Customer Reviews

The Past Is Yet To Come

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

 

 

Craig Ventresco manages to do what few "recreators" of old music ever achieve - he avoids the preciousness, delicacy and stiffness that often comes with the territory. Rather than viewing these pieces as sacrosanct, Ventresco infuses them with a very modern sense of urgency and immediacy. The results are stunning: 80 year old piano rags are played the way I can imagine audiences heard them when new. Ventresco attacks the music and his instrument with ferocious intensity - nothing sounds the least bit overwrought or hesitant.

To me, that flaw has always been the difference between the originals and the many respectful imitators. Compare Blind Blake to Stefan Grossman and you hear the "real deal" versus a very well intentioned and technically capable student. Ventresco surpasses because he lifts the veil of time and culture; when compared with Blake (Blind and Eubie), Jefferson, Joplin, Waller, etc., he does not sound at all like an imitator but rather a contemporary. He does not honor or pay homage; Ventresco just DOES IT right from his core. Highly recommended!

This man is a God who brings out music from his guitar that makes me feel so warm, content and taken care of. Sounds nutty, I know, but it's true. I love this sound and I have never heard it anywhere else but from Craig Ventresco! You want this recording.

I consider myself a respectable music critic, and although I am not a resident in the land of ragtime, this cd is breathtaking. Craig is a phenomenal guitarist, able to blend common rag techniques with an unforgiving intensity and somewhat chromatic flair that can keep you comfortably enjoying his music while breathing heavily in anticipation of his next tangential masterpiece. Anyone interested in in rag or blues should give this a chance, as true talent can never be avoided.

Brilliant, just brilliant-warm yet muscular, visceral yet cerebral, and pure fun to boot.
I'm hard to thrill but discovering Ventresco thrilled me. Finest all-around guitarist I've heard in years. His feel for this difficult music is only equalled by his inventiveness and risk-taking. Craig and one of his current sidekicks Meredith Axelrod, along with Pete Devine (Devine's Jug Band) would be selling millions of cd's if the average listener had any taste at all. Check 'em out live and buy everything you can get your hands on.