Above Blue

Above Blue

ASIN: B00000IJCC

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Myra Melford's second outing with her quintet the Same River, Twice is an impressive statement of both her stylistic range and her generosity as a bandleader. The pianist embraces the jazz avant-garde, but she also knows the value of a catchy tune. "Be Melting Snow" begins with a nimble unison articulation of an air that Chick Corea would doubtless like to call his own, then slips into a stormy, percussive piano solo that resolves into a sweet ballad statement by trumpeter Dave Douglas. Melford's writing is ambitiously varied, but also digestibly sequential. The title suite begins with a lush, near-classical exchange between Melford and Erik Friedlander's plucked cello, then launches into a gleeful two-horn steeplechase after a theme reminiscent of those Eastern European motifs that Douglas plays in his own Tiny Bell Trio. Friedlander returns to take a bluesy bowed solo that morphs into a Latin-tinged polyphony enlivened by Chris Speed's clarinet, which winds ribbons around yet another splendid trumpet solo before the composition's unabashedly melodramatic resolution. --Bill Meyer

From Jazziz
As jazz is a great river of music rushing through the 20th century into the unfolding future, pianist-composer Melford's quintet, the Same River Twice, confronts the paradoxical rapids of flux: how to retain identity, consistency, and spontaneity in view of meaningful experience being ever and always new. Just by focusing on this question, the leader and band face what's happening now, since most serious jazzers must struggle with a world of sudden and enormous change. That Melford and her band find some answers by being themselves - individualistic and original, yet also hyper-sensitive to collective sound - marks Above Blue as a work of art for seasons to come. Melford the pianist has a remarkable range, from straightforward, noble sentiment through complex, motivic development (in solos and backdrops that bespeak thought as well as feeling) to tempestuous outbreaks, and, always, a restoration of order. Melford the composer creates interlaced organic forms more akin to the supernaturalism of 19th-century Chicago architect Louis Sullivan than the geometry of his protégé Frank Lloyd Wright, whom she often cites as an inspiration. She's also extremely generous toward her fine-tuned ensemble, encouraging its members to improvise parts anew with each performance even though she's written episodes flush with chamber-group detail. Her aces respond enthusiastically with singing tones and unfailingly appropriate effusions. Trumpeter Dave Douglas and tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Chris Speed are as complementary as sparring partners; Erik Friedlander plucks and bows his cello with brio, foreground or midground or background, whatever is right; drummer Michael Sarin's touch and accents are firm but self-effacing. The music in each of the eight tracks here flows without hesitation or restraint from embodying Melford's soulful, sorrowful, and ultimately affirmative themes to interpreting them, frequently extrapolating way beyond their original design. The confidence to go so far into uncharted territory and the ability to carry listeners along then bring them back attest to Melford's vision and her team's trust in it. These attributes also signal that this tributary, merging into the mighty mainstream, has its own integrity, not to be swept aside or diffused by merely trendy tides. In the next millennium, jazz will be based on personal vocabularies like Melford's, drawing on, but also radically adapting, blues, swing, and a breadth of other "traditional" qualities. It will still be "jazz" if its players interact as they do here, closely and for singular effect, with expressive intent behind their virtuosic performances. The Same River Twice may seem twisty, even meandering, and sometimes untamed or "free." But to enjoy it, you need only lie back, settle in, and go with the flow.

Tracks:

Union Hall
Fez Up
Loosening up the Queen
Waltzing Above Ground
Reprieve
Perusal
Flying Vegetables of the Apocalypse
Blue Window
The Grass, If It Is Blue (Aint Nothin But A Polka)

Album Description

Guy Klucevsek is teaching the accordion to whoop and wheeze in strange new ways. Once condemned to drunken requests for Who Stole the Kishka and Happy Wanderer, this virtuoso now plays deconstructed, reconstructed art songs and dance tunes, translated into a metalanguage of his own making. His is a musical Esperanto fashioned from hocketed melodies, giddy with arabesques; Henry Cowell-style tone clusters; the eerie difference tones of “acoustic phenomena” composer Pauline Oliveros; the hypnotic phasing and locomotive ostinatos of early minimalism; low register drones punctuated by high register yips, in a manner reminiscent of Scottish bagpipe and Bulgarian accordion music; dark, Gyorgi Ligeti-ish sound clouds, lit from within by lightning-like melodic flickerings; the metric modulations of Elliot Carter; a Morton Feldmanesque sense of grand gestures, and of microscopic movements; an appropriation aesthetic shared with John Zorn and other New York avant-gardists; and a rollicking, roisterous energy borrowed from dance forms and folk music the world over.

In Flying Vegetables of the Apocalypse, Klucevsek gives us a postmodern conundrum: dance music informed by avant-garde styles designed to be listened to in a straight-backed chair, wearing starched duds and too-tight shoes; art music enlivened by dance musics best appreciated while slipping and sliding over sweat-slick floors. It is, refreshingly, a holistic postmodernism rather than an explosion in the Toontown sounds effects department. The identities of the Slavic, South American, and American idioms from which the composer draws inspiration are preserved, while the twentieth century classicism that is his anchor remains unshakable.

