My attention was drawn to Canadian-born baritone Gerald Finley by hearing (on CBC radio while visiting Kitchener-Waterloo for the Quantum Landscape conference at PI) his rendition of the aria "Batter my heart...", a setting of the John Donne poem, "Batter my heart, three-person'd God," as J. Robert Oppenheimer in John Adams' opera Doctor Atomic, about the creation of the atomic bomb. A few years back I found the opera, on DVD, to be pretty good, though with some weak points. Hearing Finley sing it reminds me that this aria was one of the strong points. He has a wonderful voice, clear, ringing at times, flexible but still with plenty of power when needed, and he gives meaning and drama to the words he sings.
Category Archives: Classical Music
Short listening notes: Janácek, Hindemith, Khaled, Steely Dan, Macy Gray, Handel
In lieu, for the moment at least, of longer reviews, I'll note a few things I've been listening to with great enjoyment recently:
Janácek's piano music. Both the Sonata and the series of short pieces called "On an Overgrown Path" are major masterpieces. Lyrical, evocative, often passionate. Tonal, but with Janácek's sometimes unusual harmonic colors, which however are completely natural and expressive, not self-consciously displayed. Both Rudolf Firkusný on Deutsch Grammophon and Alain Planès on Harmonia Mundi are excellent. I give the slight edge to Planès for a softer-edged, more atmospheric piano sound, but you can't go wrong with either. This music really should not be missed.
Paul Hindemith, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd and Requiem, "Für die, die wir lieben" ("For those we love"). Annelies Burmeister, mezzo-soprano, Günther Leib, baritone, Soloists and chorus of the Berliner Rundfunks, and Berliner Rundfunks Symphony Orchestra. Deep feeling here; this is not what I'd think of as "gebrauchmusik" ("use-music", a term probably from an earlier phase of Hindemith's career). These pieces are post-World War II. I need to listen to this CD again, but recall my first listen, about a month back, as a wonderful discovery.
Khaled, Liberté. Khaled, for those who don't know, has long been perhaps the greatest star of the North African (especially Algerian) popular music called Rai. In the Arabic-speaking world, he's a superstar. When I first put this on, I was not paying much attention, and thought it not as good as the earlier, essential N'Issi N'Issi and Sahra. Played it again last night, and revised my opinion: it's superb. His voice is as good as ever, his command of swirling North African melisma as secure as ever, and the material, a substantial amount of which he writes himself, is mostly excellent. Overall, though it features electric bass and some synths, the sound is "rootsier" than the other two albums I mentioned, with lots of instrumental interludes featuring traditional North African instruments and a string section recorded in Cairo. Reminiscent of some of his stuff from even earlier than N'Issi and Sahra, when he was more of a rising regional star than an international superstar.
Steely Dan, Katy Lied. I wasn't really familiar with this album, which apparently predates the essential classic Aja, but it's solid. Great to discover another 10 mostly excellent songs from the Dan, in the same vein as Aja, if perhaps a bit more varied and not as consistently great. If you like jazzy chords with your pop-rock, lots of possibly tongue-in-cheek 70's-beatnik/hipster lyrical attitudinizing, and the occasional sax solo, the Dan is for you. But you already know that from Aja, and the hits (Rikki, Do it Again, etc...) that still make classic-rock radio. Excellent listening.
I Try: The Macy Gray Collection This is some kind of Greatest Hits CD I picked up cheaply. Solid neo-soul and R&B singing from Ms. Gray. Her voice is nice, a bit lighter than those of the gutsiest, earthiest female soul singers (e.g. Aretha), but with a slightly smoky texture, too. That's a description, not a criticism. Mostly very good material, some written by Gray herself. Highly recommended.
G. F. Handel, The Messiah (oratorio). Elly Ameling, soprano; Anna Reynolds, alto; Philip Langridge, tenor; Gwynne Howell, bass. Academy and Chorus of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, conductor. (London 444 824-2). Excellent soloists, very clear recording, with relatively light instrumental forces and a reasonably light-footed, baroque feel, but probably not original instruments or finicky attention to baroque stylistics. With some of the sweetness (compared to many original-instruments treatments) that I tend to associate with Marriner/St.Martin's productions. Beautiful. The music is of course profound and essential listening. Sir Colin Davis, leading the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with Heather Harper, soprano, Helen Watts, contralto, John Wakefield, tenor, and John Shirley-Quirk, bass, is also excellent, with a fairly similar overall feel (perhaps a somewhat less lush and sweet, more severe feel overall). Unfortunately it seems to be marred by some kind of constant scratchy background noise, not extremely loud, but annoying once heard. I have no idea what this is; if it's the result of a poor digital transfer in the early days of CD, then a remaster from analogue tape is in order; otherwise, let's hope there's a better master tape around somewhere because this performance is good enough that it deserves a noise-free reissue if possible.
Learning "rootless" voicings for jazz piano from Earl MacDonald
[Understanding this post probably requires a basic knowledge of seventh and related chords and extensions and alterations as used in "straight-ahead" (swing, bebop) jazz and mid-twentieth century American popular song harmony. The highlighted (and recommended) links will tell you what they are, and something of how they function in jazz harmony, though not the full story.]
A basic component of most jazz pianists' toolbox is the so-called "Bill Evans" or "rootless" or sometimes "left-hand" voicings. Each of the three terms is inaccurate. These were to some extent used before Evans came on the scene in the late 1950s/early 1960s, but he perhaps used them more extensively than others. (Wynton Kelly, Red Garland, and Ahmad Jamal are among those also cited as inclined to use them.) Along with McCoy Tyner, Evans also was a pioneer in using quartal voicings, which would probably be equally good candidates for associating with his name, but are not our topic here. A few of the "rootless voicings" contain the root of the chord, though most do not. And although they are commonly used in the left hand while the right plays melody, they may also appear in the right hand. "Four-note voicings" might be another term one sees used, though I'm not sure if that's as specific.
