Oregon in Moscow

Oregon | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 12, 2000)
• Original Release Date: September 12, 2000
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Intuition
• ASIN: B00004UF5T
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #206,449 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true masterpiece, November 11, 2000

By 

F. Simon (Anytown, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Oregon in Moscow (Audio CD)

The new Oregon release, Oregon In Moscow, is as beautiful and profound an album as I have ever heard, and certainly one of Oregon's best. The group (Ralph Towner - guitar and piano, Paul McCandless - woodwinds, Glen Moore - bass, and Mark Walker - drums and percussion) and producer Steve Rodby have created a monumental work of art.

A two CD set recorded by Rich Breen with the Moscow Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, this is a stunning achievement from every standpoint: composition, orchestration, performance, improvisation, production, and recording. Even the packaging is stellar. The two chief composers, Ralph Towner and Paul McCandless, wrote their own orchestrations and the results are sublime, by turns achingly gorgeous and stirring. Programming varies widely, including Oregon with orchestra, alone as a quartet, guitar and woodwind duo, and solo bass. And there's a perfect balance between older familiar material and new compositions.

In a way, this may be the quintessential Oregon album, despite the fact that it's their first album with orchestra, because all the orchestral implications of Oregon's music through the years have now been fully realized here, and brilliantly so.

I strongly urge anyone interested in intelligent, moving, beautiful, and artistic music to get this album and bathe in it.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite and Profound, September 15, 2000

By 

Stephen Silberman "writer, Wired Magazine" (SF, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Oregon in Moscow (Audio CD)

Oregon has always played music that is nourished by a global range of influences -- from swinging jazz, to free improvisation, to chamber music, to classical Indian ragas -- while remaining intensely personal, reflective, focused and profound. For their 25th album, the quartet teams up with the Moscow Tschaikovsky Symphony for ambitious reworkings of "classic" Oregon tunes (like Icarus), songs that deserved more notice on their original release (Waterwheel, Zephyr, All the Mornings Bring), and some new work (The Templars, Anthem, Round Robin). The result is magnificent -- a fine introduction to the band's music for those who don't know it, and a crowning achievement for longtime fans who always wondered what Towner would sound like given a roomful of musicians to play his unearthly beautiful melodies. The version of Waterwheel (formerly released on the regrettably underappreciated Towner/Gomez/DeJohnette album "Batik") here is astonishing -- listen for the moment when the orchestra's surging voices subside, leaving only Towner and his guitar. McCandless's All the Mornings Bring (originally released on an LP of that title) is breathtaking, as is his moving Spirits of Another Sort (composed for a production of "Midsummer Night's Dream"). Even the oft-played Icarus is given new life here, sounding triumphant and definitive. On the downside, "Firebat," a new Moore tune, sounds overwrought, and Towner should give "Beneath an Evening Sky" a rest. But all in all, this is a superb album.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exemplary Wind Playing, March 11, 2001

By 

JENNIFER SPERRY (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Oregon in Moscow (Audio CD)

I applaud Oregon for sustaining its superb artistry even as it undergoes a format change. Most non-classical groups sound like muzak when they position themselves in front of an orchestra; Oregon simply finds a new dimension.

As a professional oboist, I have always found Paul McCandless' work an inspiration. An outside-of-the-box musician with speechlike communicative abilities on all the instruments he plays, he never sacrifices beauty of tone or technical hyper-virtuosity. McCandless is the only jazz star I have heard who would flatten virtually any competition had he chosen the classical field. Best of all, the lucidity and flash of all that technique doesn't stand alone, but infuses the music with a searching expression and beautiful sense of style.