The Whole Music Experience

Mike Marshall An Adventure 1999-2009 Adventure Music I’m not sure that a prolific musician such as master mandolin player Mike Marshall needs a retrospective. The musician’s output is already on this side of incredible and he’s teamed up with just about every kind of musician out there from early music to bluegrass players and Brazilian legends. His album with the Swedish trio Vasen made sense too because similar to the musicians that comprise Vasen, Marshall also knows his way around winding musical roads. On the other hand, to take in the wide scope and breadth of Marshall’s work on the Adventure Music label, lasting over a decade now, a retrospective places this musician’s work in perspective. His musical output has been phenomenal --not just in the number of albums released, but in his versatility and adaptability to varying musical genres. This guy performs virtuoso mandolin in so many musical languages that it must cause listeners’ heads to spin. I’m not talking Lind...

Hamilton De Holanda Quintet Brasilianos 2 Adventure Music If the late American bebop legend Charlie Parker had spent time in Brazil soaking up the music of Rio and Bahia, he would have composed music a lot like Brazilian mandolin player Hamilton De Holanda. The songs on Brasilianos 2 alternate between laidback and wildly frantic and the frantic ones can downright leave a listener breathless. In fact, I can sit listening to the faster pace songs and get my heart racing without aerobic exercise. It’s like eating gourmet chocolate and losing weight.  But on the musicians' part, the music itself could not be called effortless.  These players work up a sweat. The CD portion of the album features 12 tracks and the DVD features a concert in Paris that shows the virtuoso musicians in action. The highlight of the DVD for me is De Holanda’s solo performance of Astor Piazzolla’s Adios Nonino , probably one of the most complex and sad song ever composed. I have seen classical...