In some of the classic books on jazz piano playing (like Mark Levine's highly recommended "The Jazz Piano Book"), these may be introduced a bit too early, and some teachers may overemphasize them early on (especially to students who are already fairly aware of the basics of jazz harmony). Working pianists, who usually play in a rhythm section in which the bass takes care of stating the roots, like to use these voicings in order to stay out of the way of the bass line, and because they allow for more "color" tones, as found for example in standard extensions of 7th chords to include 9ths, 11ths, 13ths. (Some of these may be called "alterations", a term whose appropriate application I'm not completely clear about and am not going to get into here; it usually refers to a #11, b5 (enharmonically the same as a #11), b6=b13, b9 or #9, but precisely which notes are "altered" and which are just extensions depends on (what is considered to be) the harmonic context.) For learning jazz theory in a way that gets it into your ear (and fingers, if playing piano and not just hearing jazz harmony is your ultimate goal), I think it's best to practice four-note voicings with roots first. These can work for elementary solo piano playing, and for getting the sound of a tune including the roots fixed in your mind (play the "rooty" voicings in the LH, and the melody or an improvisation (yours, or a transcribed one) in the RH). Of course you can use these same possibilities with the Evans voicings, and you will find that many of them are the same as "rooty" four-note voicings for chords a third higher, so practicing the rooty ones first also helps with the Evans ones. I'll post on rooty voicings at some point, but here I'll discuss learning the more advanced Evans voicings, something I am in the middle of doing.
I'm using pianist Earl MacDonald's excellent post on how to learn these voicings. I recommend printing out both his post, and his pdf file with music notation and taking them to the piano. I won't go into detail, but just say a few things that might be a useful supplement. Two voicings, labeled "A" and "B", are given for each chord type. Frequently, though not always, the B voicing just involves taking the bottom two notes of the A voicing and making them the top two notes. For example, the first two chord types he considers (minor 9th, and [dominant] 13th) work that way. I tend to think of these kinds of four-note voicings as a pair of intervals (that between the bottom two notes, and that between the top two), separated by the interval between notes 2 and 3 (top of the bottom interval, and bottom of the top interval). Then I just think of the move to the other voicing as moving the bottom interval up an octave (or the top one down an octave, depending which way I'm moving it). It can help to keep in mind how the middle interval will change when you do that: e.g., for the minor 9th voicings, from a minor third for the A voicing (I don't think explicitly about this in this case, because the A voicing here is just a root position major seventh starting on the third of the chord we are voicing, e.g. Cm9 is voiced as EbMaj7) to a half step, or vice versa. The cool thing about these voicings is that when you want to move from, say, a B voicing to a voicing for the same type chord with the root down a fifth (very common root movement, with or without a change in chord type), you just keep the top two notes the same and move the bottom ones down a half step or a whole step. So again, thinking about the chord as a pair of intervals helps. Of course ultimately you want to get this into your fingers, and not "think" too explicitly. For example, to move the minor 9th B voicing to a minor 9th a fifth down, you go to the A voicing of the new chord, by keeping the top two notes the same as in the previous chord, and dropping each of the bottom two by a whole step. When you start incorporating the voicings into chord progressions, the chord type will often change, but since root movement down by fifths is common and important, you can frequently negotiate these progressions effectively by going from an A voicing for the first chord to a B voicing for the second, or vice versa, keeping track of which notes change and which stay the same. Often you will just move the bottom interval, or just move the top interval, which is nice. And if you've practiced root-included 7th-chord progressions, you might find some of the movements are similar, or the same, just used over a different root. I haven't done much along these lines yet, but obviously ii V7 I or the minor homologue, iiø V7 i, are the first ones to work on.
The basic construction principle for most of the voicings can be understood starting from the example of the minor 9th chord. The chord tones used are 3, 5, 7, and 9 (3 and 7 of course refer a minor third and minor seventh relative to the root, since this is a 9th chord; the 9th here is major). The A voicing is [3 5 7 9], B voicing is [7 9 3 5] (left to right going low to high in pitch). When a voicing has a natural 11th (enharmonically, 4th) it appears instead of the 3rd. (This happens with one chord type, the half-diminished chord with natural 11th.) When it has a 13th (= 6th) it usually appears instead of the 5th, in the above constructions. There is an exception to the 5 goes to 6 rule for the A form of the standard major (no 11th) voicing: the A form is a 6 9 voiced [3 5 6 9] (so one can think of the 6 as having been substituted for the 7th). A #11th, on the other hand (one chord type: the Maj7#11), is substituted for the 5 (the boppers used to think of the sharp 11 as a flatted fifth; thinking that way there is no substitution going on here; then again I don't think the boppers often added a sharp 11th to major chords). The Maj7#11 is also an exception to the rootless rule: it is voiced A: [1 3 11 7] and B: [11 7 1 3]. The other exception to the rootless rule is the B form of the standard (eleventh-less) major chord: it is a Maj7 with root, voiced [7 1 3 5], i.e. the major 7th and then the root-position triad, starting a half-step above the 7th. This pair of major voicings is the only one that doesn't obey the rule of putting the bottom interval on top while keeping the top interval as the bottom of the new voicing, to go from A to B voicing. Rather, the bottom goes on top, but the formerly top interval shrinks (if you must think this way) from 6 9 (a fourth) to 7 1 (a half-step) as it becomes the new bottom interval.
One could probably understand a bit more about the choice of particular types of voicings from the voice-leading properties they give rise to in common progressions (primarily major and minor ii V I or i type progressions). Curious is the omission of a voicing for the dominant 7th #11. This was a very important chord starting with bebop. If this reflects Evans' practice and not just MacDonald's predilections, I wonder if it's because Evans usually used a different type of voicing (quartal?) for this chord type?
If MacDonald's exercises seem time-consuming and difficult, let me just say that you can progress fairly quickly, and it's worth it. Here's a point from MacDonald that I really appreciate his emphasizing; it's crucial to remember, not just about this but about many, many exercises involved in learning to play jazz (and other musics, for that matter, e.g. scale practice):
Learning voicings is similar to learning to ride a bike. At first it is difficult, frustrating, and at times, painful. But once it is learned correctly, you never look back, and you can do it instinctually ever after.
A few comments on MacDonald's suggested learning routine. For all of the exercises, I've done them sometimes without sounding the root, but frequently with the root sounded in the bass. I think this is important to get the proper harmonic function of the voicing in your ear. Less crucially, I've done some of them with the right hand as well. Exercise number 8, taking the voicings down the circle of fifths with metronome (he refers to it as the circle of fourths; up a fourth is down a fifth, modulo octaves) is particularly crucial; I think this is where you'll really get the voicings memorized. Besides sometimes doing it with sounded roots, when I don't sound the root, I've been saying its letter name out loud. This also helps in better memorizing the circle of fifths, which anyone playing any music with essentially Western tempered harmony will want to do. Another point is that before working on each chord type, it is good to sound out the full chords, in root position, stack-of-(usually)-thirds configuration, and then compare this sound to the rootless voicing sounded with the root in the bass. You'll really start getting an idea of how extensions and alterations sound by doing this (especially if you sound out the lower seventh chord before adding extensions). You don't have to do this for every root (I haven't been), but it might be worthwhile too.
