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ADAGIO: A Windham Hill Collection
There have been some tragically bad adaptations of classical music over the years. ADAGIO is not one of them. Longtime Windham Hill producer Dawn Atkinson has gathered a host of familiar names from the Windham Hill roster past and present and deployed them across an array of largely familiar classical adagios. But instead of sweetening them up or making them "contemporary," each musician has found a deeper nuance in the music. Philip Aaberg explores a meditative space in Barber's "Adagio for Strings" while Patrick O'Hearn casts Rodrigo's "Adagio from Fantasy for a Gentleman" in a shroud of keyboard shadows. Tracy Silverman's delayed pizzicato violin sound plucks through Bach's "Arioso" accompanied by Thea Suits on flute, and guitarist Steve Erquiaga unfolds the haunting melody of a Grieg nocturne on his acoustic guitar. There are a couple of clunkers here, notably Phillipe Saisse's smooth jazz take on Bach's "Air on a G String" and Paul Schwartz's hopelessly corny synthesized rendition of Handel's "Sarabande." This handful of lapses is more than forgiven by Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning's Celtic chamber arrangement of a Handel sonata and Mike Marshall and Edgar Meyer's bluegrass breakdown on a Bach prelude. ADAGIO is one of those perfect Echoes transition albums, moving from acoustic to electric, ambient to classical.
©2003 John Diliberto |
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AfroCelts
SEED
They used to be Afro Celt Sound System, but with their fourth CD they've dropped the Sound System end of their name, and a bit of the techno and dub tradition from which it initially sprang. This is an even more organic AfroCelts but hardly acoustic, as electronic sequences, pads and grooves still inform much of their music.
Afro Celts continue to stretch their sound, bringing in Canadian Nouveau Flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook on some tracks, dub-punk pioneer Jah Wobble and Irish fiddler Eileen Ivers. They interweave with the kora of Afro Celt charter member N'Faly Kouyate, Irish sean nos singer Iarla O'Lionaird, uilleann piper Emer Mayock and the Irish whistles and frame drums of James McNally.SEED is a bit more melodically oriented than previous albums, but the groove remains the unifying force between Simon Emmerson's electronica sequences, Johnny Kalsey's riveting Middle Eastern drums and McNally's bodhran. Clearly the best Echoes CD of 2003 so far.
©2003 John Diliberto |
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Peter Kater
RED MOON
Pianist Peter Kater celebrates his 20th anniversary of recording by updating the sound of his greatest successes, his collaborations with Native flutist R. Carlos Nakai. Albums like Natives, Migration and Honor the Sky created a new style of Native chamber music.
On his latest CD, Kater not only works with Nakai, but several other Native luminaries, including 2002 Grammy Award winner Mary Youngblood, as well as Ara Tokatlian from Arco Iris and Paul McCandless from Oregon. But the biggest change is the electronica grooves created by Paul Avgerinos. On top of these rhythms, Kater orchestrates hypnotic tracks like "Deep Waters" with intertwined flute and penny whistle from Nakai and McCandless over a cycling guitar pattern and trance rhythm. "Never Ending Journey" is an anthemic build with a raging solo from Ara Tokatlian.
Kater places the attention on the arrangements and the soloists, rather than his piano, which serves as another part of his orchestration. Red Moon has a darker, slighter edgier sound from Kater's other CDs, creating a more enveloping, headphone-listening sound.
