Customer Reviews

17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur

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minimalism is all the rage these days in cerebral jazz, free jazz, jazz in marriage with the daughter of european concert music. do you, the music of bill dixon, take the music of steve reich to be your... ?

music for 18 musicians and 17 musicians in search of a sound. you don't have to be paranoid or chasing conspiracy theories to wonder about connections here. or music for social awareness, john adams and 911, corigliano and aids, and the trumpet so eloquent for taps and dirges, blanchard and katrina. add dixon's trumpet and compositions to darfur.

as for the music itself, what bill dixon does is far closer to roscoe mitchell and butch morris than to what terrance blanchard does, no disrespect for blanchard who plays a different brand of jazz.

today is a sunny sunday afternoon here in connecticut, and i'm not far from the jazz club, firehouse 12, in new haven, where the music for dixon's live concert was mixed, listening to the resulting cd, fitting music to a welcomed sunny sunday afternoon in new england in the month of our cold february, music that unfolds and flows the way a landscape does during a hike in the woods if you can imagine a state forest, a national park, and every mile on your walk you encounter an explosive geyser, noisy and phenomenal, before which you stop and gaze before continuing your stroll.

bill dixon's recording is divided into 13 parts, several of them under 2 minutes in duration. the longest part, sinopia (a painter's term, dixon did the art work for the 'cover'), is more than 23 minutes, 13 horns, including a tuba, tenor trombones, a bass clarinet and a bass saxophone. not to forget the double bass, the cello, the drums and the vibraphone. one would think, hard with so much orchestra to achieve and maintain minimalism, but dixon does it.

This CD captures all the angst and turmoil that is Darfur. Discord and oppression, faint hopes for a harmonious life, and aimless wandering are all metaphors that apply equally well to this amalgamation. Like fingernails on a chalkboard or rival felines asserting their dominance over one another, this project epitomizes musically the dissonance of Sudan.