I have not yet made flash cards and done the "random roots" exercise. I've tried going up by fifths, as preliminary step toward getting away from the reliance on "muscle memory" and explicit thinking about the "lower the bottom two notes" trick for moving the root down a fifth while going from an A to B voicing, and I recommend it, as it's a cool sound as well. I'm ignoring his suggestion about completely mastering one chord type before going on to the next, in that I've worked quite a bit on the 13th chord without complete mastery of the minor 9th, but I think that's OK as long as you don't mix things up to much and really push on each type focusing primarily on one at a time.
Finally, the observation he asks you to try to ignore, that five of the chord types share the same voicing (just with a different root), is quite neat and important, an example of the general phenomenon that putting a different bass note under a given set of pitches in the middle or upper register can make an enormous change in the way they sound. Not only could it be used for reharmonization of a given melody, but I imagine it could be used (and probably is used) in composition, not just jazz but classical composition (many of these 7th, 9th, 13th, 11th, and 6th chords appear in classical music, especially Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Copland) to effect modulations, by changing the root under a given voicing and then treating it as if it has the new harmonic function, resolving it in some standard way. It would be neat to find---or create---examples of this.
Jeremy Denk plays Schumann and Bach at Los Alamos
Jeremy Denk played Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze and Bach's Goldberg Variations at Los Alamos' Duane Smith Auditorium last Saturday (January 12), presented by the Los Alamos Concert Association. A wonderful experience to hear two long works, each consisting of a sequence of many short pieces, and each among the pinnacles of keyboard music of their respective (romantic and baroque) musical eras. Do not miss a chance to hear Denk play this repertoire. The Schumann is a fascinating compendium of romantic gestures and episodes, only occasionally rambling and soft-edged as Schumann can be, mostly quite focused and beautifully shaped. Denk's touch, as compared to some pianists, seems just slightly firm, and sometimes a bit monolithic on chords, sometimes slanting his interpretations towards the architectonic rather than the lyrical. This could be quite piano-dependent, of course, and is not a bad thing. In any case the last 10 minutes or so of the Schumann were pure song as played by Denk. The Goldberg was a magnificent experience, sometimes recalling Glenn Gould's 1950s version with fast tempos (though there was no sense of excessively fast tempos overall), and great clarity, especially rhythmically. Inner voices were often brought out, though less compulsively and analytically than by Gould. In this piece Denk, playing a 9-foot Steinway, got an effect somewhat like a performance on a large, powerful, harpsichord---a coherent, speaking-with-one-voice impression, while still taking advantage of the piano's more lyrical potential when called for. Very rarely, the faster tempos in certain variations left me momentarily feeling confused about the beat, but that might have been due to a momentary lapse of attention on my part, and in any case was made up for by the powerful overall impact of those same fast tempos. Denk's touch is relatively precise, but not excessively glassy or percussive, rather just slightly soft-edged, keeping things clear and well-defined but without getting clanky and aggressive nor dry. Just beautiful in the Goldbergs.
We got Mr. Denk back out for an encore: he played a fairly lengthy, and very familiar piece by Chopin in a somewhat dreamy, musing mood... probaby a ballade or nocturne...I should know the name. It was magic. Somebody brightened and dimmed the house lights accidentally toward the end, making the audience laugh, and breaking the spell a bit, I thought. Whether the spell was broken in his playing, or just in my attention, I'm not sure... a shame, but not a huge one, since as I said most of the encore was pure enchantment.
Denk is about to record, or perhaps has just recorded, the Goldbergs; I plan on getting it when it comes out. I'm also very interested to see he's recorded some Ligeti, and Ives' Concord Sonata... I listened extensively to Gilbert Kalish's wonderful version of the latter masterpiece on a Nonesuch LP a couple of decades ago, but from what I've heard of Denk's playing, I'd love to hear him do it.
Ethan Iverson plays Hall Overton's Polarities #1
Via Ethan Iverson's blog Do the Math, a panel discussion at The Jazz Loft Project, of jazz and classical composer, arranger and pianist Hall Overton. Iverson kicks it off with a superb performance of Overton's classical piece "Polarities #1" (begins around 2'00 in the video). A performance that should not be missed. Some more of my thoughts follow the video.
The Jazz Loft Project presents "Hall Overton: Out of the Shadows" from Center for Documentary Studies on Vimeo.
This is a wonderful piece of music and a superb performance of it. To my ear there are hints of jazz, especially at the beginning. The first two measures definitely sound like they could be the opening of a jazz ballad with relatively "advanced" harmonies, and the descending figure in the bass in the third measure sounds very Monkish. [Update: this figure reminded me of a specific phrase in a Monk composition, which I suspected was "Nutty". Sure enough, it's the first part of the falloff that Monk sometimes adds to the end of one of the first phrases in "Nutty". Not only that, but the opening of Polarities seems related to the phrase to which Monk adds this falling line. Though very different harmonically, there's some similarity in melodic profile and rhythm.] A few other spots have that "advanced jazz ballad" feel. While Overton was on the faculty at Juillard and apparently also taught at Yale and the New School, most of us jazz fans know Overton primarily as the arranger for the Town Hall big band concert featuring Monk, so a Monk reference is hardly a farfetched supposition. The piece is roughly atonal or at least in very unstable tonality, but not twelve-tone, and very expressively balances atonal features with what seem to me passages with stronger harmonic implications. The musical language often seems to me poised between Debussy and Schoenberg. The sequence of chords around 3'19 to 3'33 in the video remind me of Debussy in his more declamatory frame of mind, while some of the passages preceding and following it remind me of his lyrical side. I was quite surprised to be strongly reminded, around 3'39-4'00, especially in the chord alternation at 3'44, 3'50 and 3'56 and melodic line connecting these bits, of Cecil Taylor's fantastic 1973 solo piano performance "Indent". To my mind, Indent is some of the most important and enjoyable music to come out of the twentieth century, and if you don't know Taylor or have listened to other pieces and not "gotten" him, I'd say Indent or the early-60's band-as-jazz-orchestra side "Into the Hot" (the other side of the Impulse LP is Gil Evans' "Out of the Cool"), are the places to start. Accessible but building in intensity and complexity. I recall reading that Taylor intensely studied twentieth-century classical scores early in his career, so I guess it's not impossible that there was some direct influence of Overton's classical work on Taylor's composition or vice versa, especially since Overton was active in jazz circles in New York at just this time (mid to late 50s), but accidental convergence is just as likely. (Though Indent is from 1973, the "vice versa" possibility is because Taylor might have developed some of these ideas very early even though they may not have been appearing in his performances at the time, which in the late 50s were still often based on jazz standards.) Iverson recently linked the transcipt of a 1964 panel discussion between Overton, Taylor, and others that grows somewhat contentious, making this perceived momentary connection between their musics even more startling to me.