Langgaard: Music Of The Spheres/Four Tone Pictures
Average customer rating:

A work of awesome proportions and intimate emotion

One of the most extraordinary works ever written

Music to Amaze Your Ears

Langgaard: Music Of The Spheres/Four Tone Pictures

Manufacturer: Chandos
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
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Rued Langaard: Antikrist [Hybrid SACD]

Per Nørgård: Symphony No. 3; Concerto in due tempi

Symphony 6: At the End of the Day / Terrains Vague

Orchestral Works

Per Nørgard: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5

ASIN: B000000B0N
Release Date: 1997-04-22

Tracks:

Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like Sunbeams On A Coffin Decorated With Sweet Smelling Flowers -
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like The Twinklying Of Stars In The Blue Sky At Sunset -
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like Light And The Depths
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like The Refraction Of Sunbeams In The Waves
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like The Twinkling Of A Pearl Of Dew In The Sun On A Beautiful Summer's Morning
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Longing - Despair - Ecstasy
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Soul Of The World - Abyss - All Soul's Day
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): I Wish...!
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Chaos - Ruin - Far And Near -
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Flowers Wither
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Glimpse Of The Sun Through Tears -
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Bells Pealing: Look Here He Comes!
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): The Gospel Of Flowers - From The Far Distance -
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): The New Day -
Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): The End: Antichrist - Christ
Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures): I. Like Words For A Summer's Day Saga
Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures): II. A Scent Of Mull And Mud
Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures): III. A Golden Flake Hovers Above
Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures): IV. The Flowering Summer Was Linked To The Harvest

Amazon.com

Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) was the odd duck of Danish music. He remained doggedly Romantic at a time when Romanticism was out, and he had his own funny little experiments with music that noboby particularly liked. We owe a debt to Chandos and Danacord for keeping Langgaard's music current. Music of the Spheres (1916-18) predates Gyorgy Ligeti by 50 years with its bright, pointillistic assertions and groups of ideas that evolve to their own inner logic. As demonstrated in Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures), Langgaard's music has an openness that allows his tone clusters to expand, contract, or simply repeat (as Ligeti would do much later). Discover Langgaard. --Paul Cook

Customer Reviews:

A work of awesome proportions and intimate emotion.......2006-12-11

This Chandos disc containing two pieces by Danish composer Rued Langgaard is one of the most pleasant surprises this fan of modern-classical music has come across. Langgaard (1893-1952) was an outsider and eccentric in Danish music life, a virtuoso organist who succeeded only in his late forties at getting a position, and a composer of wild tales of the Antichrist coming into the world who found it almost impossible to get his music played. In the late 1960s, his music was rediscovered by scholars and his importance in Danish musical history is now certain, but he is still little-known in the modern-classical scene. We should be grateful to the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra & Choir and Gennady Rozhdestvensky for their performance and to Chandos for releasing the recording.

"Music of the Spheres" for soprano, chorus, orchestra, and distant orchestra (1916-1918) is stunning. The innovations here are considerable: exploiting the performance space in the use of two orchestras, writing for an "open" piano where glissandi are produced directly on the strings, and of course the clusters and polyphonic webs, massive and seemingly motionless blocks of sound reminiscent of Gyorgy Ligeti. Indeed, the Hungarian composer exclaimed that he was a Langaard imitator when Per Norgard showed him a copy of the score in 1968. But the purity of the string writing reminds me of Alexander Knaifel, and the massive proportions of the orchestral writing at its loudest is somewhat like Sandstroem's "The High Mass".

But, as is often said, it wouldn't matter how much Langgaard were ahead of his time in "Music of the Spheres" if the music wasn't great. And it is, one of the most moving half-hours of orchestral music I'm acquainted with. Langgaard was a Romantic in a time when Romanticism was out of fashion, and the proportions of what the listener may recognize as struggle, momentary defeat, and victory are just as powerful as in Mahler.

"Music of the Spheres" is an exceptional piece in Langgaard's total output. The "Four Tone Pictures" for soprano and orchestra are somewhat more typical of his art. Written on poems by J. Blicher-Clausen, Ivan Turgeniev, and Holger Drachmann, they are fairly tame lieder. These suggest that the modern-classical fan can pass on most of Langgaard's music, but "Music of the Spheres" is so good that at least this disc should be in your collection.

One of the most extraordinary works ever written.......2003-11-21

Music of the Spheres, by the eccentric Danish composer Rued Langgaard, really is the work that has everything. Written between 1916 and 1918, it uses a multitude of techniques that would not be rediscovered until after the wars. Multifarious tone clusters, floating micropolyphony, a piano played directly on the strings, an entire offstage orchestra, blurred choral singing, prefigurations of minimalism: you name it, this work has it. Yet it also has Scriabinesque ecstasy, Straussian opulence and a wacked-out religious subtext in which Christ and Antichrist clash in the violent climax to the whole work.

