Customer Reviews

Angels Of Fire

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How do you make sense of senseless tragedy? That is the question that informs and haunts this lovely, albeit somewhat strange, music.

Michael Mason, fireman and contemporary musician, known for his avant excursions, here tries to contextualize, in a suite of musical impressions, a human tragedy of immense proportions and indecipherable character: the holocaust of Our Lady of the Angels school fire, December 1, 1958, in Chicago. Mason, a survivor of that blaze, bravely seeks both to find some thread of sanity in what happened, and to pay homage to the 92 children and three nuns whose lives were snuffed out by that cruel conflagration.

Alas, there is little sanity to be found. The fire, almost certainly arson set by a disgruntled student, who, strangely, nevertheless evaded prosecution, remains, after many years of careful investigation, a mysterious tragedy, incapable of understanding, of closure, of resolution.

What better response than the mystical? This music, primal, inchoate, visceral, is entirely apposite. Of course it will never achieve the ephemeral popular embrace of lesser endeavors. But it is all the more worth hearing on account of that, if only because it encompasses the anguished heart-cry that touches all those open to the unsolvable mysteries that inhabit the interstices of our existence.

Those familiar with Mason's earlier work may be disappointed: This is not the avant-jazz work that marked his first 3 cds, but rather is written in a self-consciously "accessible" style. If you're looking for avant garde, look elsewhere, but if you're open to something different, this is a quite pleasant selection of flute-based jazz.