Customer Reviews

Symphony No.1

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A normal rule of Amazon.com reviews is to avoid commenting on other reviews.

I wish I could stick to that this time, but I can't. (If you're reading this, however, I suppose Amazon has done the right thing and let mine through...)

You see, the official Amazon review is SOOOO predictable. Joe Jackson has been getting press just like it for 20 years. Probably only two albums in his entire career were embraced universally by the "critics" (Look Sharp! and Night And Day).

Much more often, he gets what he's got from Amazon: glib and vicious nonsense about the music "fail[ing] miserably". Just think about that for a second: Steve Vai, Terence Blanchard, all the other acclaimed musicians, the producers and engineers, the Sony Classical executives - they all knew deep in their hearts that this music was rubbish but nobody told Joe...

Hardly likely, is it? And if it's not, then our Amazon reviewer understands this record better than all those who made it (not to mention most of the other reviewers who've posted at this site).

The simple facts are these:

(1) Every record Joe Jackson makes is *completely* different from the last (except, perhaps for the three records of 1979-80);

(2) This record is no exception.

And, yes, there IS a warning to be had with Symphony No 1: it is easily the subtlest record he has ever made.

If you give a damn about music, don't let the first listen deceive you. (Professional critics thrive on first listens: that is the very nature of their job.)

I'm both a pop song junkie and a well educated "classical" listener, and I still found this record strange at first. To my ears, it sounded too smooth (prominent saxophone, groovy electric guitar, lots of keyboards, strong 60s/70s jazz influence etc.), maybe almost muzak-like...Heaven help us!

But it's nothing like that. It's beautiful, subtle, highly complex, and thoroughly satisfying. It is a very strong composition, and it rewards patient listeners (and ONLY them). The percussion alone is astonishingly clever, but I doubt the averge professional critic has time to even hear it.

So what is a "symphony", anyway? A good definition is a (lengthy) piece of music that takes you on a journey; and that journey must feel truly ORGANIC and somehow INEVITABLE (not to be confused with 'predictable'). I'm not making this up, I'm paraphrasing from Robert Layton (ed.)'s highly acclaimed book "A Guide To The Symphony".

"Symphony No 1" is easily the most organic music Joe Jackson has ever written. The journey is incredibly satisfying, and when you finally 'get it', it's quite profound too. But it takes patience - the sort of patience that all genuinely NEW music requires.

And yes, this IS new music. The classical avant garde might happily ignore it, and I'm not saying that it has the stunning complexity and virtuosity of, say, Thomas Ades' works, but that's not what Jackson is trying to be. Nor is he trying to be a pop star. Nor a "crossover artist". Nor a "chameleon". He's just being himself, and that has always been, first and foremost, a musician.

PS: Read his book, "A Cure For Gravity" and you'll know what I mean. (Among other things, there's a hilarious comparison in it of two completely opposite reviews of the very same concert.)

PPS: The short, poor quality Real Player excerpts available on this site are quite worthless in assessing this record. If anything, they misrepresent the music quite badly.

Lots of people won't like this disc. On the one hand, you have people who aren't used to listening to long, challenging works, people who don't know what to hang onto when there are no obvious hooks. On the other hand, you have the classical purists who will insist that Jackson is engaging in pretense by playing at classical composer. (He's not entirely posturing, of course; he studied at the Royal Academy of music.) But, like so many albums that sound like just so much noise at first, Symphony No. 1 rewards repeated listening. I find that to begin to appreciate a long, complex work, I have to have established the overall contour of the piece in my mind to provide context for the individual musical ideas. It takes me half a dozen listens, or more, to begin to establish this mental map of the music. But if you pay attention, eventually you'll be able to pick out the themes and variations thereof, you'll learn how the various moments in the piece relate to one another and appreciate how one builds tension in rising to the next and how the tension is eventually released. After I started grokking this album a couple months ago, I spent a couple weeks with it on repeat in my car, enjoying it more each time. I still put it in once a week or so and appreciate it anew each time. If you are a pop listener who doesn't have this kind of patience, then this album will probably frustrate you. If you have some experience with classical but grew up listening to pop, rock, and jazz, though, you might like this as much as I do.