None of this would matter, though, if the music weren't any good. But it is good--probably the best thing Langgaard ever wrote (so far I've heard about 30 of his works, and none of them matches this one). The various short episodes flow one into another with perfect clarity and logic, the orchestration is superlative, and the dramatic writing at the climax is sonically overwhelming. Fortunately, Chandos match this work with a tremendous performance by the Danish National Radio Symphony and Choir, conducted by that indefatigable servant of underperformed music, Gennady Rozhdestvensky. This recording should be considered the best currently available, and it outstrips the rivals with ease.

Any other work isn't likely to fare so well in comparison to this, but the Four Tone Pictures are by no means eclipsed. Opulent songs in a Straussian harmonic language--though lacking the German composer's gift for melody--they are the perfect way to come down from the musical high of Music of the Spheres.

Music to Amaze Your Ears.......2003-07-23

Rued Langgaard was the man that time forgot. Completely neglected in his native Denmark because he did not fall within the prevailing neo-classic aesthetic set by Nielsen, Langgaard was rediscovered in the 60s when Per Norgard gave a score of Music of the Spheres to Gyorg Ligeti at a competition and after a minute Ligeti announced, "it seems as though I am a Langgaard imitator." Though Langgaard was essentially a conservative late romantic composer, he was capable of some real moments of innovation. He not only presaged Ligeti's color style, but also elements of minimalism, most especially in his string quartets.

Music of the Spheres is Langgaard at his most original. This work is a stunning series of small tone pictures. From the very beginning of the work, with the shimmering cluster of string harmonies over ominous timpani, through out the work, experiment reigns. Langgaard is always tonal, but in this work shows a fascination with orchestral sound and tonal clusters that was probably about 50 years ahead of the times. And yet, in the middle of the work there are sections that could come directly from Schonberg's early Gurrelieder or even the symphonies of Gade. It is a truly astonishing aural sound feast and should be a staple of the repertoire.

The accompanying Tone Pictures, four tone poems on nature themes, are also quite beautiful, though much more conventional as music. Here is Langgaard the Romantic and he is quite a good Romantic actually. The orchestrations are lush, the harmony sensuous and there is just enough oddness to mark the work as Langgaard's and no one else's.

Tracks:

Sing To My Heart A Song
I Shall Think Of You
It Is A Spring Night
Little Girl In Blue
Moonlight
Three Poems Of The Sea: Sea Dream
Three Poems Of The Sea: Waiting
Three Poems Of The Sea: Song Of The Albatross
There Were Two Swans
Be Still My Heart
I Did Not Know
My Love For You Has Grown
Love
Parting
The Sun Had Set
Heart Cry
Far Above The Purple Hills
If I Had Known
Tell Me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky
I Only Know
Three Oriental Chants: Life
Three Oriental Chants: Shadows
Three Oriental Chants: Eternity
Longing

Average customer rating:

Blue Skies Above
Matt & Shannon Heaton
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | International | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000FTAZ6U
Release Date: 2006-02-28

Average customer rating:

Head Above Water
Diamond Edge
Manufacturer: Blue Heron
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: B000LPMP4S

Product Description

Tracks: Head Above Water/Shadows in the Rain/Once Again/Winds of Fire/Vulture/Spots So Blue.

Average customer rating:

Above the Beyond
Diatomic
Manufacturer: Electric Blue
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: B000SXJYLA

Product Description

Tracks: 1. Radio edit 2. Original club mix 3. Dub mix. Includes bonus DIY video clip.

Average customer rating:

Above and Beyond
Wild Blue Yonder
Manufacturer: Wild Blue Yonder
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Country | Styles | Music

General | Bluegrass | Country | Styles | Music

Contemporary | Bluegrass | Country | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAD19K
Release Date: 2004-05-18

Average customer rating:

Lost in Blue

Manufacturer: The Turnstones
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

General | Vocal Pop | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAESHO
Release Date: 2002-07-02

Average customer rating:

Sky Blue Above & Liquid Desert Below
Art Sachs
Manufacturer: Art Sachs
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | International | Styles | Music

General | New Age | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000GIXWPG
Release Date: 2006-06-25

Tracks:

A Guitar Thing
Lady of the Forest
Something Smooth
N.A.F.B. ( The world as we know it)
Desert Water
Rhyolite
Interlude with Drums
Mt. Charleston
Calico
Everything Serenade

Product Description

"Music for the traveling soul". An eclectic collection of instruments with ambient sounds, creating music to relax and envision by. Strong underlying rhythms that will carry the listener away.

Average customer rating:

Miracle At Quecreek Mine

ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: B000GFPP4A

Product Description

1.introduction.2.miracle at quecreek mine.3.the laurel mountain song.4.why'd you go/take your time.5.dreamin alone.6.blue sky up above.7.big hole river.8.someone to hold.9.wyoming wyoming.10.painting on the wall.11.why'd we ever fall in love loke this.12.the angel on my shoulder is you.13.rainbow-covered blanket

Jazz Music:

Jazz Music

Jazz Music