Category: Tracks

I listen to a lot of really off-the-wall music, but once in a blue moon something comes along that startles even me. Twin Cities-based Matthew Smith’s symphonies for overdubbed jaw harps, 1/16-th size Suzuki violins, normal strings, and assorted percussion are bizarre beyond belief. Something of a Captain Beefheart in reverse, Smith, after 30 years as a successful painter, put down his brush and started composing music. The result is an extremely timbre-sensitive approach to sound based on built up layers much the way paintings create images from applying multiple layers of paint. Smith’s scores are un-notated although they are completely worked out. (A work created for the Minneapolis-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist, which is also included on the disc, shows how his orally-transmitted scores—communicated mostly through mouth sounds and body gestures—come across when performed by other musicians.) All in all, the results are emotionally turbulent yet extraordinarily immediate, perhaps the result of devoting the majority of his creative life to an art form that is not time-based.

—FJO

The National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, conducted by Ormsby Wilkins

Michael Torke’s score for James Kudelka’s ballet An Italian Straw Hat is as upbeat as any Mozart ever penned for the stage, and it sets an appropriate tone for the classic farce without feeling dated. Though the toe-tapping action is of course left to the dancers well supported by Torke’s score, the music gets a special moment to shine when one of the characters transforms into a violin virtuoso before our eyes. The change is dramatically well paced without overdoing the spectacle. Based on the fantastic black and white costuming on display in the production photographs included in the CD booklet, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for a live production in my town.

—MS

Hands down, this CD is the ideal soundtrack for an ultra swanky cocktail affair. I mean it. The upbeat, enthusiastic delivery of these twelve Thad Jones classics is a sonic firehouse perfect for dowsing out schmoozing and idle chitchat. Maybe those schmarmy fellows exchanging business cards over there in the corner will shut up and listen just a few seconds longer and soak in the tunes while scanning the room for their next conversation victim. With a crisp sonic buzz sharp enough to cut through the clinking of glass and ice cubes, the wallflowers out there will surely bop their heads to the groove. Another sazerac, please!

—RN

Here’s something to get you in the holiday spirit. (We figured since chain stores have started the Christmas season in October, we’d have to run this in September to stay ahead of the Joneses.) Wayne Peterson’s unaccompanied choral setting of a nativity anthem by the obscure Elizabethan poet William Austin adds a few twists to the annual rituals. For one thing, which will put a smile on the faces of secular humanists in the audience who still appreciate the spirit of Christmas if not the dogma, the poem never mentions Christ’s name. And, since the composer is Wayne Peterson whose music is unrepentantly atonal and rigorous, we are spared the usual triad clichés and our ears are bathed in gloriously unresolvable sonorities. I’m ready for the wreaths and mistletoe, bring it on!

—FJO

Definition of a Toy is the physical record of a quintet—Dylan van der Schyff (drums), Michael Moore (clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone), Brad Turner (trumpet), Achim Kaufmann (piano), Mark Helias (double bass)—that came together to mix up the brainpower of the composers involved. Set up by van der Schyff, each man brought a composition to the table, or shares billing on a track. Though each carries its own character, of course, I really could have selected any one of the tracks they’ve created together and gotten the point across. The disc is cohesive enough to feel like a whole experience, but the various authors keep the ear moving. In the end, I settled on the sultry Queen of the Box Office credited to Turner. Maybe it’s just the title planting thoughts in my head of sequins and cigarette smoke, but it works.

—MS

I haven’t a clue what Joseph Klein’s music has to do with philosophy beyond titling this chamber piece Occam’s Razor, but it really doesn’t matter. The music just sounds good. I’m afraid if things get any more cerebral, it will spoil all the fun. Like a sonic tickling with counterpoint gone awry, the first movement is a dizzying euphoria that’s actually enjoyable to listen to. Of course composers will be composers and if you’re into the head-trip, go right ahead and read Klein’s liner where he gushes all about the math behind the music. You know you want to…

—RN

The opening minute of this Billy Childs track is lullingly cinematic, but there’s a bit more to this particular old man’s story. Lines go where you expect they will, but sometimes they don’t. Plenty of side trips, new styles tried. It’s a life, and from the sound of it, one well lived. Musically, the piece straddles the jazz and chamber music worlds—lush string and horn writing around one corner, piano-bass-drum explorations around another—to make a hybrid genre that isn’t over-conscious of itself. It’s a characteristic of the entire album, for that matter, producing a sound characterized by Childs as “not dazzlingly in-your-face, but meant to get under your skin.” Another worthy offering on the Artistshare label, this CD is only available online at www.billychilds.com.

—MS

Here’s one for radio stations afraid of playing new music, a 2002 mini-opera actually created for the radio medium which conjures up the sonic milieu of World War II through simulating a 1940s radio broadcast and musicalizing it. Based on a text by Kurt Vonnegut, the performance is given extra authenticity by actually featuring Vonnegut as the voice of the General in addition to casting iconic WKCR jazz DJ Phil Schaap, as, you guessed it, the voice of the radio announcer. The instrumental ensemble conjures up an appropriate swing-era sound world with some unexpected orchestrational twists admittedly borrowed from Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat: the obligatory trumpet, trombone, and clarinet frontline is joined here by bassoon and violin, and there is no keyboard, the usual grounder of swing, which allows the music to float beyond time.

Printed on the disc is a parental advisory warning of explicit content. Let’s hope this will attract the attention of younger audiences

—FJO

Tessa Brinkman & East-West Continuo

Paintings by the playful Catalan modernist Joan Miró (1893-1993), previously the inspiration for Bobby Previte’s greatest work to date, are also the muse behind Mark Fish’s more intimate 2004 Pictures of Miró scored for flute and string trio whose 11 movements total less than 20 minutes. In the fourth movement, “Girl Practicing Gymnastics,” the flute convincingly imitates a slide whistle before the trio launches a groove reminiscent of a Viennese waltz over which the flute cheekily intones a hook-filled melody.

In addition to being a highlight of Portland, Oregon-based flutist Tessa Brinkman’s exciting collection of recent music for flute and strings (with the widest interpretation here, there’s a track featuring a koto), Fish’s Miró pictures are also a great excuse to feature Geoffrey Fairburn’s gorgeous Miró-esque painting Eclipse II 1984 on the cover although I wish the CD booklet could have also reproduced the 11 Miró paintings that triggered Fish’s music. Since they didn’t, here’s a link to the Miró painting Girl Practicing Gymnastics.

—FJO