REVIEW: ANDREW COLYER - Christmas Time - Solo Piano Improvisations

ANDREW COLYER 
Christmas Time – Solo Piano Improvisations
Inner Nova Music (2018)

Christmas Time is a collection of, shall I say, interesting interpretations/arrangements of traditional holiday/Christmas music (some originals are also on the album) from pianist Andrew Colyer. Subtitled "Solo Piano Improvisations," the liner notes describe how these eleven tracks are 100 percent of the moment including, in the words of the artist, "warts and all." Four of the eleven tracks are penned by the artist and they include some of the best songs here. If you love a more standard version of carols such as "Silent Night," "Let It Snow," and "We Three Kings," you may want to give this a pass. I will say that the first time I played the album, I was unsure how I felt about it, but it grew on me once I surrendered my preconceptions of how these songs should sound. No such bias prevented me from enjoying the original numbers, all of which range from quite pleasant to downright beautiful. "Melancholy Holiday" is somber yet beautiful, a downtempo number that evokes the feelings of those who spend the holiday season alone and lonely. Lower register chords are combined with middle register refrains to impart of sensation of weight and drama while the upper register runs do little to "brighten" the mood, which is as intended, most likely. "A Night in Brooklyn" shares a slight sensation of somberness with "Melancholy Holiday" but it is less dark and more apt to depict walking through the streets late at night with snow falling softly, musing on the holiday and what it offers, both good and bad.

Colyer’s interpretations of the standards vary widely, but none as stridently so as "Let It Snow in New Orleans" and the title basically spells out what you will hear, i.e. a boogie-woogie/jazzy take on the secular carol, with a bouncy rhythm and an infectious joyfulness. "Laissez les bon temps roule" indeed, especially at Christmastime! Among the artist’s more interesting arrangements is what he does with a two-part (tracks 3 and 9) re-working of Vince Guaraldi’s iconic tune, "Christmas Time Is Here." Given a stark and minimalist interpretation, I first thought to myself "Where is the song’s childlike joyfulness and warmth?" Later on, I started viewing it as how someone my age, who first watched A Charlie Brown Christmas as a young boy might now feel about not so much the song itself, but the holiday, i.e. viewing it less with starry-eyed wonder and more as a well-worn glow of nostalgia. Part 2 of the "separated" piece hews closer to the original but still offers a unique take with a slight jazzier inflection. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" also gets a more somber, low-key interpretation, retaining the warmth of the melody but also creating some minimalist space between the notes.

Christmas Time may not be an immediately enjoyable holiday music album, but from my perspective, this actually works in its favor (as it did for me), as I slowly but surely came to appreciate not just Colyer’s imaginative improvisations, but also the mixing and mastering of the album (it sounds fantastic!). I suggest checking it out if you are in the mood for something both old and new!

Christmas Time is available at CDBaby, Amazon, and iTunes.

DVD REVIEW: New Horizon - Aerial Ambience Relaxing the Mind, Calming the Spirit

AERIAL AMBIENCE: NEW HORIZON

Relaxing the Mind, Calming the Spirit

A collaboration between Sky Lakes Media

and the music duo Minstrel Streams

For a brief time (mid '80s to early '90s) the now-defunct Miramar record label took some new age music albums and joined the evocative music with equally beautiful nature photography, creating, in essence, a video music album using the VHS format. The first two were well-known collaborations between David Lanz and Paul Speer (Natural States in 1985 and Desert Vision in 1987). Those were followed by Pete Bardens' (R.I.P.) Water Colours in 1991 and Tangerine Dreams' Canyon Dreams in 1992. This format never really caught on, although I personally enjoyed them (the label also released some ground-breaking computer animation videos in the "Mind's Eye" series).

Fast forward to now, and nature videography has grown by leaps and bounds due to two technological advances: high definition digital video and drone videography (allowing pictures never before possible via helicopter). As a result, Mark and Michelle Unger decided to resurrect the concept of nature videos set to new age music via their company Sky Lakes Media. The pair joined forces with another couple, Matt and Rebecca Stuart (who record under the name of Minstrel Streams) and the result is the video "album" (on DVD format) titled New Horizon (this appears to be the first release in a series entitled Aerial Ambience). The DVD title is also the title  of the album by the Stuarts and features music from that well-reviewed album (of which I wrote "The music has a timeless grace, a rich beauty, and an overwhelmingly lovely and simple charm, [simple meaning not cluttered with artifice or embellished needlessly]. There is so much inherent warmth and good will present throughout all thirteen selections that it would be damn near impossible to stay in a bad mood (if you started out that way) and played the whole album through.").

The thirteen selections feature beautifully shot videos of locations in southern Oregon and northern California and the images are, indeed, stunning! From the opening selection, "Ancient Mariner," with video of Indian Sands on the majestic southern Oregon coastline, we then set out for the Smith River area of northern California on the track "Come to the Waters," and progress on from there, visiting lakes, canyons, mountain ranges, more coastline, and even a vineyard! Some videos are ground-based, many are from drones in flight, and there are even some underwater shots! The amazing visuals are wedded to the wonderful melodies of the Stuarts' music (who even appear on camera in the vineyard track, "Golden Treasures"). I am particularly awed by the coastal videos, but that's a matter of my being emotionally drawn to coastlines, because the rivers, the canyons, the mountains, are all beautiful.

