisons superficial at best. However, both albums demonstrate how far early prog bands were willing to go in their efforts to transcend ordinary rock and roll. The group Renaissance were clearly encouraged by these earlier efforts in performing their Live at Carnegie Hall concert, released on record in 1976. Rennaissance were to follow with a similar concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1977.
Procol Harum's In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra also stands apart from all prog+symphony collaborations because their dark narratives are unlikely choices to perform symphonically. Songs about shipwrecks, madness, and tarnished conquerors encapsulate Procol Harum's legacy, and it's to the band's credit that such material could not only survive the symphonic treatment but also flourish.
Steve:
It made total sense for Procol Harum to perform live with an orchestra, and it made just as much sense to release it as a live album. It did not surprise me at all to learn that Gary Brooker wrote the arrangements himself; he'd already proven to be a very skilled orchestrator with the title track to A Salty Dog, which is naturally included here. Two other epic Procol favorites of mine are also included. "Whaling Stories" and "In Held 'Twas in I" are the centerpieces of a very strong track list. Oddly, their newest album, Broken Barricades, is the only studio album not represented in the set. This omission was rectified with the expanded CD version, which adds two excellent tracks from Barricades: "Luskus Delph" and "Simple Sister".
While I still don't enjoy any of these versions quite as much as their studio equivalents, Gary Brooker's singing never sounded better than it does here, and the live sound was recorded very well, with the rock band and orchestra working together rather than fighting for space in the mix. I definitely miss the presence of Robin Trower, who had recently left the band for a lucrative solo career, and who is replaced here by Dave Ball, his only appearance on a Procol Harum album. Ball delivers a workmanlike, restrained performance, rightfully ceding the focus to the orchestral colors and to Brooker's vocal and piano stylings. The album loses some of the chemistry that made the band's early studio albums so exciting, but overall, the presentation of these expanded orchestral visions of classic tracks makes it worth the sacrifice.
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