©2003 John Diliberto |
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Amethystium
Aphelion
Fantasy music is in the air these days and Amethystium tunes into that spirit on his new CD, APHELION. Amethystium is Norwegian keyboardist Oystein Ramfjord, who takes his performance name from the gem amethyst. APHELION is his second CD and with titles like "Garden of Sakuntala," "Gates of Morpheus" and "Elvensong," you know he's working in a land of fairy tales and myths.He swirls electronica designs with old analog sounds and contemporary loops, forging a lush, imaginary orchestra. It's the soundtrack you wish you'd heard in Lord of the Rings. Gothic chants mix with Indian tabla drums, choirs from heaven vamp over churning electronica rhythms, while Chinese flutes cry out over synthesized cosmic vapor trails.Ramfjord uses ethno and electronica samples you hear elsewhere, but he weds them to a heroic sense of melody with synthesizer sequences that percolate in counterpoint to drum loops. Maybe it's the remote, Nordic atmosphere or the title, Aphelion - the point in the earth's orbit furthest from the sun - but Amethystium stays just this side of cool, avoiding the over-heated bombast of contemporaries like Yanni. Still, there's nothing under-stated about APHELION. It's all anthemic cadences and surging rhythms, a clarion call and charge into the fray, like the riders of Rohan coming to the rescue.
©2003 John Diliberto |
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Jeff Pearce
Bleed
Bleed is the foreboding name of ambient guitarist Jeff Pearce's latest CD, but Pearce's wounds are more emotional than physical. This darkly introspective, but quietly melodic CD finds Pearce creating reverberant guitar orchestrations through his fragile melodies into loops, delays, and echos that build and converge, creating a sonic womb of contemplation. In largely realtime performances, Pearce layers his melodies with gentle, picked cyles and quietly growling e-bow guitar lines, all bathed in deep, deep reverb. Pearce says the album is based on some old journals and the teenage traumas and yearnings they awakened, but you don't need to know that to hear the melancholy in his music. This album also includes more contemporary inspirations. He recorded "Through Tears" while watching the events of 9-11 unfold. That track debuted on An Echoes Requiem in October, 2001.
©2003 John Diliberto |
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A Windham Hill Christmas
Various Artists
Whenever I see an album with "In Dulci Jubilo," "Silent Night" or any other Christmas chestnuts, my eyes, and my ears just glaze over. But keeping in the tradition of their Winter Solstice series, Windham Hill brings fresh life to some of these old chestnuts, sometimes completely re-inventing them, sometimes rediscovering the original spirit of these songs before they became shopping mall fodder.
Among the highlights is Barbara Higbie's joyful Celtic reel on the aforementioned "In Dulci Jubilo." Tracy Silverman and Thea Suits completely reinvent "Silent Night" with delayed pizzicato violin and intertwining string and flute lines. David Cullen arranges a serene guitar duet with Will Ackerman on "What Strangers Are These" and Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning create a chamber arrangement for "Sussex Carol." And there's more, including Liz Story, George Winston, and W.G. Snuffy Walden.
©2002 John Diliberto |
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Philip Glass
NAQOYQATSI
Twenty years ago, director Godfrey Reggio produced Koyaanisqatsi, a non-narrative film. Virtually the only sound was Philip Glass's epic score accompanying an exhilarating, wordless meditation of images ranging from expansive, slow motion landscapes to whirling dervish city scenes shot in time-lapse. It was the first in a trilogy and now the third part, Naqoyqatsi, has been released.
Like Koyaanisqatsi, which means "life out of balance," Naqoyqatsi takes its name from the Hopi language and translates as: A life of killing each other; War as a way of life; Civilized violence. While the film is a high tech dismemberment and distortion of largely found images, including nuclear explosions, athletes and g-force smiles.
Glass's score, on the other hand, is full of heroic affirmation and poetic longing. The opening, Gregorian-like chant of "Naqoyqatsi" has the same effect the chant of "Koyaanisqatsi" did two decades back. It opens the door into a non-stop, kaleidoscopic ride. Naqoyqatsi is his most exhilarating music in years and while it has all the signposts of his earlier music with cycling melodies and motoric rhythms, they have been freshly turned and deployed across an orchestra augmented by Glass's electronic ensemble.
A highlight of the music is Yo-Yo Ma. Naqoyqatsi is a nearly a cello concerto as the gifted musician is featured throughout the work in quiet meditations and soaring with the orchestra in full overdrive.