Iverson also points out that this piece appears, played by Robert Help, on a collection from the 1960s, "New Music for the Piano", available from New World Records, and he suspects this is the only appearance of Overton's classical music on CD. Based on this performance of Polarities, that is a real shame and I hope it is rectified soon. Also based on this performance, Iverson would be a fantastic pianist to do it. He's not just playing the notes here, he has gotten inside the music and it's gotten inside him: each phrase is expressed as if he composed the music himself. He gets a fantastic, bright and ringing but not harsh tone out of this piano, and can give it nuances to bring out or contrast different lines. The clarity and control are astonishing too. Really beautiful music-making from both Overton and Iverson. I hope we can hear more of this combination sometime.
CD Review: "Made Possible" by The Bad Plus
The Bad Plus
Made Possible (eOne records, 2012)
Reid Anderson bass/synths/electronics
Ethan Iverson piano
David King drums
The Bad Plus' newly released CD, "Made Possible" (see the end of this review or this link for a video preview of it) is hard to categorize, but the important thing is that it's innovative, interesting to listen to, often beautiful and inspired music. They're typically characterized as a jazz trio, and that's what you'll find in the metadata on an mp3 and where you'll find their stuff filed in CD store bins. The instrumentation is the classic trio of piano, acoustic bass, and drums. Not only is this kind of piano trio a standard jazz configuration, but it is usually present as the rhythm section in larger jazz groups. So that is one reason to think of the music in jazz terms. Here, a bit of electronics and electronic keyboard is mixed in on occasion. But the overall musical language is wide-ranging, touching not only on a wide range of jazz styles but also on aspects of classical music and rock, and even stuff that might be considered New Age or generic mellow. To my ear there are definite echoes of the Windham Hill Records sound, and although I've never been an avid follower of that sound, I emphatically do not mean that as a criticism.
Classical: you may hear something of Glassy minimalism in Anderson's "Seven Minute Mind" or King's "Wolf Out", impressionistic or even Bartokian harmony in Iverson's lovely "Sing for a Silver Dollar", which melds it with some classic jazz gestures, as well as avant-gardisms that almost form a continuum with the further-out reaches of jazz, as in the out-of-tempo interlude beginning around 2'25 in "Silver Dollar", or some of the piano in "Wolf Out": the block chords following 3'28, morphing into medusa-like writhing lines worthy of (but more organic than) a Conlon Nancarrow player piano piece, at 4'14 and again, in a nice touch, to end the piece.
Rock: Dave King's drumming on this CD also draws not only on jazz but on influences that are fairly nonstandard for jazz of either the straight-ahead or avant-garde persuasion, though probably more apparent in jazz fusion. Quite a few of the beats he sets up have a definite rock flavor, like the one he keeps going under the lyrical theme (this one of the places on the CD where there are shades of Windham Hill, and also, one of the places of great beauty) of Anderson's "Pound for Pound", which kicks off the record. Something similar, both with the drumbeat and the shades of Windham Hill in the piano is going on in the opening of King's "For my eyes only", which also has hints of some kind of prairie church-choirish Americana thing, a bit of bluesiness, and even Satie.
There is not all that much ride-cymbal ching-cha-ching going on on this CD, and plenty of backbeat and thwacky snare reminiscent of Stax/Volt soul or Led Zeppelin, even if it's sometimes done at a much slower tempo and in support of music in a very different mood. But King mixes this kind of thing up with episodes of very interactive and inventive dialogue with the piano and bass. "Silver Dollar" is a good example, in which the opening beat, which returns periodically through the piece, is a slowed-down version of a classic rock beat in which the kickdrum and snare take alternate---if you jammed with a drummer in somebody's garage in high school, you've probably heard a close relative of this beat---and then the second subject features free commentary using all elements of the drumset. King's playing is an important part of the musical mix throughout, far from simple timekeeping. Take time to focus on it occasionally during your listening.
The pianism is also surprisingly far from your more conventional jazz outing, which might spin out a lot of long lines, hopefully, but not always, at a high level of inspiration, or pile on a lot of highly colored chords voiced in a variety of ways, again to variable effect. Compared to a typical jazz record of whatever subgenre, a much larger fraction of the music on this CD sounds relatively thoroughly composed, even if not explicitly written out; or if not composed in full detail, relatively carefully planned, with detail filled in spontaneously in performance. I don't know if that's how it was actually done; the point is that it comes out as carefully and effectively constructed, and relatively low on extended solo effusions. There is perhaps slightly too much ostinato on this CD for my taste, but I have to admit that it's very effectively used. And in the parts that seem repetitive, just listen to the details of what's going on over the ostinato... they are usually not static, they evolve, and add quite a bit of musical interest.
