Thursday, September 9, 2010

Andrew Violette Releases Songs and Dances

Andrew Violette has done it again, this time with help from a sensational young cellist, Ben Capps; twenty pieces called Songs and Dances.  There can’t really help but be some connection with the unaccompanied suites of Bach here, and like them, these pieces create their own special universe into which a buffeted soul might choose to shelter for the duration.  There are occasional choices of modal lines that identify this music as Andrew’s, but there are also instances where the lines draw arabesques suggesting the moods and cultures of the Levant.  There are just as many references to more traditional Western music too.

Those inclined may wish to employ this music in meditation, or while reading for pleasure, or while doing housework, or gardening, or while preparing a meal or taking a walk (portable CD player and headphones required), in each case providing a satisfying reward, as there is nothing quite as soothing as the deep resonant sounds of a violoncello played well, as this collection certainly demonstrates.

For all those grown tired of the huge rash of popular tracks packaged to be here and gone tomorrow (I’m reluctant even to suffer the use of the term "music" for they muse and amuse anemically by comparison), after a good dose of which one’s senses become desensitized, there is still produced today, remarkably, music intended to present its multilayered messages (in this case through a single solo stringed instrument often playing no more than one note at a time) intended to be relevant not just today but twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now, or it is possible, should one be devoted to the violoncello oneself, to acquire the written score form the composer and make this music part of oneself. This is music to treasure. 

Andrew Violette's Songs and Dances

Innova press release: 
http://musicsprings.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/from-innova-andrew-violette-and-ben-capps-songs-and-dances/

FINIS