Word: brio
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Allegro con brio is a brilliantly played, no-holds-barred affair, and a real lollipop occurs around 7:18 of the last track, when the separated violin sections compete for prominence on individual speakers -- absolutely sublime stuff. One only wishes that Deutsche Grammophon's tonmeisters would take a lesson from Mercury's recording team and dispense with the "forest of mikes" method, which often seems to obscure more than elucidate...
...earthshakers (The Man), a little gospel, a brush of soul, and an overall acid bath of Newman's corrosive wit. It's music of an ambition and quality not often heard outside the work of Stephen Sondheim (whom Newman reveres), and it is performed on the album with tremendous brio by James Taylor, who sports a no-sweat self-mocking cool as God; Linda Ronstadt as the tremulous, winsome Margaret; Bonnie Raitt as Martha, a piece of trade tough enough to wring out the devil's heart; and Don Henley as Faust, reborn here as a guitar-strumming freshman...
...already laid down plans for recording an album of sacred songs with Jones, a kind of informal jazz eucharist that has recently been released by Verve as Steal Away. It's not only unique in the jazz canon--two instrumental Olympians playing spirituals, hymns and folk tunes with improvisational brio and numinous respect for sources and traditions--it's also uniquely beautiful. Like all the best sacred music, it is a sensual tribute to the unblemished secrets of the soul...
...hymns, jazz veterans Hank Jones and Charlie Haden raise a "joyful noise" that, says TIME's Jay Cocks, is "not only unique in the jazz canon -- it's also uniquely beautiful." The Verve Records release, "a kind of informal jazz eucharist," pairs "two instrumental Olympians playing with improvisational brio and numinous respect for sources and traditions." Pianist Jones and bassist Haden have drawn on some history and autobiography and a little private meditation, set them deep in the spirit, then drawn them out into a jazz pilgrimage through Black spirituals, white hymns and folk tunes from Ireland and French Canada...
This coarse pantomime misses the comic brio of buffa; instead we have the self-conscious and self-subverting irony of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch. The chaotic ensemble action of the first scene--where the various members of Buoso's family mourn his death only because they fear disinheritance--is only a slight improvement...