Featuring the duo of
Jeffrey Schanzer on electric and classical guitars and
Bernadette Speach on piano, this CD presents sensitive pieces that successfully combine advanced harmonies and compositional techniques with some gestures suggesting folk music and jazz/pop genres.
"Two in the Morning" begins with a nocturnal mysterious ballad feel and a hint of Spanish guitar, works its way through more aggressive fast pointillism, and returns to a moody, introspective time-to-close-up-the-bar coda.
"3 1/2" is a fascinating pattern piece that gradually shifts phase and accents in this complex time signature, becoming splendidly aggressive with guitar string snaps and massive piano clusters.
"It's Your Turn" has a lovely, pensive balladic feel;
"Tracings" for solo guitar is likewise a lyrical piece with an introspective and at times even eerie nature. A lyric piece in an improvisatory style for solo piano,
"A Page Upon Which..." has a romantic yet clear texture in which patterns are reexamined and constantly varied along a fascinatingly rich path of their gradual unfolding, sensitively and beautifully performed by the composer.
"Blue" for guitar and piano is a joyous, pointillistic, pattern blues with complex rhythms and harmonies.
"Ajiaco" by composer/conductor
Tania Leon is the last piece and, like the
Speach/
Schanzer duo's pieces, also combines advanced writing with a variety of American rhythmic styles. ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny
