Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases
February 7th, 2010
Dave Brubeck, Sacred Choral Works, Songs of Praise, the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, Quartet San Francisco, Lynne Morrow and Richard Grant, conductors (Dorian Sono Luminus). The Catholic Church should rejoice that it got Dave Brubeck. His feelings are deep and real. These pieces vary wildly. “Sleep, Holy Infant, Sleep” is lovely, an excerpt from Brubeck’s Christmas cantata “La Fiesta de la Posada,” and I could see it catching on as a Christmas classic. “Why We Sing at Christmas” is actively annoying.
Between these extremes are all kinds of things to chew on. “Commandments” mixes humor with piety. I do not know if Brubeck intended it this way, but I have to laugh when it goes in a scolding rhythm: “Thou shalt not …” “Thou shalt not …” “Thou shalt not …” Sometimes it seems that way! Then it goes in shrill treble: “TELL THE ISRAELITES THIS!”
The “Credo” is a complicated case. Brubeck was one of three contemporary composers invited to complete this section from Mozart’s unfinished “Great” C Minor Mass. At first assigned “Crucifixus” and “Resurrexit,” Brubeck wound up writing an entire Credo. It is fun tracing where he was inspired by chant, where by Mozart, and where from his own disparate musical roots. A simple and lovely Benediction brings the disc to a reverent close. Praise to the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, an a cappella group, for bringing this music off with such bright, workmanlike spirit. ★★★(Mary Kunz Goldman)
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Elliott Carter, String Quartets Complete performed by the Pacifica Quartet (Naxos, three discs plus DVD). Just how on earth did American music suddenly get a composer who was 101 on his last birthday? It seems like only yesterday that younger composers and musicians were making unseemly jokes about Carter’s advanced age (about, say, hearing what effects “a cranky prostate would have on his polyphony”), but what has happened since is an unlikelihood of mildly staggering proportions: One of the thorniest and most cerebral of American composers has, by sheer dint of longevity, turned into one of the most beloved of living American musical figures. No one could possibly claim that these performances of his complete quartet music are the best that have ever been available, but they are, for such frequently fiendishly difficult scores, more than solid. (Would you believe that they’ve been known to play all five quartets plus quartet miscellany in one concert sitting?) Add to it a DVD interview with Carter and you have something quite rare and quite special in box sets. ★★★(Jeff Simon)
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Bach, Cello Suites performed by Zuill Bailey (Telarc, two disc). When Pablo Casals virtually rediscovered this music for the modern world, did he have any idea that some of it—especially the opening of the Suite No. 1 in G-major— would turn into some of the world’s most distinctive and emblematic background music? Among other places you can hear the Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suites now are the wonderful TV commercials for American Express in which we see inanimate objects arrayed as if they’re frowning and then smiling—everything from pocketbooks to small airplane propellers. What it’s symptomatic of in the past decade are frequent complete recordings of the Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suites by cellists young and old paying homage to some of the greatest Western music. Thirty-seven-year-old American cellist Zuill Bailey has made brilliant use of his current contract with Telarc Records to make one of the more impressive collections of the Bach Cello Suites to come along in quite a while. And considering the quantity of them in any year, that’s saying something. ★★★½ (J. S.)
Jazz
Mort Weiss, “Raising the Bar: The Definitive Mort Weiss —Solo Jazz Clarinet” (SMS Jazz).Who the heck, you might well ask, is Mort Weiss? Try this: He’s a 74-year-old jazz clarinetist who not only put down his horn for 40 years but in all that time didn’t even own a clarinet. And who then came back to public performance eight years ago ready to, almost literally, blow listeners away. In the intervening years, he’s been in the music retail business, including his own store “The Sheet Music Shoppe,” one of the premier such emporia in Los Angeles. He claims erroneously on the notes to this disc that “no one has ever done a solo jazz album on any horn” (among others, of course, Sonny Rollins and Anthony Braxton have done solo horn discs), but you have to forgive a musician who spent so much time away from “the scene,” especially when he’s as superb as he is here. He’s a wondrous player here by any assay, making rich, lyrical and gripping music without a soul to keep him company. ★★★½ (J. S.)
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Various Artists, “Art-I-Facts: Great Performances from 40 Years of Jazz at NEC” (New England Conservatory). Stop. Don’t head for the hills just yet. Yes, this is an anthology of music played over the years at the New England Conservatory and is devoted to that estimable institution’s jazz program, but just look at who’s on this disc: Jaki Byard, Bob Brookmeyer, George Russell, Steve Lacy, George Garzone, Bob Moses, Mick Goodrick and Ran Blake as well as Gunther Schuller (who runs the jazz program at NEC). Anyone who expects this to be jazz academically embalmed will discover something else entirely listening to this. Even when what you’re hearing is a re-creation of jazz classics— Jimmy Giuffre’s masterful “The Train and the River”—there is more than enough difference and outright revisionism to keep you happy and filled with what Whitney Balliett immortally called “the sound of surprise. ★★★½ (J. S.)
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Mick Rossi, “Songs from the Broken Land” (Orange Mountain Music). A good question: just what kind of music IS this, for pity’s sake? Is it jazz? Is it some kind of ultra-hip downtown classical music that knows its Cage and Nancarrow and Cowell (not to mention its Reich and Glass, for whose latter music Rossi is the regular pianist)? Listen to Rossi’s prepared piano on “My Old Kentucky Home” to give you some idea what a pixilated spirit you’re dealing with here. On the other hand, listen to the formidably propulsive and percussive piano technique evinced all through this disc to understand how wild it really is. “The mandate here,” Rossi writes, “was to follow a whim to create something good, bad, silly or otherwise— as long as it retained a level of rawness through no or minimal preparation.” As cool an improvised postmodern piano disc as you’re likely to hear, from Glass’ own label. ★★★★ (J. S.)
Pop
The Watson Twins, “Talking to You, Talking to Me” (Vanguard). On their third album since backing Jenny Lewis, harmony-loving identical twins Chandra and Leigh Watson have mostly traded in the folk and country facets of their sound for earmarks of classic soul and R&B. The Watsons work through a dozen torch songs crisp with scaled-back instrumentation and often hovering around the three-minute mark. The unexpectedly sultry “Harpeth River” is worthy of a pre-meltdown Amy Winehouse, as is the cooing, keyboard-tickled “Forever Me.” “Tell Me Why” is sweetly straightforward, “Calling Out” recalls Carole King’s “It’s Too Late,” and “Midnight” peaks with an extended patch of sizzling guitar licks and lively organ. Unconcerned with hipness, these are songs from the heart, seemingly from an era when craftsmanship was the prevailing currency. ★★★½ (Doug Wallen, Philadelphia Inquirer)
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