The Whole Music Experience

photo by Patricia Herlevi Satiated by the right music at the right time Often I compare music to food.  With my book Whole Music (Soul Food for the Mind, Body, Spirit) , in progress, the food-music comparison occurs to me on a daily basis.  However, so many aspects factor into the right music for us at the right time.  First, planetary transits will play a key role especially the outer planets Pluto and Neptune, while Uranus will throw us some truly shocking musical moments.  Our state of health plays a role, as do our moods, stress levels and life circumstances.  This is why I have included essay on purposeful music and keeping a music diary on this blog. I will give you an example from my life.  With Pluto transiting in the first house of my natal astrology chart, I feel blocked energy in my first three chakras. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that I am drawn to primal music with roots in Africa. Africans with their polyphonic rhythms, earth...

Shostakovich Piano Concertos Alexander Melnikov Mahler Chamber Orchestra Harmonia Mundi Russian composers came to my attention during the past decade, with the wild piano concertos of Rachmaninoff to the playful and provocative works by Prokofiev.  Now I am listening to early piano concertos by Dmitry Shostakovich as they appear on Shostakovich Piano Concertos and Sonata for Violin and Piano op. 134 as performed by Alexander Melnikov (piano), Isabelle Faust (violin), Jeroen Berwaerts (trumpet), and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra directed by Teodor Currentzis.  The music here runs the gamut from playful and spirited, to solemn to disturbing ( Sonata for Violin and Piano). The program on the recording contrasts the kinetic energy of a young Russian composer, Piano Concertos 1 & 2 with the dark and dissonant Sonata for Violin and Piano, op.134 , which I just could not sit and listen to without feeling extremely tense. While I understand intellectually tha...

Céline Moinet J.S. Bach, Berio, Britten Oboe Harmonia Mundi The oboe has always fascinated me.  The instrument’s timbre falls somewhere between a cornet, English horn, and flute--so mysterious and alternately melancholy. If you asked me to single out the sound of the oboe in an orchestra, there’s a good chance that I’ll mistake the oboe for an English horn.  On Céline Moinet’s recording Oboe , the musician explores diverse territory ranging from the baroque architecture of J.S. Bach and then skipping ahead several hundred years to modern composers Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio and Benjamin Britten. By bringing compositions by those composers, we might end up thinking that J.S. Bach was ahead of his time as far as polyphonies played on a single instrument. However, the Bach pieces that Moinet chose for this recording, (both father and son, CPE Bach's work), were originally composed for transverse flute. Still that doesn’t stop Moinet’s oboe from resembling a...

Ahmad Jamal Blue Moon Jazz Village (Harmonia Mundi) The liner notes for American jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal’s Blue Moon, The New York Session , call the album a masterpiece and I would have to agree. Distilled in Jamal’s performance are decades of jazz exploration, improvisations, and a pioneering spirit that brings old standards such as Laura and Blue Moon vibrantly alive; and with original compositions, highlight Jamal’s ear for tone, texture, and polyrhythms. Jamal strings together exquisite musical pearls, from the Latin-ized Invitation , Blue Moon , supported by conga beats (Manolo Badrena) and Cuban piano motifs, as well as, mind-blowing syncopation that keeps listeners guessing. While I enjoy hearing familiar songs tossed into unfamiliar terrain and witnessing Jamal’s imagination at work when he segues into blues motifs in the middle of Laura , or repeats a Latin piano motif in between Blue Moon ’ s famous melody, he and his quartet (Badrena, Reginald Veal, dou...