Customer Reviews

Tight Sweater: Real Quiet Plays the Music of Marc Mellits

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

 

 

I don't know what the deal is with the, er, interesting album cover photo, but Marc Mellits proves that minimalism isn't quite dead yet with his perky, spiky, and appealingly compact chamber music. It's even kinda groovy...

If Steve Reich is the Mondrian or Picasso of minimalism, Mellits has to be its Paul Klee. Like Klee, Mellits is a miniaturist, his compositions usually short but rich in creative combinations of instruments, textures, timbres and colors. For fans of Reich and Glass, these have to be pure ear candy; for listeners who become numb with too much slowly modulated repetition, rest assured that Mellits shifts cadence and key quite often. This music is full of surprises and delights, and so enjoyable it doesn't matter whether you think Mellits' indebtedness to his seniors is too great or whether---like Klee vis-a-vis Picasso---his genius is wholly his own.

Klee loved provocative, whimsical titles ("Idol for House Cats", "The Twittering Machine," etc) and you can see this trait in Mellits, too: but happily his titles are related to the music in no literal way I can figure. But their outrageousness is echoed by a purely musical wit that is a lot harder to come by.

If you like this CD keep in mind its more recent companion "Paranoid Cheese," a second feast of short, varied bon-bons.

Why this composer isn't better known is the only thing I can't explain. The pianist here, Andrew Russo (see also his solo albums "Dirty Little Secret," "Mixtape," etc.), got a Grammy nomination, and with luck something similar will soon happen to Mellits himself.