Customer Reviews

Alternate Route

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4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Being a fellow horn player I have followed Jeff Beal's recorded career with interest since 1989. This new recording is lushly symphonic with the first four selections with The Berkeley Symphony and the last four with The Metropole Orchestra in Holland. What results is an amazing cinematic set of works. The last set starting with "Circle Suite" have a very upfront jazz feel, with Jeff hitting on a few of the themes that were featured on 1993's "Three Graces" album. The result was emotionally exhausting for me. The twist and turns in the music itself plus the gorgeous playing. Jeff is one of the very few musicians who can play a flugelhorn in tune throughout it's entire range. You will simply luxuriate in the warm velvet oil that pours from this man's horn. It's a wonderful thing to know that music of this magnitude and effect is still being conceived and played in this world. As for me, it's back to the woodshed as the bar has been raised all the higher for the rest of us.

"Alternate Route" is traveling music along The Third Stream that fuses classical music and jazz. These pieces can be construed as sonatas for trumpet/flugelhorn and orchestra, beginning with modern abstract classical modes passing through Gershwinesque inspirations and ending with Ellingtonian jazz structures, with a nod to Isham's mute. The cinematic arrangements are seductive and enchanted: the disappointed first hearing gives way to extraordinary psychological journeys in repeated playing as the ear adjusts and the mind stops analyzing and just listens. Very few artists have produced true Third Stream works, most contented with symphonic accompaniments to jazz explorations. Beal knows his medium. Here, he collaborates with two excellent orchestras and employs Skywalker mixing to produce a tone poem of delightful, intriguing musical stanzas.

I recently became aware of composer Jeff Beal, having seen the film "Pollock", which he scored. Beal's breath-taking orchestration and jazz-influenced compositional language are evident in this recording, as they were in his film score. Alternate Route, a trumpet concerto featuring Beal's outstanding playing, is unique in its usage of improvising soloist with symphony orchestra. The second half of the CD features Beal in a more traditional jazz setting with the Metropole Orchestra. The music is fresh, innovative and thoroughly engaging. I look forward to hearing more from this talented composer.

This is just too precious for words. Moderately good trumpet playing is simply awash in lush orchestrations--but to coin a phrase, "where's the beef?" The compositions, solos and ideas are lackluster at best, swirled up in a meringue of sickly sweet backgrounds which more than overwhelm the slight substance. It rivals a Barney the Dinosaur CD for overwhelming cuteness plus unlistenability. Mr. Beal may be talented, but this is not my cup of tea, or should I say, cup of whipped cream.