Volume 21 Issue 1 - September 2015

Thomopoulos presents excellent readings of
Xenakis’ four mature piano works: Herma,
Evryali, Mists and À R. I thought I heard a
piano string snapping at a climactic point
in Herma, but there are a few other snaps,
pointing to hot levels during the recording.
The sound is otherwise clear and full.
The quality of sound
is one of the main
features of the Kuniko
disc, presenting two
of Xenakis’ important
works for percussion,
Pléïades and
Rebonds. They have
both been recorded
before, but never has Pléïades, a 40-minute
opus for six percussionists, been done by
one player! (It is multi-tracked, of course.)
The label, Linn Records, is connected to the
high-end audio company based in Scotland.
This hybrid disc lets you listen in pristine
surround sound (requiring SACD capacity) or
in stereo. If you get the chance, listen to the
surround version: it is amazing – the intricate
layers of rhythms and instruments coming at
you from all round. Kuniko is a fine percussionist,
and she clearly has taken much care
with this recording. I especially enjoyed the
sound of her Sixxens, metallic instruments
specially fabricated for this piece. In concert,
the sound can be quite harsh, but here we
get all the details, the sound a cross between
Indonesian gamelan and Harry Partch microtonal
percussion. The disc closes with the solo
work, Rebonds, for drums and woodblocks.
She plays well, the one surprise being the
substitution of a marimba-like instrument for
the woodblocks.
James Harley
Michael Hersch – Last Autumn
Jamie Hersch; Daniel Gaisford
Innova 907 (michaelhersch.com)
!!
Michael Hersch is
a composer who has
experienced considerable
success from an
early age. He won
first prize in the
Concordia American
Composers Awards,
one of the youngest composers to be awarded
a Guggenheim Fellowship in music, and a
Rome Prize recipient, all in his 20s. Due to
this early success, many orchestras began to
regularly commission Hersch which led to
an impressive catalogue of large ensemble
words. In recent years however, the composer
has shifted to compositions for smaller forces
that are comprised of increasingly expansive
forms. The music of Last Autumn is no exception.
Scored for cello and horn, the piece
consists of 41 movements lasting nearly two
hours. While this seems like an impossible
instrumental combination to maintain a level
of interest necessary over two hours, Hersch,
on the contrary, has composed an endlessly
impressive collection of moods and textures
for the two instruments. Inspired by classical
dance forms and the poetry of W.G. Sebald,
each movement occupies a unique sound
world ranging from the pungent and monumental
to the beautifully stagnant and fragile.
Many of the movements are violent entryways
into small forms with unified gestures.
Various solo interludes are wonderful examples
of how the composer is able to successfully
transfer the essence of the chosen poetry
into impressive sonic journeys. Much of the
music in the piece is violent and extreme
while maintaining a mysterious clarity. The
careful interplay between the horn and
cello begins to fashion a connective tissue
that stabilizes the miniature sound worlds
throughout each movement. Perhaps the
most impressive writing is for the cello, a
feature of the piece that is undoubtedly aided
by the fact that the cellist is the composer’s
brother, Jamie Hersch. This impressive set of
miniatures is an ideal listening experience for
those seeking truly novel sonic experiments
within a modernist approach.
Adam Scime
JAZZ AND IMPROVISED MUSIC
Movin’ Forward
Robi Botos
A440 Entertainment A440 010 (robibotos.
com)
!!
Robi Botos, the
highly respected jazz
piano player, has
released a fourth
CD as leader. Since
arriving in Canada in
1998 from his native
Hungary he has
become one of the most in-demand piano
players in Toronto for both recordings and
live gigs. His mentoring by the great Oscar
Peterson shows in his prodigious but not
overly showy technique. Movin’ Forward is
mostly originals – with the exception of Close
to You by Bacharach/David and the standard
Softly as in a Morning Sunrise – and, like his
mentor, Botos’ songwriting style is melodic
and swinging. There are influences of funk
and Eastern European music and some tracks
edge over into modern, but the style is mostly
mainstream and accessible.
The album opens with the New Orleansstyle
EurOrleans then goes more hard-driving
with CapTAIN KirkLAND, a tribute to Kenny
Kirkland, a friend of Jeff “Tain” Watts who is
featured on the track. Botos’ bandmates for
Movin’ Forward are among the American jazz
elite – in addition to Watts on drums, Robert
Leslie Hurst III is on bass and Seamus Blake
plays saxes and EWI. These multiple Grammy
Award-winning players bring authority and
facility to the tracks as they are given ample
room to stretch, both on the lovely ballads
such as Violet (a tribute to Botos’ wife) and
the hard-driving Heisenberg which I can only
assume is a tribute to the TV drama Breaking
Bad. Which shows that inspiration can come
from just about anywhere.
Cathy Riches
Touchstone
Ariel Pocock
Justin Time JTR 8592-2 (arielpocock.com)
!!
For her debut CD,
young, fresh and
talented keyboardist/
vocalist/composer/
arranger Ariel Pocock
has assembled a team
of skilled colleagues
– beginning with
veteran Producer Matt Pierson, who, during
his tenure at Warner Bros. Records, discovered
and successfully produced an array of
today’s top jazz luminaries, including Joshua
Redman and Brad Mehldau. Pocock’s instrumental
colleagues include some of our finest
contemporary jazz artists, including Larry
Grenadier on bass, Julian Lage on guitar,
Eric Harland on drums and percussion and
Seamus Blake on tenor saxophone. Indeed,
Pierson and Pocock’s indisputable and intuitive
good taste has informed every track of
this fine opening salvo.
Like many emerging artists, Pocock feels
free to incorporate a plethora of musical
styles, and although firmly rooted in jazz,
she seems to reject categorization – freely
drawing upon the musical influences of
Cuban and Brazilian folk music, standards
from The Great American Songbook, iconic
jazz composers such as Keith Jarrett and
Thelonious Monk, and the contributions of
meta-genre pop artists Tom Waits, Randy
Newman and James Taylor.
Whether Pocock is scat singing, rendering a
powerful lyric or exercising her considerable
keyboard chops, her innate musicality shines
through. There is so much “right” about this
recording, that it is a challenge to distill it
into comments about just a few of the exceptional
tracks… but clear triumphs include Bob
Dorough’s Devil May Care, Randy Newman’s
Real Emotional Girl, Charles Mingus’ Ugly
Beauty/Still We Dream and Kate Bush’s
Mother Stands for Comfort.
No doubt, this auspicious debut bodes well
for Pocock’s forthcoming long and relevant
artistic career.
Lesley Mitchell-Clarke
No U Turn
Bobby Bradford & John Carter Quintet
Dark Tree DT (RS) 05 (darktree-records.
com)
!!
Two of his earliest associates demonstrate
how thoroughly Ornette Coleman’s concepts
of freedom had penetrated the music’s lingua
franca, in this 1975 never-before-released
concert from Pasadena. Profoundly analytical,
yet with an animated pulse, cornetist Bobby
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