I've touched on some of the particular bits I've enjoyed, but let me just mention a few other highlights. After the relatively reiterative and not so jazzy (these are not criticisms!) opening pair of pieces by Anderson, Iverson's "Re-elect that" puts us squarely in contemporary somewhat-avant-garde jazzish territory with limpid jets of piano notes from Iverson over agile brushwork from King. Then over a more propulsive but still quite flexible beat from Anderson and King, Iverson solos playfully, toying with stock pentatonicisms and turning them on their sides, throwing in a bit of uncategorizable avant-classical stuff, then shading things toward more beboppish or chromatic lines, hints of Bach, a contrapuntal episode, and tying things up gracefully by alternating a couple of closely voiced, high chords. This may be the only thing on the CD you could really begin to categorize as a classic jazz piano solo, and it's a gem. There are plenty of other places where Iverson's inspired pianism is in evidence, but in a less traditionally linear manner. For example, the opening chords of "Silver Dollar" ... kind of dark-sounding voicings, in an unusual but compelling progression (or maybe it's the voice-leading that gives an unusual sound). Around 0'36, the darkish harmonic elements continue as what would otherwise be more conventional-sounding (in a jazz context) melodic gestures are unfurled, subtly transfigured by the harmony. Inspired indeed, but not in an in-your-face virtuosic or emotive way. The record's most extended piano passage starts around 5 minutes into the lengthy "In Stitches" ... a long ruminatively lyrical stretch, slowly building momentum (propelled by incredible, restrained high-hat and rimshot work from King that you may not even notice at first, but which is crucial) which I suspect contains much improvisation from Iverson, then fixating on an ascending line that is almost a bebop cliché, which Iverson worries, transposes, develops, extends, fragments, but in a way that is not like a typical jazz solo but more cyclical, more textural, though still building constantly in complexity and intensity, largely by adding voices and harmonic depth and rhythmic complexity as well as by the old device of modulating or moving gradually upward on the keyboard. It's your call whether the final buildup of this ends up being too grandstandy or not... I think it's fantastic. This whole passage is major music-making. And then listen to the discreet groove the rhythm section sets up to move on from this peak to finish the piece, the quiet as that groove dies down for a lyrical slow piano statement again, and then --- unexpectedly, and totally effectively --- the almost samba beat it sets up under that lyricism as the piano slowly subsides and the bass takes it out, and you're hearing just one example of why this is a great ensemble, much more than just three excellent players.
Despite what I've described as eclecticism, the record doesn't sound like a patchwork; these guys weave the elements they draw on into a language of their own that has its unity; there is plenty of variety within and between the pieces, but it's not scattershot, it's musically compelling.
I strongly recommend this CD; the musical approach is quite fresh, the musical content varied and often fascinating. The overall mood is relatively reflective and calm, with little or nothing in the way of heavy minor-key emotivism or in-your-face spirituality, but plenty of lyrical beauty, fascinating detail, and sincere but relatively calm feeling, along with some more intense passages. Despite the eclecticism, the pieces are well-structured, not rambling. I might have liked to hear a few more episodes of extended improvisation...but I suspect that if you want that too, you might get it at one of their gigs, so check out their schedule (they are in Europe for the next two weeks as of this post, and there will be plenty of opportunity to hear them in the US in December and on into next year). A very successful bout of music-making and a very enjoyable listen. Although it's hard to predict what a piece of music will end up meaning to one over the long run, I suspect that I will keep coming back to this CD over the years.
Howard Barnum
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Raw listening notes follow, but first, the official video preview of Made Possible; it kicks off with an excerpt from Seven Minute Mind, then a bit of Pound for Pound, and so on. You can already find many tracks from this on Youtube, but I'm not linking them without checking with the band first. The official preview might be considered kind of corny, but that doesn't bother me. Plus I love the neologism/solecism "on a guttural level".
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I recommend that you now just buy the CD and listen to the whole thing
to find your own high points, but for those who want a guide to some
other things they might find particularly interesting, I'm pasting in
as an appendix to this review some pretty raw listening notes, written
during a listen-through on a cross-country plane flight and re-edited
on another listen-through at home.
1- Pound for Pound (Anderson)
drums as often on the record have something of a rock beat
Almost Windham Hill kind of lyrical sound. Nice. Fairly repetitive.
Some variation of voicing, decoration etc...
almost unnoticeable synths but they're there (noticed on 3rd or 4th
listening)
Record overall has a lot of theme, not that much improv
2- Seven Minute Mind (Anderson) Minimalism, scales and ostinato, excellent,
maybe goes on a bit long.
3- Re-elect That (Iverson) After the two ostinato-ey, mellow pieces,
it's easy to imagine that this one is self-consciously reestablishing
some contemporary avant-ish jazz cred. (Of course the main point of
everything on the record is musical, not anything to do with
establishing cred; this is just an incidental impression.) Iverson's
solo is a gem. It starts by referencing modal/pentatonic cliches,
then turning them inside out. Then it brings in bop, chromatic
post-bop, developing playfully but logically. Then we get a nice bass
solo, then a drum solo (brushes). I.e., the standard jazz routine.
But the overall impression is anything but standard jazz. And then...
the last section is kind of a electronic/synthy version of some kind
of tweaked view of say 19th century band music amalgamated with an
off-kilter chorale. Given the title one imagines it might be aurally
alluding to some kind of 19th century electioneering event with
music... Musically I dig what came before this much more, but have to
admit that this coda does work with the rest of the piece, in an
Ivesian kind of way...
I interpret the title of this piece in the light of Iverson's blog
post urging jazz musicians to vote for Obama...
4 Wolf Out...
Ostinato again, over a funkier bass line at first, static for a little
while but then starts modulating... and still later moves to more
chromatic stuff... Iverson with chromatic lines and chromatic
block-chords bits, enjoyable but not as deep or distinctive as some of
the stuff on the previous cut... Nice theme... interesting chord
movement over the ostinato... important to listen for detail... B
section (?) ... descending piano line, kind of ominous in itself and
with each descent capped by somewhat ominous-sounding chords... then
the A theme starts getting mixed in ... continued development with
3'10 nice figure in the piano, q ... written or improv? 3'30 here is
the chromatic line in (clustery?) block chords I mentioned. quiets (C
section tho related?) ... & one hears electronics in background.
Nice. Then gets busier again. 4'17 or so main theme again but with
writhing high register piano lines over it, excellent. More of an
overall sound than line that can be followed. "Medusa-like". Then
more straight ostinato, straight repetition, drums eventually join in
with a major beat.... a short bit of Medusa piano is added to the mix
and that's it. Nice one.
5-- Sing for a Silver Dollar (Iverson).... spare post-bop (?) jazz
balladry meets Debussy kinda... nice. Superb, in fact. Right from
the top, a very distinctive, I've-heard-this-someplace-before drumbeat
is from, nice relentless trashy (? but w/ a fair bit of sustain)
cymbal beat... Jack de Johnette-ish? Really a superb track. Kind of
a couple of jazz ballad gestures, but done almost in classical style.
Segue into an electronic section. Nice kind of atonal thing in this
section; prepared and straight piano kinds of sounds, and bass,
blending with the electronics. Not sure about the jackhammer
drum-machine bit, though the bell-like accompaniment to it is fine.
Back to theme w/ "the beat" again. Nice last note from the bass...
