Legacy Recordings Celebrates Elvis' 75th Birthday Year with 'Viva Elvis' - The Album

An Extraordinary New Studio Work - Available Everywhere November 8th

Legacy Recordings, in cooperation with Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. and Viva ELVIS by Cirque du Soleil, proudly announces the release of Viva ELVIS - The Album, a 21st century celebration of Elvis and his music, featuring the voice of the King in a whole new context.  Viva ELVIS - The Album will be available everywhere from November 8th.  For more information, please visit www.vivaelvis.com

The undisputed King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley remains one of the most iconic and powerful forces in popular culture.  "Before Elvis," said John Lennon, "there was nothing."  

After Elvis, the world looked and sounded different.  With a swivel of his hips and the power of his voice, Elvis broke down barriers and shattered the status quo, revolutionizing the worlds of music, film and fashion while signaling a seismic shift in gender, class, race, and generational relationships. 

The Elvis revolution continues with Viva ELVIS - The Album.

The postmodern studio masterwork invokes the spirit and essence of Elvis from a contemporary perspective while furthering the revolutionary impulses of Elvis' sound. Viva ELVIS - The Album re-imagines the king’s own vocal performances in a broad variety of new musical settings. This new sound echoes Elvis' own versatility and ability to master all music genres, from Delta blues to rockabilly, from raw soul to gospel, from Southern folk to Vegas pop, while incorporating elements of garage rock, punk, urban and hip-hop.

"Viva ELVIS is a tantalizing musical experience," said Adam Block, Senior Vice President/General Manager, Legacy Recordings. "It's so creative and so contemporary, it effortlessly places Elvis in a current context that appeals to fans of all ages and all kinds of music.  There's a freshness, a newness to these songs that grabs you and shakes you and ultimately testifies to the remarkable artist Elvis remains to this very day."  

"What would the songs of Elvis be like if he were doing them for the first time today?," asks the album's producer and arranger Erich van Tourneau, Musical Director and Arranger for Viva ELVIS by Cirque du Soleil.  "We set out to evoke the soul and spirit of Elvis Presley while building a bridge between his music and future generations of fans."

When working on the music for Viva ELVIS, van Tourneau -- aided by Hugo Bombardier, Assistant Producer and Assistant Arranger on Viva ELVIS - The Album -- spent more than 3,000 hours reviewing countless albums, films, concert recordings, interviews and home recordings of Elvis.  More than 17,000 samples of Elvis’ songs – the raw material for the show – were made during the process.

Working with tens of thousands of samples of Elvis’ voice, van Tourneau and Bombardier often wove several sequences and sounds into the same songs, sometimes changing details such as the key and tempo. In creating Viva ELVIS - The Album, van Tourneau was looking to accentuate and boost the emotional charge of the songs with the incorporation of ragga, punk or hip-hop elements into classic recordings. In all cases, however, the goal was to respect and understand the essence of the original recordings.

In celebration of all eras of Elvis' musical genius, Viva ELVIS - The Album includes songs from Elvis’ rise to fame in the ‘50s, his movie soundtracks, his triumphant return to the stage in the “’68 Special,” and his ground-breaking appearances in Las Vegas.  "Burning Love," "Suspicious Minds," "Blue Suede Shoes" and "It's Now or Never" are among the songs that have been re-imagined and transformed for Viva ELVIS - The Album.

The first opportunity to hear a sample from this ground-breaking album will take place during Elvis Week in Memphis on Saturday, August 14, during the event “Conversations on Elvis.”

Viva ELVIS - The Album is a 21st century venue for rock's first and biggest superstar.  The King's Music Lives!

About Elvis Presley EnterprisesElvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. is based in Memphis, with additional offices in Los Angeles. In addition to Graceland and its related attractions in Memphis, including the Heartbreak Hotel, EPE is aggressively involved in a worldwide licensing program, merchandising, music publishing, and television, film, video and Internet projects. For more information on EPE and Graceland, visit www.elvis.com. EPE is a subsidiary of CKX, Inc. (www.ckx.com), a publicly traded company listed on the NASDAQ Global Market® under the ticker symbol CKXE.

About Legacy Recordings

The multiple Grammy-winning Legacy Recordings, Sony Music Entertainment's catalog division, produces and maintains the world's foremost catalog of historic reissues, an unparalleled compendium of thousands of digitally re-mastered archival titles representing virtually every musical genre including popular, rock, jazz, blues, R&B, folk, country, gospel, Broadway musicals, movie soundtracks, ethnic, world music, classical, comedy and more.
 

Published 29th Oct 2010

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