Well, as some of the other posts imply, this album is deffenetly not for everyone. In fact, most great music and art will, in fact, be hated by over 75% of the population because it dares to challange it's audience. And this disc is no exception! If your in it for the 3 minute songs with cetchy vocal melodies, this is not for you. In fact, it's a 40 minute instrumental work that combines 20th century classical, jazz, and some progressive rock into an exquisite piece of color and imagery. The arrangement is incredible, especially considering the odd array of instruments. The best way of describing this work is by taking some early 20th century classical, a twist of Paul Winter, and a dose of Yes and Emerson Lake & Palmer. An amaizingly ground-breaking album!

I am disappointed in how most reviewers feel the need to put this music into a category. Music is music. Good music is good, and bad music is bad, no matter what 'category' people try to pigeonhole it into. Symphony No. 1 is complex, uniquely orchestrated, and very rhythmically and harmonically challenging to listen to if the listener is expecting a Haydn-type symphony. It is also true, for all those dull dull dull purists out there, to the nature of a symphony in that it contains expositional material that is developed and then reintroduced later in within the work. Contrary to several other reviewers' opinions, it does contain many memorable themes. I can say this because I haven't listened to it since last week, but I can hear the themes of the various movements in my head right now. The comparison to ELP is childish and short-sighted -- I sincerely doubt that Jackson was out to imitate anyone else's style; he was writing the music that he felt inspired to write. I agree, Will Power was an amazing album, but Will Power was also a collection of shorter pieces of music whereas Symphony No. 1 is a different kind of work. One that maybe takes something of an attention span to listen to. It's like comparing, for example, Dvorak's symphonies to his Slavonic Dances; they are two totally different genres of music, each equally wonderful. Or like the difference between a short story and a novel. One is not better than the other; it just has to be developed at a faster rate than the other. If people don't have the attention span to listen to a piece of music more than once and notice the subtleties of it, then maybe they should stick to listening to pop music. (By the way, his Night and Day II has just come out, for those of you who want the pop stuff, and it's fabulous.) Joe Jackson is one of the few musicians alive today who has actually been developing and maturing as a musician, who has a unique style, and who has been producing high-quality music throughout his career.

A normal rule of Amazon.com reviews is to avoid commenting on other reviews.

I wish I could stick to that this time, but I can't. (If you're reading this, however, I suppose Amazon has done the right thing and let mine through...)

You see, the official Amazon review is SOOOO predictable. Joe Jackson has been getting press just like it for 20 years. Probably only two albums in his entire career were embraced universally by the "critics" (Look Sharp! and Night And Day).

Much more often, he gets what he's got from Amazon: glib and vicious nonsense about the music "fail[ing] miserably". Just think about that for a second: Steve Vai, Terence Blanchard, all the other acclaimed musicians, the producers and engineers, the Sony Classical executives - they all knew deep in their hearts that this music was rubbish but nobody told Joe...

Hardly likely, is it? And if it's not, then our Amazon reviewer understands this record better than all those who made it (not to mention most of the other reviewers who've posted at this site).

The simple facts are these:

(1) Every record Joe Jackson makes is *completely* different from the last (except, perhaps for the three records of 1979-80);

(2) This record is no exception.

And, yes, there IS a warning to be had with Symphony No 1: it is easily the subtlest record he has ever made.

If you give a damn about music, don't let the first listen deceive you. (Professional critics thrive on first listens: that is the very nature of their job.)

I'm both a pop song junkie and a well educated "classical" listener, and I still found this record strange at first. To my ears, it sounded too smooth (prominent saxophone, groovy electric guitar, lots of keyboards, strong 60s/70s jazz influence etc.), maybe almost muzak-like...Heaven help us!

But it's nothing like that. It's beautiful, subtle, highly complex, and thoroughly satisfying. It is a very strong composition, and it rewards patient listeners (and ONLY them). The percussion alone is astonishingly clever, but I doubt the averge professional critic has time to even hear it.

So what is a "symphony", anyway? A good definition is a (lengthy) piece of music that takes you on a journey; and that journey must feel truly ORGANIC and somehow INEVITABLE (not to be confused with 'predictable'). I'm not making this up, I'm paraphrasing from Robert Layton (ed.)'s highly acclaimed book "A Guide To The Symphony".