Joining Matt (guitar and piano) and Rebecca (flutes) are some stellar guest artists, including Jill Haley (English horn), Paul Kochanski (string bass), Eugene Friesen (cello), Noah Wilding (vocals), Matt Heaton (bodhran), and Tom Eaton on percussion and accordion. The music was recorded at Will Ackerman's Imaginary Road Studios in Vermont and Tom Eaton handled the engineering, mixing and mastering, so you know this is a video album that will sound as good as it looks!

Hopefully, New Horizon (the DVD) will inspire others to bring this format back to life. With the aforementioned advances in technology, the time is right. Viewed on a big screen HDTV with good speakers (e.g. a high end soundbar such as I have) it's quite the experience (especially the drone fly-overs). Tempo and energy level of the songs vary, but not distractingly so. However, one can always just watch one or two of the videos as a way of "whisking away" from the everyday and de-stressing. Or one might also view this as a precursor to voyaging to these locales to glimpse what lies ahead! Either way, or however you experience this DVD, it's a fantastic merging of the two mediums. I applaud both the Ungers and the Stuarts – well done, folks!

The DVD seems to be only available at CDBaby. I haven;t been able to find any sample videos (sorry).

REVIEW: TOM CAUFIELD - Deep Cuts from the Moral Wilderness

TOM CAUFIELD

Deep Cuts from the Moral Wilderness

Guitarist Tom Caufield possesses a truly unique and particularly intriguing musical vision. Every album of his that I have heard reveals something new about his composing and performing talent. Even knowing this, though, I was still startled by his new album, Deep Cuts from the Moral Wilderness. While Caufield has never lacked for ambition, the departure from his signature styles is marked. The backstory of how this wonderful recording came to be is worth recounting. Performing at a candlelight service at a Presbyterian church in Los Angeles, he had the chance to see performances by cellist Judy Kang and violinist Alicia Spillias. In Caufield's own words " [I was] impressed by their artistry and enchanted by the ancient sound of strings, [so I] asked them to collaborate with [me] on an upcoming set, as [I] wanted to hear [my] melodies played with this burnished, haunting magic." A second violinist, Zach Paul, joined the trio for a performance at The Last Bookstore in downtown LA and the die was cast, so to speak. Before heading into the recording studio, a second cellist, Mark Edward Lewis, was added.

Deep Cuts from the Moral Wilderness (a cryptic title if there ever was one) flows forth with a sense of subtle vibrancy and artistic creativity, a fusion of the chamber music aesthetic with a minimalist approach to ambient guitar music that is, by turns, beautifully touching, hauntingly sad, and elegantly playful. The feeling of simpatico put forth by these artists who, if one were to be straightforward about it, are relative strangers, is a revelation of how quickly musicians can come to know each other and meld their talents into a cohesive visionary musical expression.

Long-time fans of Caufield's music may be surprised at how unselfishly he has surrendered the spotlight for nearly the entire 25-minutes of music on Deep Cuts… As a music reviewer, I have often extolled those "lead" artists of an ensemble who push their fellow players to step forward rather than he/she hogging center stage (in jazz, pianist Lisa Hilton is another shining example of this trait). It's not that Caufield's guitar mastery is absent on the recording, but more that it is relegated to a supporting role. Again, in his own words "I’ve moved the guitar to the back and brought cello and violin forward, letting them showcase the melodies, harmonies and movement. Instead of fretwork, I focused on arrangements, mood and sequence, aiming to create a half-hour ambient cloud, all cut of one cloth, but with enough detail and movement to also be engaging." Taking these sentences as a statement of the mission of Deep Cuts… leads me to conclude that he has succeeded in every way possible. There is an elegant simplicity to these six pieces, yet it is simplicity wedded to an emotional richness and deep resonance of feeling so that it would be difficult to not be intensely moved (as I was) when listening to this music (provided one has any appreciation whatsoever for the acoustic/neo-classical sound which permeates the recording).

Detailing the individual six pieces, there is the somber and mournful opening "Warszawa" (penned by David Bowie and Brian Eno, one of two pieces here not composed by Caufield, although the arrangement is his), with its plaintive mixture of strummed acoustic guitar and violin, followed by the relatively cheery, mildly uptempo elegance of "Fresh Astonishments," with a fusion of fingerstyle guitar and cello/violin which evokes sunlight and springtime. "Written on the Sky" (composed by Max Richter) begins with a semi-Mediterranean guitar, melding with a gorgeous cello/violin melody that evokes the feeling of fond remembrance, adding in some haunting sorrow in the conclusion. Delicate fingerstyle guitar likewise opens "The Nature of a Heart is to Yearn," and, as one might surmise from the title, here the mood is romantic, and the higher pitched violin melody imparts a subtle feeling of wistfulness which is counterpointed by the underlying sweetly flowing cello line. Reflection and somberness come to the forefront on "In the Realm of the Senses" with its deliberate, slow cadence of the strummed guitar chords and violin/cello melodies which echo each other. The concluding "The Weakness that Leads to Strength" is an emotional "wrapping up" of the themes presented in the previous five selections, with an evocation of a  mood that is both content yet also a tiny bit hoping for something more. The string refrain on this track is too beautiful to describe in words, as the key it's played in gets higher and higher, as if painting a musical portrait of the title, i.e. one becomes stronger through one's weakness.

Deep Cuts from the Moral Wilderness showcases Tom Caufield's maturity as a composer and his talent as an arranger for neo-classical music in a string ensemble setting, as well as, once again, displaying his performing talent and deft touch on his own instrument. I can't recommend this album enough – it's a stunning, brilliant work.

Deep Cuts...and all of Tom's albums are available directly from him at his online store. Some albums are also available from the usual online retailers, e.g. CDBaby and Amazon.