Search - The California Ear Unit :: The California Ear Unit

Mixed bag of nice,compelling and dull musical bric-a-brac

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 07/19/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"California Ear has been around for decades,touring the world,the forces have grown,but have always thrown themselves at the plurality of expression that is part of the new music scene. I know musicians who play Carter who wouldn't dare touch anything else,perhaps elitism still resonates around new creations. I wound up liking the Carter(not a frequent staple of my CD collection),he found himself(Carter) an octogenarian writings numbers of solo and chamber works. The Espirit Rude, makes great modest musical sense,exposed atonal counterpoints,the reedy qualities are heard in greater relief,thorny,convoluted,things we know Carter for.The Enchanted Preludes as well is an elegant mixture, flute and violoncello,the implication,the gestures seem beyond merely two instruments. Carter is a wonderful cello writer, knows the timbres there, the hidden magical beauties, and the fast metamorphoses of Pizz, Am Steg, to Arco. The Flute fluttertonguing is also quite compelling. I never found Torke interesting,his obsession with natural formative states as metaphors for music in colours,Exhuberant Oranges, and Greens,Blues Brass- Copper pieces,I never found a convincing sonic equivalent,his music is Bach-like mixed with Copland,continuous running counterpoints,high rhythmic drives,but without the fury,passion and overwrought states minimalist music or popular jazz can summon. The Unit here seems bored playing The Yellow Pages. It sounds dull and uninspired. I wouldn't listen to it again.Torke should spend more time with the work and theories of American painters Barnett Newman and Rothko,to discover a conceptual premise for his natural materials which excites him and launches his music. In contrast Hoketus of Andriessen gets things off the ground. He seems more at home with the extremes of timbre,framed quite simple in structure. He studied with Berio, yet always maintained a close distance to popular/jazz gestures and accessible forms in his oeuvre,and the two aesthetics mix here the accessible rhythmic dimension with a penchant for extreme timbre quite nicely.Jarvinen's Egyptian pieces here are breeze easy listening,rolls right off the cuff, yet very compelling. You can tell which pieces The Cal Unit played/rehearsed the most,this one. Wonderful colours, and evocativeness,the images here might suggest without being too obvious or predictable. It can grow thin over time."