This Sunday February 2nd 2020 at (le) poisson rouge in NYC, Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra will perform a concert of interpretations of the works of Moondog with special guest singers JG Thirlwell, Karen Mantler, Joan Wasser, and Theo Bleckmann.
For this concert Ghost Train Orchestra will be a 14 piece comprising of Matt Bauder, Andy Laster, Dennis Lichtman, Ron Caswell, Sara Schoenbeck, Curtis Hasselbring, Sara Caswell, Rob Garcia, Dina Maccabee, Maxim Moston, David Cossin, Chris Lightcap and Alex Waterman. Tix here
Noah Preminger and Rob Garcia Dead Composers Club — The Chopin Project (Connection Works)
Dead Composers Club? Apart from conjuring shades of a certain 1980s film, could a duo have picked a cheekier expression of homage? This seems to be the first in a series of such celebrations of accomplishments past, and fortunately, the music succeeds where the appellation fails. Frederic Chopin did his music something of a disservice when acknowledging Italian opera as a prime influence, causing melody to become a prominently discussed characteristic to the exclusion of so many others. Though he often wrote in miniature, his brand of streamlined Romanticism is as powerful and as chromatically daring as that of Liszt or Alkan, but it also grooves, sways dreamily, soars to nearly unfathomable heights of fancy and imagination to return with an almost understated poetic gesture of aching sweetness. Incredibly, Preminger and company capture the composer’s radical diversity in ways that have made this seasoned Chopin listener hear it all afresh.
As the quartet focuses on preludes and nocturnes, I was curious to see what would be done with the single etude, the seventh from op. 25. It’s one of the more ballady performances on offer; only part of the etude is used, but the arrangement is beautiful, emphasizing the emotional miniature’s counterpoint with pithy unisons and instrumental color. Preminger’s saxophone sounds almost like a clarinet as he takes up the plaintive melody, Kim Cass’s bass and Nate Radley’s guitar so unified as to create overtones like an expertly drilled chorus. Contrast this with the rocking precision of “Prelude no. 2.” Similar to the middle section of Yes’s “Roundabout,” Chopin’s tiny masterpiece doesn’t so much reside in E-minor as sneak around it. Garcia’s malleted and heavily syncopated percussion work drags the arrangement headlong into Ellington-esque exoticism, Preminger’s widely varied vibrato providing lush confirmation as the group glides and swings through the harmonically tensioned groove, rhythm section dropouts already built into the innovative structure.
That these bebop-chopped and free-blowing improvisers can solo with such fluidity and invention over such changes can be mind blowing! Listen to them on the ninth prelude, the album’s closing track. Yet another simple but gorgeous arrangement masks major and minor juxtapositions and third relations, but Preminger even manages to temper it all with well-placed blues licks as the complex form waltzes buy. Cass’s understated solo is especially effective on the final chorus, a few expertly timed harmonics providing timbral intrigue to an already colorful interpretation, but why do they end on the dominant? Would a strong final resolution have ruined the program? Grumbles aside, this is terrific. Maybe it’s exposure to a mixture of Monk and Ellington as filtered through the freedoms of the past fifty years that gives these players the conjoined vocabulary to succeed on a doubly difficult front where so many others have failed. This is an excellent disc and a wonderful homage, and may all future installments be approached with such obvious affection and consideration!
