Perpetual Motion
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Free Music Notes for Perpetual Motion
Free Music Review: Perpetual Delight
Hit: 5 Stars
I have always loved the music featured, and these arrangements served the music beatifully.Free Music Review: Soul Food
Hit: 5 Stars
This is exquisite! The best of human experience encoded on a simple CD disk.Free Music Review: Classical Banjo an Oxymoron? NO!
Hit: 4 Stars
I bought this CD on the strength of a very positive review in the Chicago Tribune a few weeks prior to its release. I am both a classical music and a bluegrass fan, and I think, for the most part, this disc is fantastic -- the most successful attempt to merge the banjo and classical music to date. (Yes, there have been others!) I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could, or an A-.On the positive side: If anyone has the chops to pull this off, Fleck does. His technical proficiency is mind-boggling, but his virtuosity never draws undue attention to itself. His instrument is miked a bit distant and echoey for my taste, but that was probably done to minimize the twang. In addition, even in the lively pieces, his touch is on the light side, probably for the same reason. The Bach & Scarlatti pieces fare best, in the sense that the pieces sound like they could have been originally written for the banjo. The more "romantic" pieces that might rely more on rubato and the piano pedal for maximum expressiveness, such as the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, just sound odd to me, despite the beautiful duet arrangement. In fact, nearly all of the contributing musicians here do a remarkably sensitive job in putting the banjo in a more comfortably classical context.
I've heard other attempts at "classical banjo" before, and the overwhelming impression I've gotten was that they shouldn't have bothered. On this disc, after the first few seconds where you might be thinking the same thing, that initial impression vanishes quickly, and you're just struck by the sheer inventiveness and musicality of it all.
Free Music Review: Smiling Bach
Hit: 4 Stars
This is just a wonderful collection. It was very risky, I think, for Bela Fleck to stretch himself and try his hand at a "classical" repertoire that he wasn't familiar with. I don't see how anyone could see this CD as anything but a victorious effort. The J.S.Bach pieces are especially good, because I think that Fleck does a wonderful job of keeping their original "flavor." Bach was a master (probably THE master) of baroque counterpoint and fugues, and it seems like the banjo really lends itself to those kinds of interweaving melodies. Edgar Meyer is the best "cross-over" string player (folk/classical music) that I know of. How cool is it that he plays piano with Fleck on the Tchaikovsky piece?! (Note: one reviewer said that the Tchaik piece didn't fit in with the others...I totally disagree). The marimba really works well with banjo on this disc as well. Apparently, the Paganini piece helped to spark Fleck's interest in going classical...that and his friendship with Meyer (one of the best things about this CD are the notes that Fleck writes about how he first started on the path of producing it). Of all the tracks, I'm sure that I listen to the Debussy most often. Who would have thought that a banjo could be played so seamlessly!Free Music Review: Great Technique, Disappointing Sound Quality
Hit: 4 Stars
As a banjo picker and a big fan of John Bullard's two CD's of classical music on the banjo ("The Classical Banjo" and "Bach on the Banjo"), I was really looking forward to this release. Not surprisingly, Fleck's technique is amazing, especially on the first version of the title cut. But it's this same cut that displays the disappointing sound that many of the selections share. Too often, Fleck sounds as if he's playing in a well, and on a few cuts it sounds like the banjo has a mute on it. Perhaps, as another reviewer has suggested, the idea was to minimize the banjo's twang. After all, the CD is on Sony Classical and was apparently designed to be marketed to classical music fans to whom the banjo's normal sound might be unappealing (why this should be the case is an essay topic for another day...). But it should have been possible to cut a bit of twang without having so much well/echo effect (I'm sure there's a more technical sound engineering term for this). Despite this, the CD is definitely a recommended buy.