Jazz

The other chamber music

Flightpatterns

Artist(s): Jesse Olsen, multi-instruments; Paul Kikuchi, percussion; Stuart Dempster, Trombone

Composer(s): Jesse Olsen, Paul Kikuchi, Stuart Dempster

Flightpatterns demonstrates the potential value of designing albums around special acoustic environments. Immediately, the album’s intrigue and surface appeal blossoms in light of of Open Graves’ imaginative use of the empty water cistern as a recording studio. Despite the evident danger of casting the music in a monochromatic reverb throughout the length of the disc, Flightpatterns is a bold exploration of physical and musical resonance. Alluring and chilling at once, the CD’s tracks will undoubtedly leave you with aural goosebumps as the blurred identities of Stuart Demptser’s trombone and Open Grave’s multi-layered accopaniment will press the boundaries of your music-listening imagination.

Inventions

Artist(s): Kris Becker

Composer(s): Kris Becker

Kris Becker’s Inventions is not an avant-garde manifesto, nor is it trite sentimentalism. At least in the community of composers close to me, many of my colleagues are trying to do the same this Mr. Becker pulls off in this recording: blending idioms from popular and classical music. I think music like that on Inventions is worthwhile to the masses of listeners on the fringe of art music because it challenges definitions and breaks down barriers between what the music they are familiar with (pop music) and that which they have never heard (most art music). Dubbed “nu-classical” in the liner notes, Mr. Becker’s style is evidently steeped in multiple genres but is not mere eclecticism. Rather, his compositions are a clear distillation of very personal musical impulses; a pensive exploration of the music he has studied, performed and listened to regardless of style.