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Kamasutra NPG Orchestra album
NPG Records
albumI never pretended I was the only woman he ever loved.
Kamasutra is a collection of work comprising of orchestral instrumentation Prince created to be played live at a ballet production of that name. He started recording the work at Paisley Park Studios in 1994 and in spring 1995 when he was courting his dancer Mayte Garcia, who was going to choreograph the show and take it on tour. The accompanying orchestral elements was recorded in 1995 at Mad Hatter Studios in LA under the arrangement of long term collaborator Clare Fischer. The work was finished in early 1996. Prince composed the work in honour of his soon-to-be wife. Mayte is pictured on the cover art dancing round Prince’s then name Prince Love Symbol. The music was played at their wedding ceremony at Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis on Valentine’s Day 1996.
Exactly one year later, on 14 February 1997 Kamasutra was issued on cassette, sold directly from Prince’s official retail website 1800newfunk.com. Then, from 29 January 1998, the album was given a wider commercial release on CD as a companion disc to the box-set containing Prince’s acoustic album The Truth and a triple disc collection of previously unreleased vaulted material, titled Crystal Ball. Kamasutra was considered for a stand-alone release, as was The Truth, but were instead packed into the Crystal Ball 5-disc set due the collapse of his then record company EMI-Capitol.
The track The Plan was earlier included on Prince’s previous album Emancipation, released through EMI in 1996. That LP also contained the song Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife which the couple danced along to at their wedding reception. Their wedding programme was titled Coincidence Or Fate? after the circumstances of their chance meeting in 1990. Prince is mentioned on the liner notes as The Artist Formally Known As Prince, albeit the Kamasutra itself is credited to NPG Orchestra, the orchestra plays only on two of the eleven tracks. Prince did the rest of the instrumentation solo using a Synclavier synthesizer to produce the orchestral instruments. In the summer of 1997, Mayte started assembling a dance company for the touring show, but following the miscarriage of her second child these plans did not materialise and the show never saw light of day.
Performers
- All Instruments
- Prince Love Symbol
- Saxophone
- Eric Leeds Kamasutra, Overture #8 and Promise/Broken
- Trombone
- Michael B. Nelson Kamasutra and Overture #8
- Baritone Sax
- Kathy Jensen Kamasutra and Overture #8
- Tenor Saxophone
- Brian Gallagher Kamasutra and Overture #8
- Trumpet
- Dave Jensen Kamasutra and Overture #8
- Steve Strand Kamasutra and Overture #8
- Orchestration
- Clare Fischer
Data
- Producer
- Prince Love Symbol
- Label
- NPG Records
- Distribution
- NPG Records
- Cover/Design
- Michael Van Huffel, Steve Parke and Nicole Nodland
- Released
- 29 years ago on 14 February 1997
- Running Time
- 40:57
- US Chart Peak
- Did not chart
- US R&B Peak
- 59 (with Crystal Ball)
- UK Chart Peak
- Did not chart
- Orig. Formats
-
Tracklist
- (2:03)
- Kamasutra (11:49)
- At Last... The Lost Is Found (3:37)
- The Ever Changing Light (2:59)
- Cutz (3:03)
- Serotonin (0:47)
- Promise Made/Promise Broken (3:46)
- Barcelona (2:16)
- Kamasutra/Overture #8 (3:11)
- Coincidence Or Fate? (3:24)
- Kamasutra / Eternal Embrace (4:02)
Kamasutra album review
Ordinary people would put photos into their wedding album but not Prince, he created an actual album to celebrate his marriage to Mayte. Kamasutra is Prince’s first fully instrumental project since Madhouse. It opens with The Plan, earlier released on Emancipation at the time the stand-alone release of Kamasutra was abandoned, it is therefore the most familiar track on the disc. The title track follows, and arcs seamlessly through light and dark in epic scale, showcasing an operatic take – complete with movements – on Prince’s music, an avenue he was heavily exploring in the mid-1990s for theatre productions of his own. In it is a nice detail, strains of Still Would Stand All Time. Kamasutra is comprised of short ambient cutz yet the instrumentation is never dull. While this is no Madhouse reboot there are similarities with Promise Made / Broken and the album’s most ambitious track, the grandly named Overture 8, which are also the album’s best tracks. The penultimate is the softly does it Coincidence Or Fate, whose name was emblazoned on the cover of the wedding programme. Kamasutra closes with Eternal Embrace, which for anyone wondering what Prince would have sounded like in 18th Century then consider your search over. Kamasutra was instead repackaged into Crystal Ball, and whilst never deserving of a fully-fledged release of its own the album is a great accompaniment and one that is just about accessible to be explored more often.
Kamasutra is rated 2.5 out of 5 by Goldies Parade.
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