Word: straightforwardly
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Take his music. That Monty Norman's classic tune can be straightforward enough to instantly stick in one's head yet sophisticated enough to instantly trigger one's imagination is a minor miracle, not to be overlooked. It calls for a precise interplay of uncomplicated but carefully wrought elements: the tensely chromatic rise and fall of the bass, the edgy twang of crafty appoggiaturas, wailing brass punctuation in all the right places. It's just so. What the music doesn't need is a techno beat underneath...
...thing is, when film sequences are designed with the idea of being extravagant specifically in mind, they inevitably turn out muddled and less than satisfying. Think back to really effective action sequences in recent movies, and you'll see it was their simplicity which made them compelling: from the straightforward careening of the bus in Speed, to the unpretentious mano y mano fighting in The Matrix. In the modern Bond world, everything must turn on fancy gizmos, fancier gizmos to counteract the original fancy gizmos, and if there's time, some more fancy gizmos, all of which have been concocted...
...comes The Melody at Night, with You (ECM), a superlative album that at first may look like a straightforward melding of Jarrett's predilections for solo works and standards: unaccompanied versions of such old favorites as Someone to Watch Over Me and I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good). But you don't have to listen very long to realize that, once again, he's up to something completely different. Gone are the swirling right-hand cascades and rocking gospel vamps, the layered harmonies and high-energy codas; in their place is a style of quiet, unvirtuosic simplicity...
...Good may perhaps lack the universal appeal of more straightforward, conventional theater. But stylistic preferences aside, this production of Good could hardly have been better...
...advice to young musicians was straightforward...