L'Amoroso - Baroque Extravagances - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Veteran acoustic & electric bassist Chuck Deardorf brings together a broad collection of musical friends to create an album full of spontaneous interaction, gritty grooves and melodic beauty. Along with pianists Bill Mays & Jovino Santos Neto, guitarists Bruce Forman, Dave Peterson & Rick Peckham, as well as a host of other world-class players, Deardorf explores fresh originals, reconstructed standards and even a new take on the Beatles' InchDear Prudence,Inch displaying the creative vision that has made him a favorite musical partner to the countless jazz legends he's accompanied over the years.InchChuck is one of my favorite bassists... one of the finest working todayInch - Bud Shank.

As the forerunner of the piano and violin concertos, the concerto grosso is all about give and take. Not only one against many but also one, two or three musicians conversing with each other and with a larger ensemble in a genre that celebrates intimacy, diversity and virtuosity. The form inspired collections of instrumental masterpieces by the greatest names of the Baroque era, and it's an ideal environment for the relaxed mastery of Seldom Sene. Ever since the ensemble's debut in 2014 (Taracea, 94871), it has continued to fulfill imaginative recording projects with the same 'commitment, technical versatility, unanimity of ensemble and near-immaculate tuning on display' (Gramophone) in that first album. In their booklet notes, Stephanie Brandt of Seldom Sene and Matthias Havinga explain that the challenge of arranging this repertoire was to create a wide variety of sound colors through the intelligent use of different types of recorders and the stops of harpsichord and organ. The Sixth Brandenburg Concerto of Bach is an obvious candidate for Seldom Sene's performance, having originally been written for a similarly homogeneous ensemble of lower strings. In Handel's lovely Organ Concerto Op.4 No.1 Havinga retains the solo part while the recorder quintet plays the role of orchestra and basso continuo. The roles are reversed in Vivaldi's Concerto Grosso Op.3 No.10, where the harpsichord accompanies the recorders' flights of fancy. There is also an originally scored rarity the Sonata for five winds and organ by the Italian-born Viennese court composer Antonio Bertali.

It's an unusual occurrence in our experience, but occasionally a record arrives more or less fully formed in it's demo phase. Long Lost Solace Find, the irresistible debut solo album by Mike Polizze (Purling Hiss, Birds of Maya) landed in our inboxes in July as just such a rara avis, to our great delight. Truly, we were floored by the perfect flight path of these skeletal songs, even without their summery studio plumage. Further fledging and local color came courtesy of Mike and engineer and co-producer Jeff Zeigler (The War on Drugs), with an enthusiastic assist from their close Philly friend Kurt Vile, but the bones of these songs were already embedded deep in the demos, structurally, lyrically, and spiritually. They proved to be elegant maquettes for the architecture of the album and a testament to Mike's careful craftmanship. So we are proud to present the outrageously titled collection Dizzy Demos 2 Tickets to Cheeseburger in Paradise, comprising Dizzy Polizzy's original homebrew demos for six of the twelve final album tracks, along with two studio outtakes from the Long Lost Solace Find sessions, InchSign of LifeInch and InchSunny SundaysInch (which are, in our estimation, just as good as anything on the proper album.) Listen digitally wherever you harvest sounds from the ether, or pick up a florid green cassette, featuring alien/pyramid/burger art (and a two-cat centerfold) by the man himself and available exclusively via direct order from the PoB website and Bandcamp page, in an edition limited to 300 copies only.Here's hoping we hear more demos that sound this killer. Our inboxes are open, y'all.