Search - Don Byron, Bang on a Can :: A Ballad for Many

Don Byron and the Bang On A Can All-Stars occupy front-row positions in the interstices where jazz, world music, and avant garde art music meet. Put them together in this stimulating new album, A Ballad For Many, and you get a lively, genre-busting experience. All of the compositions are by Byron, including "Eugene," written as a live accompaniment to a silent episode of Ernie Kovacs' 1960s TV show. Its six sections feature tick-tock percussion, a Rachmaninoff-like cello solo, and a general "jazz-meets-cartoon music" feel. The other multi-section piece is Byron's music from The Red-Tailed Angels, a documentary film about World War II's famed Tuskegee fighter airmen. Its 9 evocative cues range from a brief cello solo to Ellingtonian tone painting to martial rhythms. The closing section features Byron soloing, a jazz clarinet flight in tribute to the brave fighter pilots who broke barriers in a Jim Crow society. Another highlight is Basquiat, a moving homage to the Haitian-American artist who won fame and died young. It has dazzling Byron solos that include piercing forays into the upper stratosphere where Basquiat dwelt--in Byron?s words, "a brother who knew high art things he wasn't supposed to know, and ended up in high places where he wasn't supposed to be." --Dan Davis