© John Diliberto 2002 |
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The Echoes
Living Room Concerts
Volume 8
We didn't pick this disc just because it's our own. We picked it because it really is the best CD of the month, a quintessential example of the Echoes soundscape. We've drawn upon our favorite concerts, recorded exclusively for Echoes over the last year or so to compile this recording. You can take your pick of highlights.
Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble create a trans-global orchestra, updating a renaissance tune with a global array of instruments. At the opposite end, there's a 10 minute or so space excursion from Wave World, the Dutch synthesizer duo. This is a classic example of modern space music. Robert Rich takes his own atmospheric journey, playing lap steel guitar over electronic ambiences on "Steel Harmonics."
We have two solo pianists on this CD. Philip Aaberg is a veteran of Windham Hill records and assays one of his best loved tunes, "Marias River Breakdown." Suzanne Ciani is still best known as a synthesist, but we catch her in an intimate solo piano performance, looking out the window to the Pacific Ocean from her living room in Marin County.
World fusion is in abundance and variety with pioneers Ancient Future and an exquisite, Indian-based piece called "Socha Socha" that features guitarist Matthew Montfort and Indian sitarist Habib Khan. Shaman's Dream brings us a gamelan-based meditation mixing Balinese sounds with Indian flutes, and middle eastern percussion. Lumin continues the world fusion sound with their Persian derived designs on "Stiga," with singer Irina Mikhailova.
Persian meets Celtic with harpist Lisa Lynne when she teams up with the Lian Ensemble. Another Celtic variation occurs with Solas when they perform the instrumental air "Maybe In A Prayer." You'll hear the first harpsichord ever to be played live on Echoes with Richard Searles and a rare trio of guitarist David Cullen, oboist Jill Haley and bassist Michael Manring.
The Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 8 isn't just a collection of songs. It's the articulation of a vision that connects music ancient to the future (to steal a line from the Art Ensemble of Chicago), music of the spirit and music of the senses, music that says the future is now. It's also a music that suggests a world coming together, despite political efforts to the contrary.
©2002 John Diliberto
More info and photos here>> |
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Steve Tibbetts
A MAN ABOUT A HORSE
Steve Tibbetts creates temples of the imagination on his first true solo album since THE FALL OF US ALL eight years ago. Like that CD, Steve Tibbetts cracks open the serene veneer of spirituality and plunges into a world of volcanic fire and psychological turmoil. Doesn't sound like a fun ride? It is if you love a roller-coaster.
Assembling a virtual percussion orchestra out of Balinese rhythms and instruments, along with cohort Marc Anderson's rhythm arsenal, Tibbetts creates plaintive meditations of acoustic guitars ripped asunder by throbbing electric forays that undulate and transmute in a fun-house of fractured mirrors.
Some of this album was recorded in the wake of September 11, 2001 and it reveals the conflicting emotions in the air at that time. The track "Black Temple" was premiered on an Echoes Requiem Soundscape, our 9/11 commemoration on October 11, 2001. Tibbetts has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism for years and in 1996 released CHO, an album on which he adapted the chants of Tibetan nun, Choying Drolma. On A MAN ABOUT A HORSE, he recalls the serene nature of Drolma's hymns, but also the thunder of Tibetan horns. A MAN ABOUT A HORSE is one of the most challenging albums that's been picked as an Echoes CD of the Month, and it's worth the effort.
©2002 John Diliberto |
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DANNY HEINES
WHAT WORLDS THEY BRING
Guitarist Danny Heines belongs to an eclectic generation of musicians who've been exposed to jazz, rock, classical and world music and are trying to find their own voice that fuses these elements together. You can hear the success of that fusion on Danny Heines's latest CD, WHAT WORLDS THEY BRING. It's a meticulously crafted album, much of which is based on eastern European folk songs that Heines learned from Russian singer Irina Mikhailova. Heines turns rustic songs like "Vir Vir" and "I Thought it was Raining" into ecstatic vocal excursions with Irina's wild voice soaring over talking drums, bansuri flutes and Heines's guitar. Singer Tina Malia brings an ethereal tone to Heines's self-penned "Six Picture Dream" while Vicki Randle intones his "Bending Lament."
