Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases
Rock
Scars On Broadway, “Scars On Broadway” (Interscope). While marking time at their day job, as members of the twisted post-apocalyptic metal outfit System Of A Down, guitarist/ vocalist Daron Malakian and drummer John Dolmayan delight in the eclectic, balancing serious shredding chops against wholly unexpected shifts in meter and out-of-left-field key changes. Within the structure of their newly formed duo Scars On Broadway, Malakian and Dolmayan keep things comparatively simple, letting far more standard melodies tell the story. It works — the pair’s debut album rushes by all muscle and sinew, sans fat, and if the record is “normal” when contrasted with System’s freakiness, it’s still pretty far from stock modern rock. Malakian isn’t exactly basking in the sunshine of pop-rock with the dark, twisted lyrics and rather molten landscape conjured by pieces like “Stoner Hate,” (in which “California’s been invaded by a hippie psychopath”) and “Exploding/ Reloading,” (during which our narrator claims to love “Suicide mixed with Jesus Christ, yeah!”). Even the dulcet tones and rich melodic structure of “Insane” serve a lyric that lives within a stone’s throw of despondency. And yet, the record isn’t a bummer — the pair take too much readily apparent delight in their observations, and their musical leanings are too thrillingly strange to allow for that. ★★★ (Jeff Miers)
Soundtrack
David Byrne, “Big Love: Hymnal” (HBO/Play Tone). Who better than David Byrne to offer accompanying sound-scapes for HBO’s brave-but-disquieting fictional take on polygamous communities, “Big Love”? Byrne’s writing, within and without Talking Heads, has always taken perverse delight in placing soothing harmonic structures up against troubling topics, and vice versa. “Big Love” is a dark show, so naturally, Byrne’s accompanying pieces are achingly romantic and infused with a nearly transcendent sense of hope. Without the accompanying show to force the context issue, they simply shine as rare gems. Aspects of Steve Reich-like poly-rhythms provide waves of movement beneath Byrne’s string arrangement harmonies here, while nursery rhyme folk ballads find New Orleans-style horn arrangements pleasantly interrupting their flow over there. As both soundtrack, and separate album, “Big Love: Hymnal” is a beautiful collection on par with Byrne’s best work. ★★★★( J.M.)
Jazz
Dave Brubeck, “50 Years of Dave Brubeck: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival 1958-2001” (Monterey Jazz/Concord); Art Blakey and the Giants of Jazz, “Live at the 1972 Monterey Jazz Festival” (Monterey Jazz/Concord). The best, by far, of the five new releases from the Monterey Jazz Festival label that was formed on the great festival’s 50th anniversary to issue live discs of some of its great previously unreleased moments (the other discs, full of jams, are by Cal Tjader, Tito Puente and Jimmy Witherspoon, crowd pleasers all.) The live Monterey Brubeck disc, in fact, may be the finest single disc extant encapsulating the past 50 years of Brubeck’s career. The technique of playing rhythms against the drummer in his piano solos was an adaptation of a compositional polyrhythm he learned from his onetime teacher Darius Milhaud. In practice, it has almost always sounded like graceless rhino banging that wretchedly refused to swing. About the only time I’ve ever heard it on record sound truly brilliant is here in Brubeck’s solo on Paul Desmond’s “Take Five.” Gerry Mulligan’s sound on Brubeck’s setting of the “Sermon on the Mount” (for which Brubeck says Mulligan memorized the biblical passage) is an example of how Mulligan, quite simply, had the most beautiful baritone saxophone sound in jazz history. We will never hear its like again. On the next tune with Mulligan, Brubeck unleashes another amazing solo but it works almost entirely because his new drummer, Alan Dawson, refused to be put off by Brubeck’s rhythmic gamesmanship and redoubled his own insistence on triplets. The result is spectacular rhythmic interplay between Brubeck and Dawson. Listen too to Bobby Militello’s “growl” flute solo on another cut.
