Bob Gluck's "Electric Brew" of Solo Piano and Electronics

A prelude-like moment for the piano, the sounding of a shofar horn and electronics set the stage for Bob Gluck's Electric Brew (EMF 069). It came out in 2007, and so it is most certainly not the flavor of the month. And it was not meant to be so. It is music for the long haul.

Bob plays a kind of improvised solo piano that has a particular sonority in mind regardless of where he is in his performance. He can go the jazz-derived improvisational route or hew more closely to the modern jazz sound. Or he can sound like he's coming out of an avant classical frame of reference. In any of these cases he remains his own person.

Electric Brew provides you with a great example of his musical personality. The piano comes across as the principal voice in his music. Electronics augment, contextualize or provide a second voice in the mix. In the case of the use of "computer-assisted" piano, the piano voice and its electronic manipulation go together. What's important is that the electronics are well-integrated and add much to what transpires. It never feels like they are an afterthought to the principal music-making.

Mr. Gluck has a fertile and richly complex musical imagination and it comes across well in this program. The music has an avant feel to it but communicates an ordered sonoral vision. The musico-structural architecture leaves the beams exposed, so to say, in that you can hear Mr. Gluck's structural sense in motion at most points.

It's very interesting music, a tour de force of advanced pianism and in its own way pioneering in its singular use of electronics. Very much recommended.

Propulsive Electric-Acoustic Jazz From Mikrokolektyw

When the sound of the unexpected is expected, yet what you get remains unexpected, it is a reason to sit up in your chair and take notice. Such was the case with the Polish duo Mikrokolektyw and their Delmark (591) CD Revisit when I first listened. Kuba Suchar is on the drums; Artur Majewski plays the trumpet; they both activate electronic parts, seemingly Moog derived.

What's cool and interesting about this music is the well conceived fullness they develop throughout. There are trumpet motifs that form thematic pivot points for the numbers and Artur plays within and without these motives in the course of his improvisations. Kuba plays some advanced and thought-out drum parts that have propulsion but also show a non-standard approach to the set. No unmediated backbeating on this! He's extraordinarily inventive in his pattern making and it contributes in no small part to why this is unusual music. The electronics are well conceived and in all cases add integrally to the music.

Mikrokolektyw play music of high adventure. Revisit takes the latter emanations from someone like Tomasz Stanko and builds a new edifice on top. Highly stimulating, highly absorbing sounds well worth hearing.