Various Artists - Fox, J. : City the Wind Swept Away - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Cranberry Suit - Nomad [VINYL LP] date 03/07/2025

Throughout WINDSWEPT, the Boston-based Arcadian Winds project a storytelling experience that is joyful, moving, and meaningful to hear. The three-movement Woodwind Quintet by Canadian composer Jan Järvlepp starts off WINDSWEPt. The first movement, InchRollercoaster,Inch invokes a childlike whimsy with a noticeable pop influence. This is followed by InchSolitude,Inch a more mature and romantic movement of music. Woodwind Quintet concludes with InchPyrotechnics,Inch a piece rooted in texture. Sonorous Earth, written by Miami composer Ferdinando DeSena, offers a down-to-earth, stable tone. While offering no less lyricism in his compositions, DeSena's storytelling is built from his ability to interweave these instruments in the lower tonal register. Stumpery, the third piece, is also based on this very concept of interwoven melodies. Composed by David MacDonald, the inspiration behind the piece is the complex network of a stumpery, or a type of garden in which the roots of trees tangle around one another. While the roots are represented by the linear melodies of the instruments, MacDonald establishes a unique ambient sound incorporating reverberations of the instruments, emphasizing the space left by the tendrils of the roots. Dirge & Second Line by Craig Peaslee experiments with the dictation of the New Orleans jazz style. Using a classical chamber ensemble, he juxtaposes some of the intricacies of classical notation with the loose, laid-back energies of the jazz music he works with. Concluding the album, Kenneth Kuhn's Variations on a Commoner Theme, No. 1 builds a musical story of the quest of a theme in the lowest class of musical hierarchy seeking to become noble. The wind quintet chronicles the various attempts via varying personalities of tempo, key change, and tone. The mood and melody start from the lowest class, build themselves up with grandiose ambitions, and

A storm of passaggi to echo the virtuosity of the cornettists of Renaissance Italy who exalted their instrument, of which Andrea Inghisciano is one of the most sought-after contemporary exponents (listen, for example, to the album 'La Morte della Ragione' with Il Giardino Armonico). Here, along with the keyboard player Maria Gonzalez, he presents a programme bursting with diminutions, whether written or improvised from the acrobatics of Francesco Rognoni and Dario Castello to the sweetness of Luzzasco Luzzaschi and Giovanni Battista Bovicelli, by way of Girolamo Dalla Casa, who, while recommending performers to 'do few things, but do them well,' amazes us with his exuberant writing, with rapid cascades of notes as arduous to play as they are fascinating to listen to. This duo recital is the recording debut of the ensemble I Cavalieri del Cornetto, which aims to explore the art of diminution in all it's forms.