Sam Rivers Music

It is a privilege to live in the same city that Tapestry calls home, since I can see/hear them perform in person. But for all those times when they are performing in other places I can always put on one of their beautiful CDs. Their latest, The Fourth River, is a feast for the ears and I play it over and over. You will too! Buy it today, you'll be glad you did.

I was, hopefully, expecting a modern extension of Hildegard of Bingan's musical type and style, but instead was subjected to an amateurish rendering, complete with near-screeching and cacophanous harmonies. I can't wait to trade it in for some Hildegard!

This gorgeous CD by Tapestry is superb on many levels, including that it avoids what I dislike about certain female ensembles: wimpiness. Tapestry's spot-on and intense renderings of music spanning 8 centuries is challenging, beautiful, informed, and imaginative. May they continue the great work for a long time to come.

Unlike 'A Music Fan' (who can't spell Bingen) I found 'The Fourth River' entrancing from start to finish. I'm not sure what a modern extension of Hildegard's musical type is - what is a 'musical type' and how does one extend it? - but I found this CD to be full of mellifluous, uplifting and life-enhancing music. Try as I might, I couldn't find any screeching and cacophanous (sic.) is the last word I would use to describe the music, and the singing, on this CD. If 'A Music Fan' wanted Hildegard, why didn't he/she buy a Hildegard CD. It's a bit like complaining that Nine Inch Nails aren't Mozart......

The Fourth River is a a beautiful recording. I enjoyed it so much I purchased ten copies for my friends. I love the sound of Tapestry and the blending of the voices. The Fourth River is a joy to the ear and the soul. I hope Tapestry will be recording another CD soon!

This bargain collection of showtunes is highlighted by the composition of Kurt Weill and the uniquely rolling tongue of Colette Lyons. I have a complaint about this compilation. It includes "Ol' Man River", but it excludes Al Jolson's rendition of "Ol' Man River." Otherwise, this collection gives you ample bang for your buck.

horns. lots of horns. i like lots of horns. reminds me of a jam session where the best of horn players show up.

the horn ensembles playing rhythmic choruses repeatedly gets to be a bit redundant, but the many solos make the recording. lots of energy.

From the open notes, this music will seem very familiar to those who have heard INspiration. The difference is the concise nature of the tracks. Many of the tracks here are under ten minutes

The two CDs show Rivers to be an awesome arranger and composer (maybe they won't rob him of a grammy this year-don't hold your breath). Hopefully one day we'll have some recordings available of these compositions the way Rivers intended, with extended lengths of 50+ minutes. UNtil then, lets savor what is available.

With the reissue of "Dimensions & Extensions," three of Sam Rivers' four Blue Note albums are now available domestically on CD. (I personally couldn't have ever imagined this happening when I purchased the Rivers Mosaic Set a dozen years ago.) This March 17, 1967 session is certainly the most avant-garde outing Rivers had for the label, and signaled the tone of later efforts he would make in the 70s for Impulse and ECM. The expanded frontline personnel of James Spaulding, Donald Byrd and Julian Priester, and the pianoless rhythm duo of Cecil McBee and Steve Ellington lay the ground work for this departure. But it is Rivers' increasingly complex original compositions that showcase a new level in his talent. Granted his extreme take on standards on his previous album (the still OOP "A New Conception") was far from run of the mill, but the depth and layering in these tunes compared to Fuchsia Swing Song or Contours (see my reviews) is striking. Fans of the more "eccentric" mid 60s Blue Notes -- Out to Lunch, Dialogue, Point of Departure, Life Time, etc. -- will be delighted with the dimension of this disc!

Can't believe there were no previous reviews. The textural interplay of the horns and the synth are great. And that's only the beginning.

Moondog is a nice CD to hear early work by Louis Hardin. The songs are like scetches and very interesting pre-studies for later work.

Odd-ball individuals are more common than geniuses, but Moondog is both. Harry Partch had the highest regard for this blind graduate of Julliard, whose fantastic get-up of skins, furs and horns might have detracted from the impact of less seminal music. Since he was immensely tall, he made quite an apparition. Moondog's primitivo get-up was odd, to say the least, but since Moondog was blind, one wonders who put the costume together. Moondog, like Harry, invented most of the instruments he played standing on the corener at the Avenue of the Americas. His music reaches back into prehistory in its effect, and has a kindness to it, if that may be a reasonable thing to say. Later, Moondog became sort of a darling of the avant garde, and composed for traditional instruments, but the earlier the recorded work, the more deep down and pure it was. The later work is slicker, but just as intelligent.

Blind he is our Moondog, but he does not bark for pity. He listens to and reproduces what he can capture with his ears. That means his work is a tremendous compilation of sounds from the real world, animals or just insects, his own baby and his own wife, or just some beating on a drum, or the frail dancing of a pipe along with a frog and a cricket. It is this extreme patchwork of sounds, voices, noise and music under the light enchantment from the moon that our artist is imagining in his eternal night. At least for him the moon never sets, never disappears over or behind the hills. "Surf Session" is the only piece that has some real length. The sea surf, the sea waves, the breaking of these waves we imagine along some pebbly seaside give a strange depth to the very both Asian and tremendously romantic music that manages to float forever over the rather powerful vortex of the sea, the ocean. The nearly Chinese constant grace-notes give the music a charm that is both discrete and so strong we seem to be able to imagine some Last Emperor advancing in the Forbidden City just before defeating his beleaguered wife and sons under the sign of some golden flower. The "Street Scene" is less fascinating because it is aimless, it lacks a direction and a destination? "I must never follow you and you must never follow me." He is roaming on and on, around and around, in that incessant, menacing, mechanical noise that comes up from the New York street locked up in between the walls of surrounding buildings. Can that be life? And what can it sound like to a blind man? Is it worse or less violent than what the famous Arthur Miller's Salesman felt, heard and experienced in his trapped two storied house in the middle of surrounding skyscrapers and under the crushing noise of thousands of motor vehicles? We will never know, except if we decide to do what dipus did when he realized his criminal inability to see the fate that was his. And he lived ever after like a dog in the eternal night of his blindness remembering the moonshine and the sunshine, tolerating the insults and petty assaults from those whose yes are not bleeding dead.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Louis T. Hardin did not graduate from the Juliard. He went to a school in Iowa and Memphis, but was mostly self taught. Listen to this with your eyes closed.