Hafez Modirzadeh - In Convergence Liberation - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Facets is saxophonist/composer Hafez Modirzadeh's latest radical entreaty against the cultural hegemony of the Western notion of equal temperament and his argument that musicians should be free to explore a variety of tonal possibilities, even on piano. His 2012  Post-Chromodal Out! was the first documentation of this concept, where the piano was tuned to a variety of temperaments. Performed with pianist Vijay Iyer, The New York Times called that album InchDauntless... There's heady discipline at work here, along with the stirrings of a hard-fought individualism.Inch With his new , Modirzadeh has distilled the idea to a single re-tuning, which is performed in duets with three towering musicians in contemporary improvised music  Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey and Craig Taborn, each interrogating the piano's new possibilities with imagination and ingenuity. Modirzadeh himself utilizes alternate fingerings and embouchure adjustments on his instrument to achieve intervals between major and minor, and the pieces sway with an elasticity reminiscent of Persian poetic meter. With eight keys re-tuned and the remainder left in equal temperament, the music explores the coexistence of familiar with unfamiliar, and in the process, discovers new logic and mysterious beauty with

Licad - American Nocturnes [COMPACT DISCS] date 11/03/2017

This presents a selection of his works for piano. From the reminiscent Alghe (or 'seaweed'), which features a delicate melody over shimmering Debussy- like harmonies, to Le stagioni ('The Seasons') and I naviganti ('The Sailors'), Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a master at creating evocative images of provincial life through his music. His longer, more virtuosic works take on grander themes; Alt Wien is described as a 'Viennese rhapsody', and Piedigrotta takes us through a whirlwind of Neapolitan music, starting with a dark and pulsating tarantella, after which the music sinks gently into an undulating rhythm to evoke the image of a moonlit Neapolitan evening. Le danze del Re David reveal an unexpectedly hard edge to the composer, turning dark and violent, with movement names such as 'rapid and savage' and 'warlike Allegro', finally culminating in a 'clear and solemn' conclusion.