hee. Cigolea also contributes two of his own compositions - Just My Eyes, and Doina & Joe. · Tribute to an Idol is a strong first outing for Cristine! Cigolea that will particularly appeal to the fan of Classical trumpet playing, as well as aspiring brass players. Merlin Williams terview'. But the sound of this disc is nearly perfect. John S. Gray MODERN & CONTEMPORARY experienced by human beings ruled by others df their kind. Michelle Assay Eshglzpour :-::,,-,,,.:-.,.·:
appear in every territory. With Naxos he has no such worries. Bruce Surtees Mompou Complete Piano Works Federico Mompou Brilliant Classics How did it happen that I've spent a lifetime steeped in western classical music without ever before encountering the output of Spain's Federico Mompou (1893-1987)? I'm even a pianist, like he was. Well, better late acquaintance than never. Shy Mompou, for his part, waited until he was over eighty to record these dozens of fetching, evocative miniatures which constitute the bulk of his work. It is as if we are invited to leaf through his lifetime gathering of albums of musical snapshots from Barcelona and Paris, his twin cities of residence. Folklike Spanish ballads abound. So do robust yet refined Catalan dances. Mompou' s simple style utilizes much repetition of slender tonal material, to craft his typically short, two-and-threeminute pieces. Imagine a lightclassical cross between Satie Alec Wilder, and Alan Hovhaness'. Plus castanets. The composer's keyboard playing is direct and serviceable. Not elegant, though the music itself provides the elegance. Recording quality is fine if you crank up the listening volume enough. Lengthy critical essays, translated from French and Spanish, seek both to immerse us in Mompou' s esthetic world and analyze the music: between their small print in the booklet and their impressionistic, what-the-heck-does-thismean prose, good luck should you try to read them. Peter Kristian Mose Fractures Christian Bouchard Empreintes DIGITALes IMEC 0474 Christian Bouchard moves fluidly between lush spacious environments and agitated, rough, edgy ] ULY 1 - SEPTEMBER 7 2004 punctuations. By doing so, he makes an alliance with soundscape composition, glitch, and acousmatic art. His choices to distort sounds or to magnify normally discarded recorded artifacts are offset by his imagination for colour and his feeling for the inherent nuances of sounds manipulated from environmental sources. In summary, the worlds of glitch and a filmic acousmatic sense go hand in hand in his sensibilities. There is not a conscious attempt to construct narrative in his works like in the Gotfrit CD that I reviewed last month. However images and vestiges of stories do' peer out from time to time, products I think more of the inherent associative qualities of environmental sounds than of a conscious attempt to construct the sense of a storyline in his music. Bouchard's early works on the CD maintain a compactness and economy that I appreciate more than in his later and more longerform works. But then again, the use of conceptual structural models in these earlier works, such as the portrait of a soundscape from the point of view of a parking meter, is more appealing to my ears these days than the looser and more meandering structures that are more common in acousmatic art. In closing, Bouchard has a nice edge and grit to his music that I think will appeal to listeners looking for something new. Darren Copeland JAZZ & IMPROVISED I'm All For You (Ballad Songbook) Joe Lovano; Hank Jones; George Mraz; Paul Motian Blue Note EMI 72435 91950 2 5 Okay, you shouldn't 'judge a book by its cover', but I had good feelings about tenorman Joe Lovano's CD even before opening it. What promise: Hank Jones, George Mraz and Paul Motian; and great standards and jazz tunes. And it was all recorded live to two tracks no headphones. '
