Pianist Pandelis Karayorgis Plays "Caramelula"

Boston-based Pandelis Karayorgis has been the subject of several review postings on my blogs. Today there is yet another one. I suppose you can tell I like what he is doing! This one is an Ayler Download-Only recording, which goes for a good price. Caramelula (Ayler Download 078) situates Pandelis in a good trio setting, with Nate McBride (bass) and Randy Peterson (drums).

Caramelula provides nearly an hour of the trio in action, playing Karayorgis's original pieces but allowing a good deal of space for extemporaneous improvisation. There is a linear logic to the post-Monk avant doings of this recording. Everyone is relaxed and gets the opportunity to stretch out. It is another worthwhile look into the Karayorgis artistry. It may be a little more low-key than some of his other disks, but it provides you with another way into what he is doing. Anyone who wants to follow the modern improvisational piano must not miss Pandelis Karayorgis. This is one good place to get a good sampling of his style in conducive surroundings.

See the Ayler link on this site to find out more.

Powerful Music from Szymanowski's "King Roger" On A New DVD Release

Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) is known, at least here in the States, as primarily a composer of solo piano music that takes its cue from Chopin and Scriabin. His harmonically advanced and very pianistic writing has a poetic touch and a depth I for one have appreciated very much over the years.

Szymanowski the composer of large-scale orchestral and operatic works is a lesser known commodity. So when I had a chance to review the new DVD release (C Major) of his opera King Roger I welcomed the chance to get to know the work.

The opera was first performed in the mid-'20s and has not since garnered the sort of standard performance rotation that Berg's Wozzeck or Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier have achieved. How many 20th century operas enjoy that status in any event?

The work is mid-length, timing in at around 90 minutes. It is scored for soloists, choir and a fairly large orchestra. The libretto is of a symbolic-mystical bent. A charismatic prophet-shepherd comes on the scene and King Roger's people are divided between followers of the shepherd and those who wish him punished for heresy.

There is a trial scene that ends up with the shepherd summoning his followers and going off into the night. The Queen succumbs to his influence and joins him. And on from there. It's a libretto filled with mystic ideas and ambiguity. One could say it is somewhat difficult for mainstream audiences to fathom. It accounts in part for the relative neglect the opera has received.

But on the other hand this is a very well-conceived work as music. The orchestral writing is powerful and filled with affect. The principal roles have a heroic tone to them. It is a movingly beautiful work and will appeal to those who like Ravel's "Daphne and Chloe," Strauss' most advanced operas, the orchestral music of Scriabin and perhaps a little in the way of Wagner's epic largess as well.

The performance on the DVD is quite good. The Vienna Symphony under Sir Mark Elder is ravishingly sensual or stupendously gigantic when called upon to be so. The various choral groups involved achieve a glowing sonority and give their parts all they deserve. The principal roles are handled excellently by the singers involved. Scott Hendricks as King Roger is especially effective, no mean feat when singing against the massed choral and orchestral resources that would all-but-defeat a less robust vocal instrument.

The sound is good overall. It is a live recording so on occasion the vocal protagonists can vary in balance level according to where they are on stage and the relative dynamic level of the orchestra in any given passage.

David Poultney's staging is minimalist and dramatic. The stage is set up as a sort of half amphitheatre with stepped levels occupying the entire stage. It is through very effect use of spot and overall colored lighting that moods are created and sustained. It comes off quite well.

The DVD medium is ideal for bringing the total gestalt of the opera across to the viewer-listener. You hear in vivid sound the score and its fine interpretation; you experience the starkly effective staging; and you experience the libretto in its full context. Szymanowski's King Roger lives or dies on the merits of its music. It is not completely convincing as a story-plot. Musically it is a very powerful work. I came away from it all with a much greater appreciation of Szymanowski's compositional breadth. In its own way King Roger constitutes a forgotten masterpiece of the 20th century. And this DVD production seems like an ideal way to appreciate its strengths. 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.

Jon Irabagon Blows His Top On "Foxy"!

The album is called Foxy (Hot Cup 102). F-O-X-Y.

Just skip the review and go get it right now! No, I am only kidding. What is it we are talking about? We are talking about Jon Irabagon on tenor, Barry Altschul on drums, and Peter Brendler on bass. We are talking about 78 minutes or so of Jon Irabagon blowing his top! It's a mid-up swing groove with "Jumping with Symphony Sid" as the nominal underlying implication. It's no coincidence but also very funny how the album sleeve's front panel takes Rollin's Way Out West cover art concept and burlesques it with a bikini-clad would be tenor-wielder standing in the desert in place of Rollins. Funny! But the music is something like the cover. Read on!

That does not begin to describe what goes on, though. Take Sonny Rollins at his best, mid-Period Trane on a sheets-of-sound tear, Roland Kirk on one of his most fantastic tenor solo flights, then just put an h-bomb in the bell of the sax.