But it's not all singers. Heines's guitar is front and center, sideways and backwards on tracks like"Fly Bird Fly" and "The Loneliest Monk." He sounds like multiple players as he orchestrates his 10-fingered orchestra with an intricate sound. His duet with tabla player Ty Burhoe on "Singing with Gargoyles" is an enveloping maze as Heines interweaves the melody. You can also hear Heines's Tuvan throat singing and bansuri flute playing on a couple of tracks.
Danny Heines has been recording for over 15 years, but WHAT WORLDS THEY BRING is his definitive statement.
© John Diliberto 2002 |
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Phil Thornton
DREAMSCAPES
From the opening eagle bone whistle and distant percussion of "Eagle Dream", Phil Thornton casts us into an exotic world where Elizabethan fantasy meets Native flutes on a desert of Middle Eastern rhythms. Thornton may be one of the most overlooked of all the musicians
played on Echoes. He's released over a dozen of albums, many of them challenging, world fusion excursions that wrap his flutes and electric guitars in throbbing trance rhythms, didgeridoos and abstract sound designs like wind blown off the Tibetan Plateau. DREAMSCAPES falls in the middle, a haunting album full of lush orchestrations and melodies that envelop you. On "Desert Dream" Thorton employs the percussion grooves of Egypt's Hossam Ramzy for a descent into delirium, with Thornton's bamboo flute spinning like a dervish. "In Search of Avalon" taps into his fantasy/Elizabethan side with a gentle recorder melody underpinned by a synthesizer ostinato and morphing into e-bow guitar crescendos.
Phil Thornton is in a lineage that includes Kitaro and Vangelis. But this veteran musician, whose resume includes stints with The Bay City Rollers and Sinead O'Connor, brings a depth of experience and vision that sets him apart. If I were to pick an album to introduce you to Phil Thornton, it would be DREAMSCAPES.
© John Diliberto 2002 |
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KODO
MONDO HEAD
Every decade or so, Mickey Hart puts out an album that points the way towards his concept of a 21st century gamelan orchestra. In the 1970s it was the Diga Rhythm Band, in the 1990s it was Planet Drum and now at the dawn of the 21st century, he's brought us MONDO HEAD. It's an album centered on the acrobatic percussion grooves of Kodo, a Japanese taiko drum ensemble who are already considered the most elite group of their kind. Hart sets them in a boiling cauldron of global percussionists and ecstatic singers, including Azam Ali from Vas.
Given the presence of Planet Drum cohorts such as Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain, Latin percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo, Brazilian Airto Moreira and Greg Ellis, the percussive half of Vas, it's not as percussion and rhythm heavy as you might expect. Tracks like "Echo Bells" feature minimalist bell cycles and the melancholy harmonica of Charlie Musselwhite. "Ektal," which takes its name from an Indian rhythm, is an ethereal work of ghost percussion, and the soaring voice of Azam Ali. Other tracks combine Armenian vocalese, Tibetan monks and Japanese vocables, including "Okesa Prayer" with Arto Tuncboyaciyan. Although he's a percussion proselytizer, Mickey Hart infuses these rhythm grooves with melody and drama, and you can almost see the dancing members of Kodo emerging from your speakers.
©John Diliberto 2002 |
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PATRICK BALL
FAIR PLAY
Long before the Celtic Craze hit America, Patrick Ball was spreading the Irish gospel, playing the songs of legendary bard Turlough O'Carolan and other Celtic tunes on his harp. Unlike most Celtic harpists who use nylon strings, Patrick Ball plays a steel-strung harp which gives his music a more ringing and atmospheric quality. His last few albums have featured him telling Irish stories, but on FAIR PLAY, he returns to pure solo harp playing and it's a gem, at least an emerald. Ball plays several of Turlough O'Carolan's tunes including "Captain O'Kane," "Lady Dillon" and "Lord Galways' Lamentation." Each piece resonates through Ball's expertly plucked melodies, calling out across an Irish vale that is as timeless as a Bach fugue.
