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█ █ P U B L I C . S O U N D
█ █
█ █ presenting our latest release
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r e l e a s e . i n f o
Artist.....: Beirach Huebner Mraz
Title......: Round About Monteverdi
Rip Date...: Nov-25-2007 Cat.No.....: ACT9412-2
Style......: Jazz Label......: The ACT Company
Quality....: VBRkbps Type.......: Album
Size.......: 70,1 MB Source.....: CDDA
r e l e a s e . n o t e s
It was like a revelation for him: "I have been involved with music
my whole life, but this was something I knew very
little about. ", says pianist Richie Beirach. "I had no idea there
was so much happening during this particular
epoch". In their newest project the American jazz pianist and his
two partners, violinist Gregor Huebner and
bassist George Mraz, devote themselves to compositions out of the
early Baroque. After "Round About Bartok"
(ACT 9276-2) and "Round About Federico Mompou" (ACT 9296-2) now
follows "Round About Monteverdi".
With their homage to the Hungarian Bela Bartok and the Catalonian
Mompou, the trio were inspired by 20th
century composers. Picking up on a favorite idea of ACT chief
Siegfried Loch's, this time they go some 400 years
back. Beirach was amazed: " Up until now I had always thought that
Johann Sebastian Bach had begun
something new. Now it's clear to me that Bach is the culmination
of what Monteverdi and his contemporaries had
worked on". With such pieces as "L'Orfeo" (Orpheus, 1606) and
"L'incoronazione di Poppea" (The Crowning of
Poppea, 1642) Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1673)
created milestones in the history of the opera.
He was also a bold innovator of church music ("Marienvesper",
1610). No wonder his works are played more and
more often in the great opera houses, for with a sylphlike air
accompanied by sparse (by today's standards) but
essential harmonies and virtuoso-embellished melodies,
Monteverdi's music achieves an enthralling emotional
tension.
And this is just what attracted Beirach, Huebner, and Mraz. "The
archaic, open forms of these pieces are very
interesting as a basis for improvisation", says Gregor Huebner;
"and contemporary composers such as Arvo PΣrt
are going back to such material". There are also many points of
convergence with jazz: Orpheo's plaintive cry has
a similar atmospheric quality to the Bill Evans classic "Blue in
Green", and for years Richie Beirach has employed
figures in his own pieces which are akin to some of the descending
bass lines that one finds in Monteverdi and
his contemporaries. Huebner talks about "swinging relationships"
in the early Baroque, and Beirach about "magic
simplicity" that is "remarkably fresh".
They approach this CD in an almost didactic manner; to start with,
they play Monteverdi's most famous single
piece, the "Lamento d'Arianne, directly from the original
manuscript, using only its melody and basic harmonies.
That allows one to recognize and admire much of Monteverdi's
impressive yet seemingly simple style - for instance
the clever use of dissonance in the first measure by setting a
B-flat in the melody against an A in the bass line. This
striking juxtaposition transposes the underlying text into a
timeless classic. "Lasciatemi morire" (let me die), sings
Ariadne, who has been left behind on the Greek island Naxos by her
unfaithful lover, Theseus. This piece is the
single existing fragment from Monteverdi's lost 1604 opera,
"Arianna".
Beirach, Huebner, and Mraz gently lead the listeners into
Monteverdi's world and then weave an Ariadne-thread
through to other composers. These include the highly regarded
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, who met an early
death (1710-1736), and Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613), a prince and
musical revolutionary (Huebner describes
him as "much more radical than Bach, who was born over a century
later"). Gesualdo also became famous (or
infamous) for having murdered his adulterous wife and her lover as
he caught them in the act. It is not until the
CD's fifth piece that Beirach's trio lets loose with their first
jazz improvisation.
You don't need to be a music historian or have a deep
understanding of the original compositions and texts to listen
to "Round About Monteverdi". Beirach: "We use the music's
atmosphere to convey how marvelous it is - and we are
also able to add new colors and textures to jazz. Sometimes we may
only take the nucleus of a melody and improvise
over it". The musicians loosen the thread more and more from the
middle to the end, allowing George Mraz to pay
homage to the composer Heinrich Schⁿtz (1585-1672) with a
passionate bass solo. The trio is swinging and at the
same relaxed as they paraphrase the dialog between Orpheus and the
fateful messenger who brings him news of
Eurydice's death. They grab hold of Pergolesis' famous "Stabat
Mater" for a second go-around, and after Bach's
"Siciliana", which is the end of their Baroque studies, they once
again visit "Lamento d'Arianna", whose voice appears
to echo off a very different island than before.
"We want to build a bridge from written to improvised music, and
from early baroque to jazz", says Beirach. Piece by
piece, "Round About Monteverdi" shows how much weight this bridge
can hold when those who built it are not
overawed by the project, but take on the task with artful
consideration.
p l a y l i s t
01 Monteverdi - Lamento d'Arianna 01:34
02 Gesualdo - Responsorium #5 04:21
03 Pergolesi - Eja mater fons amoris 05:53
04 Palestrina - Chant 04:59
05 Monteverdi - Ben Mio, rimanti in pace 04:38
06 Monteverdi - Orfeos lament 07:29
07 Monteverdi - Fantasy on Orfeos lament 01:15
08 Schutz - Fantasy on Fili mi, Absalon 02:49
09 Monteverdi - Dialog Ofeo Messanger 04:22
10 Monteverdi - Around Dialog Orfeo Messanger 03:11
11 Pergolesi - Sancta mater, istud agas 06:09
12 JS Bach - Siciliana 06:02
13 Monteverdi - Fantasy on Lamento d'Arianna 04:31
57:13 min
g r e e t i n g s
agw - amok - bass - bcc - bex - boss - cmg - cmc - cms - d2h
def - dh - disc0 - drum - emp - ftd - fwyh - gem - i8 - ipc
jce - jfk - jrp - just - khz - kinky - kw - lame - maem - mbs
mgc - psycz - r2r - rac - radial - rapid - rks - rtb - sb
sever - sfe - soup - sour - sq - tr - trt - ube - uc - upe
uki - xtc - yard - zi
respect to music lovers worldwide
never forget : go to the show. buy the t-shirt. order the vinyl