Joe Jackson - Symphony No.1
|
Our Price: $13.98 Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. Buy Used: from $1.25 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Symphony No.1
Free Music Review: Give the artist a chance to grow!
Hit: 5 Stars
Those of you who wish this middle-aged artist would go back to his angry pop stuff like "I'm the Man" and "Look Sharp!" are going to be sorely disappointed. All artists want to grow and explore new material and new modes of expression, and with his classical training Joe Jackson is not only not going to be any different, but he's going to be an examplar in new directions. Those who enjoy a full orchestration will be delighted with what Joe has written in this jazz symphony. The first movement opens with a single touch of the cymbal, moving into contemporary chord structure backing the alto sax theme. The flute against allegro keyboard and percussion in the middle theme recalls urban modernity and action. The second movement features trumpets, noble French horns and low brass in a somewhat unraveled set of themes, connoting freneticism and escape to a better place. The slow third movement echoes some of the chord structures featured in pieces from Body and Soul and Night and Day, feeling almost like the few nighttime hours before sunrise. Wistful andante trumpet and flute themes evoke loneliness and at the same time anticipation. The triumphant fourth movement begins with a heart-rendingly beautiful flute duo evoking optimism and the promise of a new day, moving into a vivace string theme. Smooth brass harmony and vibraphone in the third section provide the bridge to the final section, in which the original flute and violin themes are presented by brass and keyboards, respectively, along with a return of the violin in the most uplifting, positive melody line I've heard in decades. I sometimes play just the fourth movement when I'm feeling down and need a lift. The final chord, like that of the fourth movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony, ends not with a bang but a decrescendo whisper. Nothing from his angry young punk days can compare to this! Truly a Gershwinesque tour de force!Free Music Review: Joe Jackson - Symphony No.1
Hit: 4 Stars
This is an interesting symphony. It's not your typical sounding symphony with traditional instrumentation. It's a symphony that blends various woodwinds with drums and other electric instruments and sounds. However, it does feature more traditional instruments like a violin and viola. The symphony manages to progress nicely and it held my interest throughout it's 45 minutes. This album is a little treasure that will stay in my cd player for awhile. It features the great virtuoso Steve Vai on electric guitar.Free Music Review: Can't stop listening to this
Hit: 5 Stars
Lots of people won't like this disc. On the one hand, you have people who aren't used to listening to long, challenging works, people who don't know what to hang onto when there are no obvious hooks. On the other hand, you have the classical purists who will insist that Jackson is engaging in pretense by playing at classical composer. (He's not entirely posturing, of course; he studied at the Royal Academy of music.) But, like so many albums that sound like just so much noise at first, Symphony No. 1 rewards repeated listening. I find that to begin to appreciate a long, complex work, I have to have established the overall contour of the piece in my mind to provide context for the individual musical ideas. It takes me half a dozen listens, or more, to begin to establish this mental map of the music. But if you pay attention, eventually you'll be able to pick out the themes and variations thereof, you'll learn how the various moments in the piece relate to one another and appreciate how one builds tension in rising to the next and how the tension is eventually released. After I started grokking this album a couple months ago, I spent a couple weeks with it on repeat in my car, enjoying it more each time. I still put it in once a week or so and appreciate it anew each time. If you are a pop listener who doesn't have this kind of patience, then this album will probably frustrate you. If you have some experience with classical but grew up listening to pop, rock, and jazz, though, you might like this as much as I do.Free Music Review: Jackson is more creative than this experiement
Hit: 1 Stars
If Joe wants to experiment in his home studio with this kind of stuff then it's fine, a musician should explore all he wants for the sake of growth, but to pass this CD off as a smyphony,well, the joke is on us. I work hard and save my $ to purchase fine CD's, something Joe is worthy of producing, so why would he push this stuff off on us and call it smyphony No1? I'll pass on a Symphony No.2, Joe.Free Music Review: Symphony No. 1 Is In Its Own Category
Hit: 5 Stars
I am disappointed in how most reviewers feel the need to put this music into a category. Music is music. Good music is good, and bad music is bad, no matter what 'category' people try to pigeonhole it into. Symphony No. 1 is complex, uniquely orchestrated, and very rhythmically and harmonically challenging to listen to if the listener is expecting a Haydn-type symphony. It is also true, for all those dull dull dull purists out there, to the nature of a symphony in that it contains expositional material that is developed and then reintroduced later in within the work. Contrary to several other reviewers' opinions, it does contain many memorable themes. I can say this because I haven't listened to it since last week, but I can hear the themes of the various movements in my head right now. The comparison to ELP is childish and short-sighted -- I sincerely doubt that Jackson was out to imitate anyone else's style; he was writing the music that he felt inspired to write. I agree, Will Power was an amazing album, but Will Power was also a collection of shorter pieces of music whereas Symphony No. 1 is a different kind of work. One that maybe takes something of an attention span to listen to. It's like comparing, for example, Dvorak's symphonies to his Slavonic Dances; they are two totally different genres of music, each equally wonderful. Or like the difference between a short story and a novel. One is not better than the other; it just has to be developed at a faster rate than the other. If people don't have the attention span to listen to a piece of music more than once and notice the subtleties of it, then maybe they should stick to listening to pop music. (By the way, his Night and Day II has just come out, for those of you who want the pop stuff, and it's fabulous.) Joe Jackson is one of the few musicians alive today who has actually been developing and maturing as a musician, who has a unique style, and who has been producing high-quality music throughout his career.