Concertante: Modern Works for Guitar
Campbell Ross, guitar;
Benjamin Greaves, violin. Matthew Ryan, viola. Ngaio Toombes, cello.
Dave Mibus, piano. Lachlan Symons, bass. James Whiting, drums/percussion.
Disc One: Total Time:  53:47
Disc Two: Total Time: 44:53
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Ravello presents this two-disc set featuring composer and guitarist Campbell Ross in music that melds classical touches with a host of world music and jazz.  The first disc focuses on Ross’ own music while the second introduces listeners to the work of two brothers Ariel and Gerardo Dirie.

The album’s title comes from the three-movement work that opens disc one.  Inspired by Claude Bolling’s Concerto for guitar and jazz piano, Ross crafted a piece that blends various musical styles from popular (blues, jazz), world music (in this case elements of Latin music), and classical (i.e. Spanish guitar) style.  These various elements are strewn across the piece.  For anyone familiar with the Bolling work, this makes for an apt companion.  It is filled with fun melodic content and humor.  The string trio adds more of an element of class to the jazz-like implications of the music.  The “concertante” aspect is addressed by transferring important solos to the different instruments along the way which lends the music some of its additional color.  While the first movement seems a bit long, the central “rumba” is very moving lyrical pause before the final little light “Allegro.”  Unique harmonic twists and spun out melodic ideas against the shifting meters make for a fine conclusion.  Many will find it a delightful discovery in that sort of crossover musical genre.

This longer is work is followed by pieces for solo guitar.  First is the composer’s own four-movement Sonata (2011) with its nods to those of Ponce and Castelnuovo-Tedesco.  The pieces have more formal structures with an opening movement in sonata-allegro form and a concluding rondo.  The second movement takes its inspiration from Schubert with its songlike melancholy themes.  The third movement has a more intimate feel with interesting harmonic shifts.  At just under 20 minutes it is an important addition to the guitar repertoire.  To close off the album, Ross created two sets of variations, both on familiar Lennon-McCartney songs.  First is an exploration of variations based on “Norwegian Wood” followed by another on “On World Without Logic”.  In this case, one may wish to have the tunes handy at the end of each piece.  That said, these are interesting improvisation-like explorations of these tunes.

The bulk of disc two is given over to music by Argentinian composer Ariel Dirie (1960-2010) who taught at the Conservatory in Cordoba.  His brother Gerardo had a collection of his pieces which Ross was given for this recording of premieres.  The first of these is a gorgeous little work, Mesurando Y Dalias.  It is in a traditional style.  What follows are ten delightful Estudios.  These are essentially works written to help explore different technical aspects of playing the guitar crafted here in delicate pieces that have nice melodic content and interesting rhythmic interest that includes a couple tangos, and a final Argentinean dance (the chacarera) in the mix.  The pieces maintain a traditional harmonic style with thematic ideas that make them more than just technical exercises.  Listeners more familiar with guitar repertoire will likely appreciate more the way these different combinations of fingerings and techniques will translate again and again in other more familiar music, but here they are just the means to many beautiful ends.  The end result is music that has a playful wit.  Sometimes light percussion adds extra flavor (like the country-folk style that appears in the “Allegretto”).  There are also sounds of the bush that opening and close the album and appear in a couple other places unobtrusively.  The music thus fits quite well with South American folk-influenced art music.  The final work on the album is by Gerardo Dirie (b. 1956).

The three-movement Si un dia el Olvido is like a musical exploration of memory.  The first movement seems as if we are viewing things through a haze as ideas are introduced in smaller bits and pieces to grow into slightly more angular, or chromatic arrival points.  Motives are introduced in lines that have an almost serial outline, though the music itself tends to be more unsettling due to its ambiguity than any modernist tendency, though dissonance is an important component.  The central movement picks up the pace perhaps causing forgetfulness in the speed with which one is confronted or moving about.  This is in the traditional shifts from arpeggios and long lines that can be found throughout Spanish guitar literature.  The music here too maintains a bit of dissonance with more angular lines that seem to reference forgotten dances.  The final movement has references to the troubadour composer Ventadorn and more modern troubadours Lennon and McCartney.  With a playing time of just over 13 minutes, it is an important modern guitar work well played here by Ross.

It is not uncommon for there to be the odd performer noise in guitar recordings and there is some of that here but nothing obtrusive by any means.  Campbell Ross is on great display here as a guitarist with the ability to play across a number of genres and his program here demonstrates this.  His own works make for engaging listening that receive compelling performances.  There is a little bit for everyone in this set from jazz listeners, to those who enjoy Latin American-flavored concert music, to modern guitar music lovers.  The album allows the listener an opportunity to sit back and enjoy the many styles and moods in well-sequenced selections.  With both discs selling for the price of one it is quite the bargain.

Interfaces: Jazz Meets Electronics
Jeff Morris, live sampling. Karl Berger, vibraphone & piano.
Joe Hertenstein, drum set/percussion.
Ravello Records 7998
Total Time:  51:31
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Composer Jeff Morris is known for his unusual, and often surprising, explorations and integrations of sounds, electronics, and experiences.  His music skirts traditional concert hall work and performance art,  Here he is joined by two consummate jazz performers, Karl Berger and Joe Hertenstein across ten works that challenge our expectations of the genre.  Morris uses technology more as an instrument unto itself by using his own skills in improvisation to respond to the performances of the music as it progresses.  In this respect, the music is a natural outgrowth of third stream jazz.  Morris counts Ornette Coleman and experimental composer Conlon Nancarrow among influences and philosophical compatriots.

Across ten tracks, Morris intends to challenge his listener’s expectations about what sounds and rhythmic ideas float out of jazz gestures.  This free jazz experimental style will strike the listener from the very first track, “Upzy”.  The electronic and computer sounds serve more as a percussive backdrop, sometimes adding manipulations of the piano or drum set ideas and reworking them against the extended jazz harmonies.  The piano pops out with a variety of jazz-infused lines and chordal progressions that struggle sometimes to come out of the percussive background.  In effect, it is like all three performers are improvising at the same time.  As disorienting as this may seem at first, there is enough tonal material here for the listener to latch onto.  It helps to then listen closely to see how this might be altered sonically by the sampling and rhythmically (“Into”—which adds a vibraphone) through percussion and sampling.  Sometimes these will be grouped in loops (“A Solo is the Nth Melody”) and other times the sampled material is reimagined and played back through sampling adjustments reacting to the live performance (“Into”).  “Unwind” and “Into” are connected in that the latter is retrograde of the former.  Bebop-like gestures can also be heard.

Interfaces is indeed an appropriate title for this experimental free-jazz release.  Sometimes it is as if we have been dropped into the middle of the improvisational section of a larger work.  The electronics and sampling here are akin to what might here in popular urban forms.  What helps draw the listener into the music though are the piano lines and threads.  These provide a basis upon which one can better appreciate all the unusual sounds and effects that Morris creates.  As he further breaks down the chords and rhythmic jazz tropes, they are reintegrated into new sounds and ideas upon which each of the performers react and interact.  That process makes the album a rather intriguing exploration as Morris deconstructs and reconstructs our expectations for what sound and music can be.