6 For My Eyes Only (King) .... again a kind of autumnal midwestern
kind of sound, very nice, between classical and Windham Hill
again... Yeah! nice blues touch ... which echoed lower somehow gives
it a tinge of oh I don't know, cowboy soul maybe... Excellent
composition. Windham Hill meets Satie? So far quite arranged. New
section... piano arpeggios mostly triadic .... with bass tremolo and
windchimes.... nice interlude. 3'40 ... related to main theme but
still a different episode. Or just in a different key, I think that's
it. (Yup, the bluesy bits again just as before but transposed
(?)....) Maybe goes on just a bit long... 4'48 ish nice bass work
under it all! good stuff.
7 I Want to Feel Good pt 2 (King) ... I like this one too. A bit
singsongybackground, slightly off-kilter melodies.
8 In Stitches (Anderson) ... quite a long piece (14--15' or so?!)
starts a bit slow and avant-garde sparse noodly... quite moody
... nice.... around two minutes starts moving a bit more, still quite
pensive... 2'30 more crystalline... almost classical
figures.... digging the drumming... 6' picking it up on mellow
rippling chords from Iverson, nice...possibly a bit slow to
develop.... but really gets into its groove just over 1/2 way through
(about 7'26) with a beboppy figure that's varied and becomes the basis
for fantastic elaboration by Iverson, steadily increasing in
intensity. Still quite a bit of repetition with textural development
rather than linear improvisation. 11'18 texture thins out. Theme
again, at some point. Then at 13' almost a samba beat, but still the
theme .... then the piano drifs on into silence, as bass and drums
soldier on. Standout piece.
9 Victoria (Paul Motian) Starts as almost a bit of baroque
voice-leading. Continuing fairly classical in mood. Nice. Again not
a lot of improv.
Kapustin Variations Opus 41 played by Yeol Eum Son, and Impromptu Op. 66 No. 2 by himself
During the last (2010-2011) Los Alamos Concert Association season, Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son, a silver medalist in the 2009 Van Cliburn piano competition and 2nd prize winner in the 2011 Tchaikowsky competition, was a last-minute substitute for another competition-winning pianist. I recall enjoying her playing of a substantial chunk of Liszt, and being especially pleased to finally discover a jazz-influenced classical piece that made effective and idiomatic use of the language of bebop, but there was no program and I was having difficulty tracking it down. I just figured out, with the help of Ethan Iverson's interview of pianist Marc-André Hamelin, in which the jazz-influenced composer Nikolai Kapustin (fansite here) is discussed, what it was: Kapustin's Variations Opus 41. Here's Yeol Eum Son herself playing it on Youtube:
Turns out there's a lot more of his stuff on youtube; here's Kapustin playing his Opus 66, no. 2 impromptu, which I think I like even better:
Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles: at Santa Fe 2012 and on record (Alain Vanzo's Nadir should not be missed)
This summer's Santa Fe Opera performance was the first time I've really listened to Bizet's first opera, Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers). It was a good performance, and perhaps I'll review it more fully sometime; the male leads, singing Nadir and Zurga, were good but not extraordinary, the female lead, Nicole Cabell singing Leila, had a more distinctive and powerful voice, with some clear ringing tone but also at times a bit too much vibrato and/or distortion, and possibly an overall sound more suited, to my ears, for bel canto Italian opera than a more legato french style. The opera has some beautiful choral sections, and in the Santa Fe performance I especially liked some of the duet work between Nadir and Leila in the middle and later sections. I also enjoyed the act I interaction between Nadir and Zurga, but I didn't quite realize, from the Santa Fe performance, that this is probably the high point of the opera and probably, in terms of just beautiful melody and singing, one of the high points of opera.
Listening to the first act, on Angel LPs (Angel 3603, stereo) with Pierre Dervaux conducting the chorus and orchestra of the Opéra Comique (Paris) and Janine Micheau as love-interest and priestess Leila, Nicolai Gedda as Nadir, Ernest Blanc as Zurga (rivals for Leila's love) and Jacques Mars as the bad-guy priest Nourabad, was a thoroughly satisfying musical experience. Some of the music might be thought a bit simple in its appeal, but none of it is boring, and there are plenty of superb high points. Gedda, who was a go-to tenor for recordings for several decades in the middle of the last century because of his reliability, willingness to deal with studio requirements such as multiple takes and such, and ability to project a role even in the studio, does an excellent job, with a relatively clear and neutral vocal quality. Baritone Ernest Blanc is a wonderful foil for Gedda, especially in the outstanding duet "Au fond du temple saint", with a very characterful voice that has a mellow, almost walnut-brown tone. The voices contrast nicely, but also work beautifully together in the unison passages. The Angel LP sound is good except toward the end of a side, where there is either a lot of inner-groove distortion, or perhaps my copy is just worn. I'm looking forward to a careful listen to the rest of this performance. Here's the Nadir-Zurga duet "Au fond du Temple Saint" from this recording:
However, what really turned me on to quality of the first-act music for Nadir and Zurga was the performances of French tenor Alain Vanzo. He has an amazing, very clear voice, sounding higher than most tenors when singing the same notes, but not quite like a countertenor. No one can touch him in this role. So here is a selection of his performances of the two great highlights of the first act: the duet "Au fond du temple saint", and Nadir's solo aria "Je crois entendre encore". This is some of the most beautiful singing ever.
Au Fond du Temple Saint:
Live in Amsterdam, 1963, with Belgian baritone Juri Jorlis as Zurga. Probably my favorite. Joris also has an exceptionally clear-toned voice that goes well with Vanzo's, and sings well; it's not just Vanzo's solo work that is outstanding here, Joris is too, and the two together are stunning, for instance beginning at 1'30 in the video.
The above performance is available on a 2 CD set on the Verona label. Jean Fornet conducts the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw, Erna Spoorenberg is Leila.
It's also interesting to hear a younger Vanzo, in 1959 with Robert Massard as Zurga. His voice sounds slightly tauter, the overall tone a bit more brilliantly operatic but perhaps less supple, and the tempo may be a bit faster.
