2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Who Is Simon Haram?, April 4, 2000
This review is from: Alone... (Audio CD)
Simon Haram must be a member of Michael Nyman's band or associated somehow with John Adams and the Nonesuch posse. There are 3 Adams compositions here, 2 Michael Nyman, an Arvo Part and a Bowie/Eno, not to mention Graham Fitkin of whom I know nothing about. Lovely music though.
This is apparantely his second album (first being "On Fire"), both on Black Box in England. If there is an American distributor, they should take advantage of this beautiful cd. Its Philip Glass without the staccato repetition and constant modulation.
Haram is a soprano and alto sax player in the way that Jon Hassell is a trumpet player - he completely reinterprets the instrument. In fact, this is an instrumental album of vocal and mostly choral works. If Jan Garbarek represented the sax moving from jazz to ambient, Haram is coming from the Classical field.
He creates lyrical, minimalist soundscapes with sweet, not saccharine, clear tone, full of imagery and somewhat sanguine. I would recommend "Alone..." for lovers, massage therapists and chronic melancholics. It does test the limits at times of serious composition with a tendency towards the light romantic, but that's ok now and then. There's always Part to sober you up!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ravishingly beautiful Classical/New Music/Ambient music, June 12, 2005
This review is from: Alone... (Audio CD)
This is, simply, some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. Proving that New Music needn't be sterile or unapproachable, Simon Haram proves with this remarkable disc that far from being a melodic graveyard, New Music/Minimalism/Ambient can be among the most stunningly beautiful soundscapes on the planet.
One thing that immediately impresses is Haram's sax sound/conception. Playing his soprano/alto/EWI/synth instruments in a very classically oriented fashion, at times sounding almost like a cor Anglais or oboe, Haram achieves a tonal quality for his particular winds that I've never heard before. Meshing uncannily with the Ambient/New Music sensibility, he creates a unique aural signature, one entirely apposite to the over musical concept represented here.
Think Gerald Finzi, Gabriel Fauré, Samuel Barber, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Maurice Duruflé, and Peter Garland at their most elegiac, and you, perhaps, get somewhat of a sense of the kind of music that's going down here.
Simply gorgeous, and not to be missed.
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