 |
|
Contents
Back Pages
User Functions
|
featurewell Pat Metheny, March 2005
04/28/05
One might not think that something as seemingly abstract as an hour-plus instrumental jazz composition would be the stuff of a manifesto. But guitarist Pat Metheny's ambitious new work is rooted in a political, or at least philosophical, statement. The Pat Metheny Group's album The Way Up consists of a through-composed, many-hued suite, composed by Metheny with longtime keyboard partner Lyle Mays and performed with a fresh incarnation of his electric, multicultural six-piece group. Metheny says the suite's expansive character stems "from a rejection of all the scaling back in our culture, where so much is reduced to sound bites and nuance goes out the window. We strove to offer an alternative in size and detail, in the spirit of challenge." The challenge goes beyond scale, though. "There has always been a political component to jazz -- just look at the ramifications of free jazz behind the Iron Curtain," Metheny says. "We're living in a politically and culturally polarized time in our country, even in terms of jazz; and we declare a proud allegiance to a liberal, inclusive, contemporary aesthetic. In a blue/red, left/right world, we are as blue and as left as you could be."
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:51:04 am
featurewell Jordi Savall, March 2005
04/28/05
History is littered with wonderful things discarded on the march of progress. Globalization today has merely sped up this process exponentially, "so that thousands of cultural nuances are lost by the year," Jordi Savall says. "But nuance isn't decorative -- it is essential to communication, in art as in life." Recovering lost nuance is Savall's raison d'etre. He is the world's foremost master of the viola da gamba, the fretted, seven-string instrument superseded by the cello in the late Baroque era. The simpler, more sonorous cello took its place in a future of larger ensembles in bigger halls. Yet the complex, intimate sound of the viola da gamba, or viol -- which "mimics the human voice in all its modulations, even in its profoundest accents of sadness and joy," according to a 17th-century treatise -- was lost for ages. For all of Savall's immersion in ancient manuscripts and archaic modes, the Catalan artist is no Luddite. He allies his reverence of the past to entrepreneurial forward-thinking. While most companies have bewailed the end of recorded classical music, his boutique label Alia Vox has sold more than 1 million copies of 40 titles in six years -- figures that his competitors, corporate and independent alike, envy. Moreover, Alia Vox recordings aren't just shiny silver widgets sheathed in anonymous plastic; they are individual, gorgeous objets d'art, with not only audiophile sound but serious annotation and lavish packaging that bespeak passion more than profit.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:47:51 am
|
Links
music related
©2005 bradley bambarger
|
read more