Also from 1959, a very different performance with Gabriel Bacquier as Zurga. A much slower tempo, a softer-edged tone from Vanzo, a more relaxed interpretation overall. At least as presented on Youtube, the sound quality is better than in the two preceding clips, but I think there is a genuine difference in Vanzo's tone here, probably influenced by the slow tempo. Bacquier is a more standard, dark-toned baritone, and his delivery is more emphatically "operatic" at times. Still very much worth hearing. This clip also contains a lot of excellent music leading up to the aria; a highlight is the melodic passage for Nadir as he starts to be carried away by memories of Leila ("Son regard...") from 1'20 through 1'40. The musical and melodic quality here is as high as in any great aria. The passage begins with an old (but perhaps not so old in Bizet's time) trick, the singer singing the words of the phrase while repeating the same musical note, with the harmony changing underneath. (Puccini's "E lucevan le stelle" for Cavaradossi in Tosca starts the same way.) Here we just get one harmonic change with the same note kept in the melody; at the next harmonic change the singer rises by a minor third, and we are into an unmistakably nineteenth-century French melody, probably in some minor mode, reminiscent of antique times and exotic lands seen through a golden haze of memory. (You know the vein; it runs through art (Delacroix) and literature (Baudelaire), and certainly through French music all the way up to Debussy and Ravel, Reynaldo Hahn, etc...) This is magic, Bizet's genius at work; the transitions into and out of it are also superbly handled...in fact, the whole passage in this clip, before what is considered the duet proper begins with "Au fond..." at 2'20, shows Bizet's genius in handling dialogue in music, seamlessly mixing declamatory, recitative-like parts with melodic passages. At 1'50, Zurga is drawn into the reverie...the foreboding in his chromatic descending line (echoed at times in his lines in the duet proper, and presaged in some way by some chromatic ascending lines earlier) is not exactly the most subtle or original thing, but works perfectly as part of Bizet's mix.
Je crois entendre encore
This solo aria "Je crois entendre encore" is another contender for the musical high point of the opera. I'm unsure of the source of this clip, but it's a good one.
I'm also not sure where and when this next clip is from. In the preceding version, and in most or all of the other performances I've heard, the aria ends with Nadir's final "Charmant souvenir" echoed by the oboe. Where the singer rises a fourth (to the A above middle C) on "Charmant", the oboe rises a minor sixth, and also rises at the end to the cadence. In this version Vanzo sings the oboe's line, the minor sixth on "Charmant" taking him (incidentally) to what is called a "high C" for tenor, and it is breathaking:
The oboe line is probably what Bizet wrote, and perhaps sets up the transition to what follows better than singing the cadence, but it's also possible that it was set for the oboe because it was too high for the tenor in the relevant performance. Possibly the above clip is from a concert performance of the aria, where there is no need for a transition; the sung cadence is certainly effective.
Finally, from the 1963 Amsterdam performance again:
Lucevan le stelle: Tosca at Santa Fe
The stars, seen at intermission from the exterior loggia at the Santa Fe Opera two nights ago, were shining over the Sangre de Cristo mountains, through the gaps between the clouds remaining after a typical New Mexico late summer evening shower. And they were definitely shining onstage in a performance of Puccini's Tosca.
Tosca is one of the great operas. (If, like Benjamin Britten and Berkeley musicologist Joseph Kerman, you're one of the doubters on this score, I may address your doubts in another post, but now is not the time.) And the Santa Fe Opera put on a great performance of it two nights ago. Not a perfect one, but a genuinely great one. The sets were a bit unorthodox, with the church setting of act I portrayed with the dome suspended globe-like, its coffered, gilt-highlighted interior toward the audience, at the rear of the stage, which was open to the pinon-covered hills and more distant mesas and mountains of New Mexico. Stage right and left, chapel gates lined the church aisles, scaled down toward the back for artifical perspective. And rising ramp-like from front center, the huge painting on which Mario Cavaradossi is working---while standing on it---for most of the first act. Unorthodox, but very effective.
Brian Jagde (who replaced Andrew Richard, who had been scheduled for this season) sang Cavaradossi with elegant but unfussy phrasing, and a voice that was not huge, nor over-the-top dramatic, but handsome and focused, with a good core and excellent intonation, well suited to the part overall if a bit restrained at times. Below, I say more about why he is a really superb artist. Amanda Echalaz, from Durban, South Africa, has been getting some rave reviews for her Toscas at Covent Garden, the English National Opera, and elsewhere. Her voice is perhaps a bit far over on the dramatic side, rather than lyrical, to be perfectly ideal for the part which seems to me to require equal measure of both. It is produced with a lot of vibrato, and at least in the first act's scene of love, jealousy, and flirtation, some measure of distortion or strain in high, loud notes---which somewhat paradoxically, seemed to mostly disappear in the dramatic, no-holds-barred extended confrontation with Scarpia that is the second act. Her acting was superb, and the less-sweet side of her voice does emphasize the possibly more worldly side of Floria Tosca, who is after all a woman in show business (an opera singer, in fact!) at the turn of the 19th century, so the first act did have plenty of humor, tension, and drama. But she really came into her own in the second act. With Thomas Hampson playing a relatively suave and controlled but thoroughly despicable Scarpia, singing with effortless control and refined phrasing in a deep, honeyed baritone---no hammy villain he---this was unquestionably a highlight of the season at Santa Fe---as it would have been anywhere. Echalaz responded to each new piece of calm but implacably studied coercion, each newly revealed depth of evil, with more and more frenzied alternation of despair and rage, masterfully paced and not overdone, at the end almost like a lioness in the cage of Scarpia's office. And as Scarpia finds out, you don't want to be in a cage with an enraged lioness, especially if you are threatening one of her loved ones. The choral scene at the end of the first act should be singled out too...it's essentially a dark credo sung by Scarpia, with a hugely effective minor modal melody slithering up and down behind him, the orchestra providing a dirgelike, menacing 2/4 groove, and sacristans, priests, church officials piling on in a Te Deum along with a superb boy choir.
