Steve Swell's Imbued With Light: Hommage À Galina Ustvolskaya

EDITORIAL REVIEWS
One of the great pleasures of listening to music is discovering a new artist you love. It kindles a special wow reaction whenever you hear a new sound that touches you. It's the reaction that Steve Swell had when he first heard the music of Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya. I just thought, this is so off the charts. How can anybody be doing this? Swell said. It's just so out of the box, especially for the time she was composing. Born in St. Petersburg in 1919, Ustvolskaya studied with Dmitri Shostakovich in the 1940s, but didn't start composing in her characteristic style until around 1950. Ustvolskaya's compositions can startle any listener with their focus and intensity. And as Swell listened to Ustvolskaya's work, certain elements resonated with him. For instance, on Hammer, Robert Boston's hard piano blows echo the explosively rhythmic urgency of Ustvolskaya's music. Her pieces thunder on the edge of a precipice, calling to God, waiting for a reply that never returns from across the void. In contrast, Swell's music--as iconoclastic in its own way as Ustvolskaya's--is bustling and social, spontaneous, lively with sudden contrasts in tempo and mood, balanced but irregular in outline. Enfolded into Swell's compositions, Boston's sharp, clear chords buttress discursive eighth note melodies like a demented Bud Powell, or they add an element of contrast in more peaceful surroundings, or become another rogue element of unpredictability in Swell's multilayered, radically unstable narratives. Swell uses that steady rhythm as a contrasting element in his composition Rocks Have Lives Too. The same regular beat, highly ornamented by the band, occurs in Compositie #12, as well. Swell's misty curtain of dissonant sound create a backdrop out of which soloists skitter forward and retreat. Since improvisation is part of everything he does, he includes five free improvisations showcasing the members of the ensemble. Ed Hazell (excerpt from the liner notes).

Number of Discs: 1

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