©2002 John Diliberto |
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MOODSWINGS
HORIZONTAL
A double CD album of deeply chilled ambiences and quietly anthemic hymns, HORIZONTAL pulses on a sea of chirping sequencer patterns, swirling synthesizers and the pedal steel guitar of B.J. Cole. The first disc hovers in a liquid sound pool that ebbs and flows, sometimes profoundly electronic, but just as often drawing on classical motifs, especially Pachelbel's "Canon" which lurks just beneath the surface of "Blue Topaz."
The second disc brings on some rhythm loops and bass grooves, re-mixing music of the first CD. "Opium" turns from a quiet meditation into an epic trance. Singer Julee Cruise of "Twin Peaks" breathes forlorn ministrations across "Seems to Remind Me of Love" and "Into the Blue," a revamp of "Blue Topaz." HORIZONTAL is an album that pulses more than grooves, and even the slightly rhythmic re-mixes never get more than downtempo. Filled with subtle sonic effects and melodies that linger, Moodswings will be a favorite on Echoes for some time.
©2002 John Diliberto |
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Ancient Future
PLANET PASSION
It's been eight years since the last Ancient Future album, ASIAN FUSION, but guitarist Matthew Montfort has maintained his global fusion vision through personnel changes and label indifference. For PLANET PASSION, he's gathered some of the best of the San Francisco Bay area's world fusion luminaries and created a CD based around the concept of global love of a romantic, not political nature.
Indian sitarist Habib Khan appears on "Longing for the Beloved" and Manose Singh weaves his bansuri flute with the Chinese flute of Liu Qi-Chao on "Forest Frolic." Singer Irina Mikhailova from Lumin lends her Bulgarian/Kazakh vocal to a few tracks while Indian tablas and African drums form a shifting rhythmic floor that rises to melody.
Almost every track is centered by Montfort, an underrated guitarist who uses his scalloped fretboard acoustic to emulate the bends of an Indian sitar. He creates a guitar orchestra on "I Mett Her in the Medowe" and gets some sweet African style licks with electric guitar on "Ocean of Love." As if to remind us how true his original vision remains, Montfort gathers together the original 1978 line-up of Ancient Future on the laconic India-meets-Bali moods of "Semara." Despite the erotic and sensual imagery of the album, Ancient Future's music is more playful than passionate, an intricately entwined global tapestry full of airy melodies from a future possible world. Ancient Future has always been a band that embodied the
concept of Echoes, and PLANET PASSION continues that stream.
©2002 John Diliberto |
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Samite
KAMBU ANGELS
We heard Samite quite a bit this past winter. He was a central player in Windham Hill's Winter's Solstice Tour which we recorded as Sonic Seasonings 2001. Whether singing on Will Ackerman's compositions or playing his own works, Samite immediately drew the music towards a soulful serenity. His 1999 album, STARS TO SHARE was a favorite on Echoes. KAMBU ANGELS was actually recorded just before that. Released for the first time, it is
equally captivating.
Samite's voice is an emotional, intimate instrument. As he layers it into choirs and canons on "Zenina" and "Tokido," he creates immersive lullabies. Combined with instruments like the electric kalimba (African thumb piano) and wood flutes, he orchestrates an African minimalist chamber music.
In the hands of other artists, Samite's songs would be sweet. But Samite's music is born from pain and exile. He escaped the turmoil of Uganda, including growing up with Idi Amin and came to this country 14 years ago. He only got back to Africa four years ago, and that experience suffuses the sound of KAMBU ANGELS. Instead of sentimentalism, Samite
brings us affirmation.
©2002 John Diliberto |
