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Quiet Stone: Music of Laurie Altman

£12.69

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Label: Neos Music

Cat No: NEOS11907

Barcode: 4260063119071

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Release Date: 26th April 2019

Works

Altman, Laurie

50 MM
Eyes Light
J's Way
Japanese Suite
La Musique des Troubadours
Miniatures (3) for solo piano
Persona
Prelude no.17
Standard Twists
Winter's Passage

Artists

Laurie Altman (piano)
Andreas Kuhnrich (cello)
Anders Miolin (13-string guitar)
Matthias Mueller (clarinet)
Nedyalko Petkov (clarinet)
Isabel Pfefferkorn (mezzo-soprano)

Works

Altman, Laurie

50 MM
Eyes Light
J's Way
Japanese Suite
La Musique des Troubadours
Miniatures (3) for solo piano
Persona
Prelude no.17
Standard Twists
Winter's Passage

Artists

Laurie Altman (piano)
Andreas Kuhnrich (cello)
Anders Miolin (13-string guitar)
Matthias Mueller (clarinet)
Nedyalko Petkov (clarinet)
Isabel Pfefferkorn (mezzo-soprano)

About

With his new CD “Quiet Stone” Laurie Altman draws the listener into a musical world that is completely different from that of his previous three NEOS recordings. In a certain sense, his background as a jazz pianist shines through: instead of large, fully composed works he offers miniatures with some improvised passages.

The recordings are strongly characterized by the presence of a 13-string guitar belonging to Laurie Altman’s stage partner of many years, Anders Miolin.

“The first piece, Winter’s Passage, is a pictorial representation of a day, winter, that despite its cold wind, touched me with a kind of warmth and wonder. It features Andreas Kuhnrich’s haunting cello; a wind-swept voice telling its own story. La Musique des Troubadours aligns a past with a present, a 12th-century poem of Guiraut Riquier, its sentiments (powerful in scope), and a form of expression exploiting sparse, thin textural support to Isabel Pfefferkorn’s ancient inspired vocals.

“Standard Twists takes a somewhat unorthodox approach to three American standards by applying a totally different melodic contour and shape to these lovely lyrics. I discovered that providing different melodic choices only served to heighten the lyrics’ intensity and specificity because they were no longer attached to the tunes, so many of us had become accustomed to listening too. Anders Miolin’s 13-string guitar lends its unique tonal character and sonic poignancy to Eyes Light. Originally a piano work, Anders has re-imagined it for his instrument with a delicate and wistful effect. The Japanese Suite finds its inspiration from a trip to Japan three years ago that my wife, Jeannine and I took. I sought here a range of colours in these four works from the delicate to the frenetic; from the spatial to the complex; with improvisations as integral structural component.

“Prelude no.17, the last piece in my Piano Preludes, expresses a jazzy, urgent and energetic framework within its brief time span. Being the last piece of the set seemed to drive its completion towards the final ending in a most breathless and emphatic manner. J’s Way portrays my wife Jeannine in whatever muse she presented to me on the day of its composing. Persona is an homage to the great Swedish film director, Ingmar Bergman and his film of the same name. 50 MM is a birthday present for my friend, Matthias Mueller on the occasion of his 50th. Free, loose, spontaneous and interactive ... different in intensity and character than the other works on the CD, yet it reflects upon the ways in which a work of music moves both inside and outside itself as it finds its way back to where it began, or perhaps to where it had never even started.”

– Laurie Altman