"Symphony No 1" is easily the most organic music Joe Jackson has ever written. The journey is incredibly satisfying, and when you finally 'get it', it's quite profound too. But it takes patience - the sort of patience that all genuinely NEW music requires.

And yes, this IS new music. The classical avant garde might happily ignore it, and I'm not saying that it has the stunning complexity and virtuosity of, say, Thomas Ades' works, but that's not what Jackson is trying to be. Nor is he trying to be a pop star. Nor a "crossover artist". Nor a "chameleon". He's just being himself, and that has always been, first and foremost, a musician.

PS: Read his book, "A Cure For Gravity" and you'll know what I mean. (Among other things, there's a hilarious comparison in it of two completely opposite reviews of the very same concert.)

PPS: The short, poor quality Real Player excerpts available on this site are quite worthless in assessing this record. If anything, they misrepresent the music quite badly.

Those of you who wish this middle-aged artist would go back to his angry pop stuff like "I'm the Man" and "Look Sharp!" are going to be sorely disappointed. All artists want to grow and explore new material and new modes of expression, and with his classical training Joe Jackson is not only not going to be any different, but he's going to be an examplar in new directions. Those who enjoy a full orchestration will be delighted with what Joe has written in this jazz symphony. The first movement opens with a single touch of the cymbal, moving into contemporary chord structure backing the alto sax theme. The flute against allegro keyboard and percussion in the middle theme recalls urban modernity and action. The second movement features trumpets, noble French horns and low brass in a somewhat unraveled set of themes, connoting freneticism and escape to a better place. The slow third movement echoes some of the chord structures featured in pieces from Body and Soul and Night and Day, feeling almost like the few nighttime hours before sunrise. Wistful andante trumpet and flute themes evoke loneliness and at the same time anticipation. The triumphant fourth movement begins with a heart-rendingly beautiful flute duo evoking optimism and the promise of a new day, moving into a vivace string theme. Smooth brass harmony and vibraphone in the third section provide the bridge to the final section, in which the original flute and violin themes are presented by brass and keyboards, respectively, along with a return of the violin in the most uplifting, positive melody line I've heard in decades. I sometimes play just the fourth movement when I'm feeling down and need a lift. The final chord, like that of the fourth movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony, ends not with a bang but a decrescendo whisper. Nothing from his angry young punk days can compare to this! Truly a Gershwinesque tour de force!

If you are interested in what happens to a musician that continues to mature throughout their life, then Joe Jackson is for you. He continues to explore the art of sound. He has been jazzy and bluesy, now he is classical. This disc continues to explore some of the themes in "Night Music." I welcome whatever Joe Jackson may due next. Maybe an opera?

Joe Jack son has created a wonderful instrumental that takes your mind drifting over the various soundscapes. His keyboards are distinct even in the mist of other goings on. Steve Vai adds his unmistakable presence while maintaining Jackson's musical vision. Jackson combines classical ideas with modern pop and jazz with call backs to Frank Zappa's instrumental jazz circa "Hot Rats," Emerson, Lake & Palmer, even Kurt Weill. The first movement is an awakening, the second movement a release of the spirit, while the last movement is reflection over all that has come before. You might say Joe Jackson summed up his life in this instrumental odyssey.

This is an interesting symphony. It's not your typical sounding symphony with traditional instrumentation. It's a symphony that blends various woodwinds with drums and other electric instruments and sounds. However, it does feature more traditional instruments like a violin and viola. The symphony manages to progress nicely and it held my interest throughout it's 45 minutes. This album is a little treasure that will stay in my cd player for awhile. It features the great virtuoso Steve Vai on electric guitar.

Just as my subject says, yes, JJ's days of synth heavy anthems of city life are a thing of the past. Heck, I'm gonna miss that stuff. However, we are dawning on a time of great revalation. Joe's newest CD stuck a good chord with me ("A C-minor with a tendency to shift to an F#" as JJ says) It's awesome when playing in your car. I found myself more attuned to the road when listening to the CD. The instrumentation is beautiful, and sometimes even comical. The Second Movement had a sort of videogame-ish sound with the brass chorus. All in all, If you like jazzy riffs with a pinch of classical, buy this CD, you won't be dissapointed.