There was plenty more excellent singing, and of course fabulous music, in some of the love arias in acts I and III. Tosca's aria Vissi d'arte (I lived for art, I lived for love") also stood out. But the high point of this performance, and it was very high, was an aria that may well be the crux of the opera --- Cavaradossi's solo "E lucevan le stelle" ("And the stars were shining", or more literally, "and the stars shone"), in act III. Waiting to be executed, he recalls how the stars were shining the night he met Tosca, the creaking of the garden gate as she comes to him, her sweet kisses and languid caresses, and so forth... ratcheting up to "That time is gone, I die in desperation. I have never loved life as much as I do now!" There have been some great versions of this aria. Often the emotionalism, the remembered passion and the despair at oncoming death, are heavily underlined by the vocal interpretation, with massive rubato in places, changes in dynamics, a sensation that notes are being tossed or wrenched out into the air. Under control, this can make for a very effective interpretation. Roberto Alagna is among the farthest to this end of the continuum among successful interpretations; Giuseppe di Stefano much less so, depending on the performance. In the superb 1956 La Scala performance with Victor de Sabato conducting and Maria Callas as Tosca (available on CDs from EMI) di Stefano is impassioned but relatively controlled except for some (in my view unfortunate) minor sob/breakdown vocal effects at the very end. At Santa Fe, Jagde was at the opposite end of the spectrum---with vocal histrionics to a minimum, full, legato phrasing and musical beauty prioritized. Emotionally, the beauty of remembered times with Tosca predominated, and the final "I have never loved life so much" ("Non ho amato mai tanto la vita!") resonated more than the immediately preceding "I die desperate!" ("muoio disperato"). The music does more than enough to convey the pathos of the situation; Jagde's smooth, focused, firm and centered but not at all harsh or hard, and very slightly dark, voice, and supremely musical phrasing was perfect for this interpretation, and the effect was devastating, perhaps even more effective than a more highly wrought rendition. It is hard to know---and doesn't much matter---whether this judgement would hold up on listening to a recording, but subjectively, in its effect in context in this live performance, this was one of the greatest pieces of opera singing I've ever been privileged to hear. It brought down the house. Crucial to this aria's impact, of course, was the foundation provided by the singing and acting of the leads earlier in the opera, especially the Tosca-Scarpia confrontation by Echalaz and Hampson in Act II. (If you're curious what Richards might have sounded like had he been able to make it to Santa Fe this season, you can hear Richards sing Stelle in an August 2008 performance at the Bregenzer Festspiele; try to ignore the sobbing in the minute of lovely music that precedes the aria, and following it (although it's indicated in the score, it's overdone here), and you'll get an idea of how Richards sings this. Except for the histrionics, calmer and more centered than most of what you'll find for this aria, and quite beautifully sung...not that far from Jagde's interpretation, actually, though Richard's voice is a bit larger and deeper and his singing just a little less legato.)
Lucevan le stelle is preceded by a long orchestral interlude with Cavaradossi alone on stage, rather Debussyan in some of its harmony and moodiness, although with a bit more standard harmonic motion underneath. This is probably the place to mention that the orchestra, conducted by music director Frederic Chaslin, played superbly throughout. Very clear, almost transparent textures much of the time, supple phrasing, excellent timbres from the individual instruments, delicacy when needed but also a tasty bite and crunch from the brass and percussion when appropriate, and plenty of lushness, menace or power as required (which in Tosca, is often). I've been to the opera at Santa Fe quite a bit over the years and overall this season the orchestra is probably playing the best I've ever heard them play.
When Tosca arrives on the scene just before the execution, which she believes will be faked as Scarpia had promised, the interaction between her and Cavaradossi is not the transcendent love duet that publisher Ricordi had apparently tried to talk Puccini into; Puccini defended this choice on dramatic grounds, and I'm inclined to agree. There was no letdown musically, vocally, or dramatically, though, as the opera swiftly moved to its [SPOILER ALERT ;-)] dire conclusion.
Santa Fe made a great move here in engaging three major stars---one, Echalaz, relatively newly minted as a star through her replacement of Angela Gheorgiu as Tosca at Covent Garden in 2009, another, Hampson, relatively far along in his illustrious career but portraying Scarpia for the first time and the third, Richards, relatively unknown to be before this but to judge from credits in major roles at places like the Met and La Scala, somewhere near the peak of an important career. And even though only two of them could make it to Santa Fe in the end, the less well-known Jagde really came through, in this performance, as Richards' replacement. With excellent support from the orchestra, chorus, and supporting singers, and by engaging fully with each other vocally and dramatically, Jagde, Echalaz and Hampson put over Tosca not just as the highly emotional and musically lush potboiler it is easy to see it as, but as the---to be sure, highly emotional and musically lush---masterpiece it really is.
Debussy on NPR's Performance Today this week...
Claude Debussy's birthday is Wednesday the 22nd. NPR's Performance Today is featuring him today through Weds. You can stream today's show here. (The player will open hour 1; for hour 2 of the show, click at bottom right.) Currently (end of the 2nd hour) a really superb performance of "The Perfumes of the Night and Morning of a Festival Day, from Images, The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Shao-Chia Lu, conductor. I haven't listened intensely to the orchestral Images; in this performance, it's really lovely. Certainly when I listen to La Mer (for both musical quality and influence, one of the key works of classical music) I want more orchestral Debussy in that vein; this Images fits the bill all round, harmonically, melodically, rhythmically, timbrally, the main qualitative difference (the musical content is of course different) being that it is overall calmer. Perhaps there's something special about the Concertgebouw and Debussy; my favorite La Mer so far is the 1976 Phillips recording, in which they are conducted by Bernard Haitink. It's on Phillips CD 438-742-2 (bargain two CD set, if it's still available), which also has Haitink conducting them in Images, Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune, Jeux, Dances for harp and orchestra, Rhapsody for orchestra and clarinet, and some short pieces). Earlier in the show pianist Marc-André Hamelin played three preludes beautifully; I have and greatly enjoy Pascal Rogé playing some of these on CD, and was enchanted by Radu Lupu live, but after this I will probably search out some Hamelin on record. He's not afraid to be expressive, including rhythmically. The Rhapsody for saxophone and orchestra, with Hamelin playing the orchestral part on piano, came off less well to my ears, probably not because of the performance but either because it is a more ungainly piece of music, or because it needs the orchestra to sound right.
All or much of the portion of the show that features Hamelin seems to have been recorded live, in a concert hosted by PT host Fred Childs, that also features interesting conversation between him and Hamelin about the music. Today's show began with two pieces by Hamelin that I enjoyed... in a style that is reminiscent of the side of Debussy that is more involved with stacks of thirds and relatively diatonic melody (rather than fourths and fifths and pentatonic melody), but with a bit more chromaticism (though soft-edged) and to my ears somewhat more standard harmonic progressions, bringing in some of the more restrained aspects of nineteenth-century romanticism, as well as a slight whiff of classic thirties-through-fifties classic jazz and American popular music.
Tomorrow's show will feature Hamelin playing more preludes and a duet with clarinetist Richard Stoltzmann, among other things, so I'd say tune in or stream it.