High Strung Tall Tales
ASIN: B000003BXW
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Adrian Legg comes out of the British "baroque folk" guitar tradition of Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, and Richard Thompson, and like his predecessors, Legg plays the Anglo-Celtic roots of folk, country and classical "early music" with a chamber musician's ear for precision and harmony. On his new album, "High Strung Tall Tales,'' Legg displays a rare knack for combining strong melodic lines with arpeggiated harmonies in such a way that they flow with a graceful unity. Guitarists love him for his ability to pull off these one-person "duets," but lay listeners will love the sheer beauty of melodic and harmonic interplay.
"High Strung Tall Tales" serves up a generous serving of 20 tracks, covering all the far-flung aspects of Legg's career. You have the improvised, unaccompanied guitar of "Naive II"; the six studio collaborations between Legg's acoustic guitar and various other musicians; the four movements of his classically influenced "High Strung Suite"; and a sampling from a live show in Philadelphia in February, including four solo guitar tunes and five monologues delivered in his deadpan British delivery.
The collaborations include a lovely guitar-and-snaredrum duet, "The Crockett Waltz," and an irreverent garage rock mugging of the Christmas carol, "Silent Night." The suite captures Legg's playing at its most intricately virtuosic, and the live tracks document the wild humor and musical simplicity that make his concerts so special. --Geoffrey Himes
High Strung Tall Tales,Adrian Legg,Relativity,Jazz,New Acoustic,Pop,Popular Music,Rock,Solo Instrumental
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High Strung Tall Tales
Adrian Legg Manufacturer: Relativity ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD  General
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ASIN: B000003BXW Release Date: 1994-10-11 |
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Amazon.com
Adrian Legg comes out of the British "baroque folk" guitar tradition of Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, and Richard Thompson, and like his predecessors, Legg plays the Anglo-Celtic roots of folk, country and classical "early music" with a chamber musician's ear for precision and harmony. On his new album, "High Strung Tall Tales,'' Legg displays a rare knack for combining strong melodic lines with arpeggiated harmonies in such a way that they flow with a graceful unity. Guitarists love him for his ability to pull off these one-person "duets," but lay listeners will love the sheer beauty of melodic and harmonic interplay."High Strung Tall Tales" serves up a generous serving of 20 tracks, covering all the far-flung aspects of Legg's career. You have the improvised, unaccompanied guitar of "Naive II"; the six studio collaborations between Legg's acoustic guitar and various other musicians; the four movements of his classically influenced "High Strung Suite"; and a sampling from a live show in Philadelphia in February, including four solo guitar tunes and five monologues delivered in his deadpan British delivery.
The collaborations include a lovely guitar-and-snaredrum duet, "The Crockett Waltz," and an irreverent garage rock mugging of the Christmas carol, "Silent Night." The suite captures Legg's playing at its most intricately virtuosic, and the live tracks document the wild humor and musical simplicity that make his concerts so special. --Geoffrey Himes
Customer Reviews:
Legg takes a few gambles, but remembers from where he came.......2002-12-10
It's rather hard to describe the power of the music because it gently walks the line between impressive guitar work and impressive melodies. How can you have both? Well Legg shows us how it's done with the High Strung Suite, a four movement piece (and a reprise towards the end) that gives us varations on a theme. The theme may sound conventional, but the variations are modern.
Naive II and Silent Night are a bit puzzling (I'll assume that the latter is a joke?), but the remainder of the album really does serve up the goods just as well as the suite. Throwing in a keyboard here, a wind instrument there, a dab of drums, there is lots of nicely arranged music for your money. The song Sweetheart can melt the coldest of hearts.
And we get a concert excerpt too. It's a real treat for me (since I've never seen him perform) to hear this, even if the live songs total to only three. The rest are his witty banter (like Leo Kottke, just replace the midwestern wryness with British wryness).
To call High Strung Tall Tales a bummer is really underscoring all that is going on, surface and otherwise. If you like your guitar music, and I mean REALLY like your guitar music, you owe it to yourself to hear High Strung Tall Tales.
superhuman talent, coupled with humility...what a concept.......2001-11-10
Finally a live track.......1999-12-17
Very disappointing.......1999-09-06
Awesome guitar work; mood-altering textures.......1999-04-20
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