The Blakey disc is a misnomer because this is one version of the historic bebop group that toured Europe and was recorded there — Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt, Clark Terry, Kai Winding, Roy Eldridge and Al McKibbon with Blakey. The music isn’t quite the succession of Olympian thunderbolts you hope for but is, in its way, exceptional, especially the far-from- intimidated Terry and Stitt. Ratings: ★★★★ for Brubeck; ★★★ 1/2 for Blakey and the Jazz All-Stars. (Jeff Simon)
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David Sanborn, “Here and Gone” (Decca). In case anyone ever forgot that David Sanborn’s first heavyweight fan in jazz was the great Gil Evans, one of the handful of most revered composer/arrangers in the music’s history, Sanborn’s first selection on his new disc is a version of the “St. Louis Blues” whose Gil Goldstein arrangement steals liberally from the classic version Evans recorded with Cannonball Adderly (a suitably Milesian solo is taken on it by trumpet player Wallace Roney). The dedicatee of the disc of juicy covers, though, is alto saxophonist Hank Crawford, one of the two reigning soul men of the Ray Charles band and the forerunner of Sanborn’s kind of commercial bluesmanship. Eric Clapton, Derek Trucks and singers Joss Stone and Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave) guest on one tune apiece and all are splendid, especially Clapton on Jimmy Rushing’s “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town” and Sam Moore on the hilarious “I’ve Got News for You” (so delightful in Ray Charles’ version). Pure unadulterated musical commerce should always be this likable. ★★★( J.S.)
Classical
Mozart, Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581, Quartet for Clarinet and Strings No. 3,
K. 496 performed by Sean Osborn (Albany Records). The clarinet seems to have done something to Mozart. His clarinet music, written late in life, has a Schubertian, valedictory quality, not to mention unearthly beauty. From its breathtaking beginning, the Clarinet Quintet has that transcendence. The Quartet for Clarinet and Strings, adapted from a piano trio, can’t quite measure up to that — nothing can — and the liner notes go into tremendous detail debating whether or not the arrangement was Mozart’s. Still it is quintessential Mozart. Osborn, who plays with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and his colleagues turn in a performance of both pieces that is absolutely delightful. ★★★ (Mary Kunz Goldman)
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Leon Fleisher : Copland, Sessions, Kirchner and Rorem, Piano Music; Schubert Sonata for Piano in B-Flat Major and Landler; Liszt Sonata in B-Minor and Weber Sonata No. 4 in E-Minor and Invitation to the Dance; Debussy, Suite Bergamasque and Ravel Sonatine, Valses et Sentimentales and Alborada dell Gracioso; Brahms Piano Quintet in FMinor Op. 34 with the Juilliard String Quartet; Mozart Piano Sonatas in C Major K. 330 and E-Flat Major K. 282 and Rondo for Piano in D Major K. 485. All performed by pianist Leon Fleisher, piano (Arkiv/Sony). Among the greatest musical stories of the past 20 years is Leon Fleisher’s recapture of his career as a full, two-handed piano soloist after the immobility of two fingers of his right hand in 1965 caused him to “retire” into teaching, conducting and performances of the left hand repertoire for 40 years. Here are six discs from the ’50s and ’60s to indicate how much the world lost for those 40 years. Fleisher was one of the greatest pianists of his generation and his future was virtually unlimited when he was silenced at the age of 37. These are all magnificent records. Obviously, not all could be on the same level. The Schubert disc is sublime as is the recording of Brahms’ F-Minor Quintet. He was a breathtakingly thorny performer of Liszt and Weber in 1959 and suavely sensitive in Debussy and Ravel from a year earlier. His Mozart from the same years is on the same astonishing level. Best of all, perhaps, are his 1962 recordings of great solo American piano music, especially the Aaron Copland Sonata and Roger Sessions “From My Diary,” both probably unsurpassed. Even the period sound is less nettlesome than you’d think. Ratings: ★★★★ for modern American piano music, Schubert, Brahms and Liszt/Weber disc; ★★★ 1/2 for Mozart and Debussy/Ravel. (J. S.)
