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| Works By Bolcom/Druckman/Shapey/Wright | 
 enlarge | Creators: William Bolcom, Jacob Druckman, Ralph Shapey, Maurice Wright, American Brass Quintet
Label: New World Records
Category: Music
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $12.98
You Save: $5.01 (28%)
Buy New/Used from $9.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  (1 reviews)
Sales Rank: 395842
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 093228037729
EAN: 0093228037729
ASIN: B0000030EJ
Release Date: December 8, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Quintet: Introduction - Remembered Fathers | | • | Quintet: 1. Quintet | | • | Quintet: 2. Quintet | | • | Quintet: 3. Quintet | | • | Quintet: 1. Bold and strong | | • | Quintet: 2. With a subtle pulse | | • | Quintet: 3. Brisk | | • | Quintet: 4. With great energy | | • | Other Voices: 1. Other Voices | | • | Other Voices: 2. Other Voices | | • | Other Voices: 3. Other Voices | | • | Other Voices: 4. Other Voices |
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| Customer Reviews:
Americana brass not always interesting June 25, 2001
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
What is American brass music?, well music played by brass players(not necessarily American citizens) a few steps from the vernacular, the playing(dumming) down to the popular imagination, concerts in the parks, round the lakefront,pops,tunes,hits,marches,declamatory gestures, obvious most of the time, arrogant,imperialistic like Washington's foreign policy designs, yet tender and gentle, unfolding with a large degree of predictability, antique road shows, showing what grandaddy meant to me,to us. That's what the Bolcom piece so obviously does,a trip backwards to the Family Tree Roots, each movement named after an ancestor of this now famous prize-winning American composer. And it's music that unfolds quite nicely, no experimentation, just good brass music, And what is Good brass music??, well music with a tune, you can almost hum, with counterpoint, main line melody and accompaniment,rolls off the pallette. I found this piece quite tedious after a while, i think I got to know the Bolcom Family persona and its engrained sensibility. Ralph Shapey withdrew his music from public performance until 1976,fed up with the American music scene, of cliques, and politics to get a piece played,the indifference toward creativity and real culture, not Hollywood's market concoctions in this country. However he practices what he preaches his music has a strain of dignity,crafted with a dose of experimentalism disciplined within the modernist tradition with a large reliance on classical shapes,forms and structures. Here the french horn has melodic lines screeching/reaching for the upper regions of itself, quite tortured sounding at times and anxiety ridden. Shapey's music has a transgressive side that not all is right with the state of the world. He gets however a tremendous sound from the modest economical of means,with dissonant chordal timbres. The use of the bass trombone instead of tuba was a stroke of genious, in thining out the often dense texture. Reiteration is an important component of Shapey's aesthetic pallette,and here the infusion of gestural madness yet powerfully rendered is quite compelling.The use of mutes is also quite a disturbing element of this work, quite barren. Rhythmic shape is torn from its sockets,meaning each reiteration is displaced upon different beats, and differing pulses are dispersed. This music is direct as well, and in-yer-face yet it resounds from a deep affinity for modernist dodecaphonic means. Shapey was a student of Stefan Wolpe, and was a close friend of Edgar Varese and Willem de Kooning, all that seems to be part of the Quintet. The Wright Quiniet is a fairly modest predictable affair, now fast and declamatory, then brisk n' light n' toccata like. Bold statement all projected within predictable frames, good sitting in the park on a Sunday afternoon music here. Other Voices by the late Jacob Druckman is a grandiose affair for brass,quite unique in the literature, about 18 minutes in length,and you hear Druckman's time he spent with electronic means, the enveloping of timbres, quick crecendoes, the masking, hiding of timbre, then when stripped away we find another layer, we didn't hear. the brass parts hear have this noise-like affinity, fast bird like chirping, and the muted trumpet associates this timbre quite immediately for us.Duckman's music is evocative, and mysterious,with a theatrical bend.
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