Word: ballades
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Staring out at you from the cover of his fourth album, you would be forgiven for immediately thinking that the bald head on the cover of Mark Turner's Ballad Sessions belongs to media darling Joshua Redman '91. However, while Redman is known for his fire and exuberance alternating with tender touches, fellow tenor saxophonist Turner's sound is cooler and more brooding. That latter quality certainly shows up on this latest release, an album consisting of ballads that runs the gamut from George and Ira Gershwin to Hoagy Carmichael...
...Turner's flights of interpretational fancy, which soar to great melodic heights yet still maintain the melancholia inherent to many tracks. On "I Loves You Porgy," he conjures simple sentimentality in a lush landscape of tender phrasing and introspective tones. Granted, not every single aspect of Ballad Sessions works. Turner's group doesn't gel when he attempts to change pace with Latin inflections on "All or Nothing At All," and bassist Larry Grenadier and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel just aren't up to par with their more talented headliner. It's not that Turner isn't featured with ample attention...
...creative license to experiment with different textures, because there are scarcely two tracks that sound similar, which is hardly a drawback. Heavily distorted guitars are on assault on the opening track "Let Me Show You," but are immediately contrasted with ethereal and richly textured multi-layered sonics on the ballad "Possibilities." Radio ready hits jostle for space with heavily funk-influenced grooves, as do rolling rhythm and blues beats, all of which are pulled off with considerable ease considering the great diversity of styles. It's difficult to ascribe credit in this case because we don't know where Hutchence...
...your comment that the "hapless initiates" were seen "butchering that modern-day ballad by the Backstreet Boys," I can only assume that you did not see the performance. Those boys were in tune, and they made those outfits work! Did you notice that there were almost 200 Harvard students watching this performance, and laughing hysterically? I don't know when the last time you saw that large a group of students laughing together was, but it doesn't happen often enough...
...donor purchased Willa Cather's My Antonia and Lucy Gayheart, Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Grace Paley's The Little Disturbances of Man, and The Portable Dorothy by Dorothy Parker for $10,000 at Christie's auction house in October...