July 10, 2019

  • Join the Journey with Richard Carr

     

    Richard Carr: Places I’ve Walked
    Mia Theodoratus, harp. Ben Carr, bass, electronics.
    Steve Gorn, bansuri flute, clarinet. Joakim Lartey & Fre Atlast, percussion.
    Peter Head, homemade guitar, electric guitar.

    Sylvain Leroux, fula flute. Gus Mancini, alto sax.

    Joe North, tenor sax.

    Ted Morcaldi guitar, electronics.

    Richard Carr piano, violin, viola, guitar, electric violin, sampled instruments

    Ravello Records 8012
    Total Time:  54:30
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    In Places I’ve Walked composer Richard Carr invites listeners to accompany him on a travelogue across the world in a journey that has the feel of a personal soundtrack.  He incorporates a variety of field recordings and other natural sounds that become part of an album whose musical materials sometimes feel folkish with a global sensibility.  Each track being like a meditation of some new visual, or personal, experience.  The music is composed for harps, ethnic flutes, traditional winds and strings, guitars, and sampled instruments as well as piano.

    The album is constructed in four parts that each explore differing landscapes.  After a particularly reflective opening (“Fjordland”), we are introduced to the primary guitar motif that Carr uses as a unifying element in this collection of pieces in “Cordillera Blanca”.  The music has a somewhat improvisatory feel with expanded, jazz-like harmonies, and an ostinato technique that adds forward motion.  The use of the bansuri flute, set against the harp, is an equally beautiful color in the “Markha Valley”.  Part three explores a variety of natural experiences framed with the opening “Sacred and Profane” using recorded Moroccan music and a right-wing commentator juxtaposed in a rather unusual blend of sounds.  The other sections of this part have reflections on water, gardens, murals and light.  The  more extensive “Through Streams” and the later "Bowery Murals" have the greatest feel of third-stream jazz.  The album concludes with “Cementerio de La Recoleta”—a famous Argentinian necropolis where Evita is entombed.  As the album progresses, Carr invites us to reflect on our own personal journeys in music that moves us through these moments of the sacred and the secular intersecting throughout one’s life until we all come to an end.  It is a rather fascinating, and often mesmerizing listen that is spectacularly unique.  Carr’s musical language is quite accessible and his often delicate shadings of different instrumental and vocal combinations adds to this seemingly seamless series of musical episodes and scenes.  While the music tends to be mostly tonal, there are some moments that seem to have a more improvisational feel that brings a bit more dissonant exploration, often warmed by atmospheric textures.

    Places I’ve Walked is more than just a musical meditation because the journey requires a bit more than that.  Its sensibilities come out of the worlds of global music and New Age qualities blended into an interesting album.