Search - Philip Aaberg, Michael Hedges, William Ackerman :: Shape of the Land

Shines from afar like ...

bobnjulie01 | Bay Saint Louis, MS United States | 06/04/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A diamond, a masterpiece! I remember when this was first released and it was a bargain to behold. I couldn't pronounce the man's name Aceberg, Ahberg whatever but it was the first time I heard Philip Aaberg's work and I kept playing it around the clock. Now, it's June 2003 and I love to play it in the garden and sip on some chamomile tea and I laugh when kids come by and ask," what is that great sounding music?" It just seems to fit the out-of-doors.And bonus work from Will Ackerman and Michael Hedges add remarkable ambience.The music is dedicated to the memory of Naomi Uemura who, while travelling alone in 1984, disappeared descending Mount McKinley into an icy storm. Naomi Uemura was a bold, Japanese adventurer who ascended the highest mountains on all continents and rafted the entire Amazon River, alone."

Fine Windham Hill artists work

Phasedin | New Jersey | 01/07/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"It seems that I keep reviewing recordings currently out of print. Oh well, perhaps this will be reissued sometime in the future. For fans of the ORIGINAL vision of the Windham Hill record label in the early 1980's and the artists who recorded for it at the time, you really couldn't do much better than this.

This one doesn't play at all like a movie soundtrack. It seems the films director (or somebody involved with the original movie) were already fans of the Windham Hill label and requested a bunch of it's artists to come up with some new, original music for the movie's soundtrack. The soundtrack does not consist of tunes pulled from these artists indvidual recordings-most the stuff here it seems was recorded in January 1986 specifically for the movie soundtrack, though I can't be 100%sure of that.

So what we have here is primarily acoustic music as was the original M.O. of the label at the time.

The primary contributor here is pianist Phillip Aaberg-who also plays synthesizers as well. I'm not sure of this, as the only Aaberg recording I have is only solo piano, but I think this may be a rare example of Aaberg actually playing synthesizers (though i'm not sure of what he's been up to on his more recent recordings). His synthesizer playing here is excellent and tasteful, and adds nicely to his acoustic piano, with not a hint of some of the cheesey sounding samples that the 80's produced with it's early digital syntesizers . It's something I wish Aaberg would do more of. I'd certainly like to hear it.

Also along for the ride is guitarist Michael Hedges who plays harp guitar on 2 tracks, as well as Windham Hill founder William Ackerman playing guitar with Shadowfax founder (the late) Chuck Greenberg on lyricon on one track, and Ackerman on another duet with violionist Charles Bisharat on another track. There is also one very nice track with Philip Aaberg on synthesizers along with Malcolm Dalglish on hammered dulcimer. Very nice. Primarily though, most of the tracks feature Philip Aaberg either alone, in duet or trio with other musicians. The final piece on the album is the only piece to feature more than 3 musicians, a larger scale piece for 7 musicians (possibly also with some additional overdubs on the string parts) which has Aaberg joined by several string players, with guitars by Will Ackerman and Michael Hedges.

If you were/are a fan of any of those early Windham Hill multi-artist "samplers" or compilations you will simply love this. Let's just hope the current large corporate management who now owns the rights to the Windham Hill catalog see fit to reissue this at some point...or find a remaining copy here or elsewhere which I suggest as well....





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