Word: piano
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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ANDREW HILL, COMPULSION (Blue Note). Haitian-born Pianist Hill is magnificently obsessed with the complex rhythms and bold colors of African music. Aided by Nedi Quamar's African thumb piano (a handmade wooden box holding long metal prongs that are plucked), Renaud Simmons' conga and Joe Chamber's drums, he conjures up a thundering, lashing storm with sweeps across the keyboard -and then lets it fade into the silver pinging of random raindrops. Freddie Hubbard's trumpet has a cry for every change of mood...
...once the choice was made--perhaps destroying three prints of alternative spatial arrangement and then framing the fourth--a particular composition may become so perfect that it's hard to imagine that a real choice has ever been made. Arnold Newman's portrait of Igor Stravinsky and his black piano on a white foreground is one of these unquestionable arrangements...
Such mixtures seem quite natural to Messiaen, who describes himself as "a born believer, musician and revolutionary." He taught himself to play the piano at eight, at ten was devouring the scores of Don Giovanni, Die Walkure and Pelleas et Melisande. He conceived a lifelong fascination with "all things mysterious and marvelous," and found that musical sounds gave him inner visions of colors; once, he got a stomach ache while watching a ballet because the violet hue of the lighting clashed so badly with the tonality of G major...
...resort town of Royan last week, as Messiaen presided over an international piano competition, he reflected that the young musicians he has influenced have not imitated him but have gone their own way, forging new electronic, mathematic or aleatory (chance) musical techniques. His own ideal is still "to rejoin the eternal durations and resonances, to apprehend the inaudible which is above music." Meantime, he is content to clap on his beret, pack up his music paper, and drive off for some bird watching...
...performance Friday night was generally high. The pick-up orchestra had its tentative moments but was otherwise enthusiastic and attentive. Soprano Dorothy Crawford and pianist Daniel Hathaway gave an excellent rendition of six Ives songs, and there were outstanding performances by David Archibald, clarinet, and D. Allan Shewmon, piano. The height of the evening was the massive Piano Trio (1904-1911), whose second movement bears the indication "TSIAJ" ("This Scherzo is a Joke"). This is one of those pieces that has to be heard live to be appreciated. The sight and sound of Shewmon and 'cellist Fran Uitti ripping their...