This is one incredible performance. Irabagon has been known to be a man of adventure, especially as a member of Mostly Other People Do the Killing and as a guest with Puttin On the Ritz. Nothing is sacred but that stance is sacred. For Foxy the bop extended solo becomes an epic, almost a send-up of itself. But no, this is very serious blowing. They stick close to the changes (and imply them when things get over-the-top) but there is so much fire one might suspect arson is the cause.

Barry Altschul never sounded better. He fires up and never lets up for 78 minutes. He pushes Irabagon to just blow his top, man, and that's what Irabagon does.

This is some of the most impressive blowing I've heard in the last ten years. Irabagon is monstrous. He plays with musical cells, then comes out with lightening runs, he circular-breathes his way into some wild phrase repetitions and he has the hard sound of classic-wailing-gone-berserk all the way through.

I don't think I need to say anything more. Good lord, this one is hot!

Charles Tyler's "Eastern Man Alone" Reissued

Charles Tyler's Eastern Man Alone (ESP 1059) was first released in 1967 and perhaps could not be said to have caused a sensation. That was a year where so much was going on musically that some things did not get all the attention they deserved.

Now it's out again on CD and to return to it again after so many years is to hear it with all the intervening music in between as a new context. Fact is the instrumentation was unusual at the time. Tyler on alto plus David Baker on cello and the two acoustic basses of Kent Brinkley and Brent McKesson.

Tyler began his career in the limelight as a member of Albert Ayler's group and by 1967 he was taking some steps away from the speaking-in-tongues frenetic solo style he initially adopted. Eastern Man moves toward a chamber jazz. The three strings and sax combination allows for a more intimate sound, with the strings playing foil to Charles's stringent alto. The melody heads still have an Ayleresque down-home folkishness to them, but Charles' solos tend to bounce off the ceiling a little less.

It was a rather different offering to the typical "new thing" sides that preceded it. But the music is still on the outside track.

It bears hearing again. There is much to like in the interactions of the quartet. It innovated and it turns out that similar instrumentations became quite ordinary in later years. There are moments where intonation is non-standard, but that gives the music some rawness and guarantees that those who are looking for a slicker veneer will not take to it. Perhaps that explains it's relative neglect over the years.

Listening again now, though, I find that there was much that was prophetic. The music has a conviction to it. Listen a few times and you'll no doubt see what I mean.

Markevitch: Complete Orchestral Music Volume Six

The story of Igor Markevitch the composer is most unusual and rather tragic. For eight years he was considered one of the brightest lights of European new music and he turned out a series of orchestral works that show a remarkable maturity for someone of his age. More important the compositions show a mastery of the orchestral palate and an originality that shine through today as you hear the best of the works. Then, abruptly, he stopped composing completely and went on to international acclaim as a conductor. He never went back. At the time of his death in 1983 only one of his works had been recorded, and that on a set of inferior shellac 78-rpm dubs.

Volume Six (Naxos 8.572156) of Naxos's Complete Orchestral Works introduces us to a major work he composed toward the end (1938-39) of his compositional career. La Taille de l'Homme was left unfinished, only half of the projected work survives. But those 55 or so minutes are impressive evidence of Markevitch's stature.

Scored for soprano (Lucy Shelton on this recording) and symphony orchestra (the Arnhem Philharmonic under Lydon-Gee here), the work has depth, orchestral luminescence, a bittersweet ethos and scherzo-like moments with a kind of grotesque, macabre quality. The world premiere recording is a very good one and gives you an excellent look at how Markevitch by that point had mastered his art. There are the influences of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and perhaps Milhaud, but the more you listen the more you realize that the at-first vague feeling that he doesn't fit into any of those model exemplifications has grown as you become more familiar with his work. Perhaps no more so than with the work at hand.

Anyone with an interest in the 20th-century music world cannot afford to miss the experience of Igor Markevitch. This recording of La Taille de l'Homme is a very good place to start.

Amina Figarova Returns with the Ravishing "Sketches"

Amina Figarova weights in with a new album, "Sketches" (BMCD 507). Once again it's Amina at the piano with 13 new pieces, scored for the mid-sized group that gives her a chance again to show what she can do with the three-man horn frontline. Bart Platteau once more brings his eloquent and warm-toned flute and we also have Ernie Hammes on trumpet and flugelhorn as well as Marc Mommans on the tenor.

Ms. Figarova's music is cool, deceptively cool. It's cool in the way that Herbie Hancock's Speak Like A Child is cool. It has moments of fire but it's the legato piano soloing and the lush carpet of beautifully voiced horns that gives everything a gentle quality, cool-like.

To appreciate Figarova's music you have to listen more than a few times because it's pretty subtle. It's music of a pleasant sort, but that initial impression broadens on repeated listening as one comes to understand the sophisticated melodic writing-voicings and the lyrically inspired Figarova piano.

This new one may be the most subtle of them all. We have a very well-rehearsed group with very capable soloists playing a baker's dozen of Figarova's jazz compositions. It's a real pleasure to hear, but it has a latent punch you'll feel as you keep listening. Get a copy and put it on a few times and you'll see what I mean.

Ms. Figarova is carving out her niche with some wonderful music. Hear it.