Renaissance (band) - Later Days

Later Days

After the Azure d'Or tour, Tout left the group for personal reasons, quickly followed by Sullivan. Subsequent albums Camera Camera (1981) and Time-Line (1983) brought Renaissance more into the contemporary synthpop and New Wave genre, but neither garnered enough commercial interest to make a viable future for the band (Camera Camera was the band's final album to chart in the US where it reached No. 196 in late 1981). In 1985 Camp left, and Haslam and Dunford led an acoustic version of the band and performed occasional shows (the last being in Georgetown, DC until splitting up in August 1987).

In 1988, Sire issued a two-part compilation, Tales of 1001 Nights, focusing on the band's 1972–79 period. In the 1990s most of their catalogue appeared on CD from reissue record labels such as Repertoire Records (Germany). In 2006 Repertoire issued remastered versions of Ashes are Burning, Turn of the Cards and Scheherezade; however, they have been criticised for having a heavily compressed sound.

In the mid 1990s both Haslam (who had released a self-titled solo album in 1989) and Dunford (who had been working on a proposed musical based on the Scheherazade storyline) formed their own bands using the name Renaissance and released albums with different line-ups.

Renaissance partially re-formed in 1998 around a nucleus of Haslam, Dunford and Sullivan, plus Tout and several new musicians, most notably Roy Wood and Mickey Simmonds, to record the CD Tuscany. In 1999, Haslam, Dunford and Simmonds played a one-off trio concert at London's Astoria supporting Caravan.

In March 2001, following the delayed release of Tuscany, a full band tour was organised, with a line-up of Haslam, Dunford, Sullivan, Simmonds, Rave Tesar (keyboards) and David Keyes (bass), who played one London concert on 9th (again at the Astoria) and three dates in Japan - Osaka on 13th, Nagoya on 14th and Tokyo on 16th. The Tokyo concert was recorded and released as In the Land of the Rising Sun: Live in Japan 2001. (Tout, although in the audience at the Astoria, did not perform on this tour). Annie Haslam, who had become the band's spokesperson, said that several factors made further touring and recording impractical. The band's short third incarnation was soon over.a

Terry Sullivan has since recorded an album called South of Winter with a studio group he named Renaissant. It is evocative of Renaissance's music, with lyrics by Betty Thatcher and keyboard contributions by John Tout.

On 20 September 2008, John Tout made his first public appearance in the US in over 25 years, with Annie Haslam and the Jann Klose band, at the Sellersville Theatre 1984 in Sellersville, Pennsylvania.

Sometime before the summer of 2009, John Tout suffered a heart attack.

In August 2009, Annie Haslam announced that she and Michael Dunford were commemorating the 40th anniversary of Renaissance with a re-formed band, called Renaissance 2009 (including no other members of the "classic" line-up, but with musicians from the 2001 incarnation of the band), and a concert tour.

A tour in Eastern North America and Japan was undertaken in 2010, together with a three song EP release and a new official website. Further concerts took place during the fall of 2011 featuring Haslam, but no other former band-mates.

Renaissance headlined the sold out final edition of the North East Art Rock Festival, entitled NEARfest Apocalypse, on 23 June 2012.

On 20 November 2012, Michael Dunford died from a cerebral hemorrhage.