Customer Reviews

Tone Poems Ii

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

 

 

Every now and then a collector of fine wines will go down to his cellar when nobody else is about and secretly crack open a bottle of the very finest wine and enjoy it's contents slowly, taking in every sip and savouring the moment. "Tone Poems II" is as fine as it gets to anybody intersted in Jazz guitar and/or mandolin world. The instruments collected here are second to none and the playing is equally exquisite. The interaction between the two artists demonstrates how great a duet setting can be - leader and supporter. Martin's solo playing (as on Lulu's Back in Town", "Tears" on a tenor Gibson and "My Romance" on a 1989 D'Aquisto New Yorker) is, as always, superb. Where else can you sit back and hear two Gibson Super 400s roaring and soaring while swinging like a gate. From an early Style U Gibson Harp guitar all the way through D'Angelicos, D'Aquistos, Strombergs, Martins, Epiphones and many many pre war Gibsons all the way up to John Monteleone's ground breaking masterpeices, these fantastic instruments that most of us can only dream about, are recorded hear with the finest quality allowing us to hear exactly the character of each intstrument, played at it's best in the style it was built for. The accompanying booklet is equally well presented with great photos of each and every intstrument played and a page or two of it's history. Any serious guitar or mandolin collector or just fanatic really should have this CD on their shelf for those moments when they have a chance to really sit back and relax, savouring each track one by one.

This is a masterful interpretation of these old chestnuts. The rapport of the musicians is terrific. The enclosed folder on the vintage instruments used is fascinating also.

You have to be an ACOUSTIC MUSIC fan to fully appreciate this, but nowhere else will you find a contemporary interpertation of "Teasin' the frets".

I might mention the artists would probably appreciate it if you bought the CD directly from them [...]

The music is superb. Anyone who likes accoustic music will love this. Included with the CD is a booklet describing the instruments Grisman and Taylor use. While listening to the tunes, you can flip through this booklet and get a short history of the different vintage guitars, mandolins, ect. they use in this album. This is an excellent piece of work and artistry.

Trust the dependable old Dawg himself, David Grisman, to deliver the goods when it comes to honest-to-goodness acoustic music. Tone Poems II accomplishes precisely what it sets out to do, to present "the sounds of the great jazz guitars, mandolins, mandolas, and mandocellos." There is good pickin' aplenty by Grisman and Taylor on a variety of well-known tunes, but not one note of this set sounds rote or routine. With an informative booklet featuring pictures and histories of some beautiful instruments, Tone Poems II is truly a treasure.

I bought this album because I couldn't hear their first one often enough. As I feared I might be, I'm a little disappointed. This album is much more up-tempo and jazzy, and lacks the finesse of their first, which offered a lot of folk music carefully and reflectively - is that a word? - played. It's harder to play well slowly than quickly, as your piano teacher probably told you. This is particularly true for duets.

This album was lame. It was way , way , way too spacey for me. Sorry. I love bluegrass, this was a little too "artistic" for me. Grier's more recent albums (Lone Soldier, house to myself, hootenanny) were great albums and worth the money. This one went in the garbage.