|
|||
ARBORS JAZZ
CHRIS FLORY/For You: There’s always room in our Ipod for some hot work by a swinging guitarist that knows his ax well. A solidly tasty outing that tickles the ears nicely and delivers a full on jazzbo good time.
LARRY HAM/Just Me, Just You: Since Carl Jefferson passed, the Maybeck Recital series has been allowed to lapse at Concord but Mat Domber has done a stellar job of picking up the slack over at Arbors. His latest addition to his solo piano series is a classy guy that know how to give the standards a nice swinging airing out without being derivative, overly deferential or sucking the air out of the room to prove a point. Ham has been around and he really makes his experience work for him on the spotlight outing.
DIVINE ART
ANTHONY GOLDSTONE/A Night at the Opera: No Marx Brothers in sight but there is a dandy solo piano set in which Goldstone serves up a tasty tour de force where he doesn’t just take a spin through a handful of opera classics, he puts his own spin to them as well. From the Green Hornet to Rigoletto to stuff you might not know, this is a diversion for opera fans that want something new that doesn’t take them too far a field.
25067
METIER
DAVEY CHAMBER EMSAMBLE/Judith Bailey-Instrumental Music: Here’s a sterling chance to bet he first on your block. Bailey is a contemporary classical composer now getting the first commercial release on her works, delightfully played by this ensemble. She writes with a deft precision giving you the feeling that she really considers each note before putting it to paper. It’s not laden with a schoolmarm type precision so don’t expect any nuns to pop out of the disc and whack you with a ruler if you find yourself tapping your toes along to the music. With a feel that’s distinctly Great British as opposed to Germanic or Roman, Bailey sonically paints her pictures with an emotional core that shows real heartbeats pumping along.
92101
MICHAEL FINNISSY/20th Century Music by Laurence Crane: Post modern minimalist piano music by a contemporary classical composer as played by a piano man that seems to be in synch with the composer. It wouldn’t hurt if you come to this by way of an appreciation of John Cage and Steve Reich, this almost feels like classical music for high tech minds.
28506
SONY BMG MASTERWORKS
SOUTH PACIFIC/new Broadway cast: Fresh from a good night at the Tonys, the first official Broadway revival of the classic musical is brought into the present in a reverential way that shaves off some of the soul and rough edges of the original but really doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. When you have an original that casts such a long shadow, anything that comes in it’s wake is always going to have an uphill climb to make it’s own mark. When you have such an unbeatable score to work with, anything is possible. Fans of the show will probably want to hear this anyway since there isn’t very much that couldn’t use a spiffing up every 50 years or so. Anyway, it stays as delightfully exotic as Claudette Psico.
Volume 31/Number 231
June 18, 2008
MIDWEST RECORD
830 W. Route 22 #144
Lake Zurich, IL., 60047
CHRIS SPECTOR, Editor and Publisher
©2008 Midwest Record
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI