Imani Winds quintet caps performance with klezmer — and it’s a blast by Joan Reinthaler
Of all the tools in the arsenal that the Imani Winds quintet wields so skillfully, perhaps the two most powerful are its ability to get into the heart of each piece's cultural core and to communicate the joy of making music together. Nothing brought this home more clearly than the rollicking finale of the ensemble's concert Friday at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE.

Having recently absorbed klezmer into its multicultural repertoire, the group blew the place apart with a pair of klezmer dances, which were milked for every bit of drama. They were led by clarinetist Mariam Adam, who evoked enough human-sounding wailing, achingly cool slow-dance rhythms and uninhibited emoting to delight even the most rabid klezmer fans.

Coming off a week of performing at Strathmore and offering workshops to children there, the woodwind quintet took its trademark inventiveness to the Atlas. It's a sure bet that most of this music was new to many in the audience. There were pieces by Eugene Bozza, Brian DuFord, Pavel Haas and John Harbison, and Villa-Lobos's "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6" (instead of the more famous No. 5). The five had the audience anticipating the jokes in the music, nodding as textural tangles unraveled and following, like fans at a tennis match, themes as they bounced from one instrument to another.

After twittering their way through the wind-sprint-like warm-up of Bozza's "Scherzo," the quintet settled into "Variations on an Afro-Cuban Lullaby." Written for Imani Winds by DuFord, its languid melody wanders through the personas of a hoedown and the dry ironies of a 1920s music-hall piece, then settles in the loosely groomed rhythmic clapping and rattle-shaking of an African dance.

Flutist Valerie Coleman and bassoonist Monica Ellis partnered on a happily coherent reading of Villa-Lobos's 20th-century evocation of baroque structure, weaving the exuberant colors of ­Brazilian energy around the more predictable foundation of 18th-century harmony with gratifying transparency and balance. Haas's four-movement quintet, with its heavy-handed third-movement "Ballet" (the dancers get tired and droop at the end), and Harbison's quintet, a repertoire standard, got the treatment accorded old friends: a pleased welcome and a comfortably intimate collaboration.

The Week Ahead: Jan. 15 — 21 by Daniel J. Wakin
MOHAMMED FAIROUZ, an Arab-American composer, is strikingly prolific for someone still under 30. He also shows a remarkable ability to draw from different cultures, giving klezmer overtones to a clarinet work, placing an opera in Upper Egypt, setting songs to words by Alma Mahler and using Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic texts for a large-scale vocal piece. Established performers have championed his music, including the clarinetist David Krakauer and the Imani Winds. They and others, like the TransAtlantic Ensemble, the baritone Christopher Thompson and the soprano Mellissa Hughes, will join Mr. Fairouz, on piano, as performers for an evening of chamber and vocal music by this important new artistic voice.

11 classical music stories to remember from '11 by Sarah Bryan Miller
Anonymous 4: "Secret Voices" (harmonia mundi). An almost hypnotic collection of music for women's voices from 13th century Spain.

Ravi Shankar: Nine Decades Volume 2: Reminiscence of North Vista by Doug Heselgrave
At 91 years of age, Ravi Shankar has earned the right to be reflective. As a dancer, choreographer, composer and virtuoso sitar player, Shankar has spent most of his life- since he was a very young child-on the road, fulfilling a mission to expose the world to Indian classical music. Up until a very few years ago, he maintained a touring and recording schedule that would exhaust most players half his age, but the intense physical demands of playing the sitar have finally forced Shankar to pare down his activities and spend more time at home.

While this may be bad news for concertgoers who have had the privilege of attending Shankar's illuminating live performances over the years, the extra time Shankar has on his hands now has been well spent. For, even though his reflexes may have slowed down somewhat, Shankar's intellect and restless creativity has not, so for the last year or two the sitarist has been attending to the preservation of his recorded and performance legacy by releasing archival concerts on his label East Meets West Music as a part of a personally selected series entitled Nine Decades.

The music for this second volume of the Nine Decades series was recorded at Shankar's home in California on Aug. 29, 1969 just one week after he played the Woodstock Festival. Unlike his performance at that legendary event, which was characterized more by its speed and virtuosity than its subtlety, this home recording finds Shankar and Alla Rahkha, his table player, in a much more reflective mood. At this time, Ravi Shankar was at the height of his popularity in the West and not surprisingly, the parties at his home attracted luminaries from the worlds of music and film, including George Harrison, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando. And, while it remains uncertain how the intricate improvisations and interweaving melodies resonated with the celebrity audience in attendance, the recording preserved here is among the very best of Shankar's music captured anywhere. Comprised of two meditative evening ragas (melodic sketches) the tracks on Nine Decades Volume 2 showcase Shankar at his intuitive peak. The compositions are soothing and can be enjoyed at low volume as background music, but listen actively and you'll hear the work of an improviser who-without flash or bombast-is every bit the equal of Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix at their freewheeling best.

George Harrison once famously credited Ravi Shankar with 'inventing world music' and though that might be a bit of a stretch, if you listen to Nine Decades a few times, it might be enough to understand that no one alive today has contributed more to the development of the genre than he has. This CD is absolutely essential listening and belongs in everyone's collection.

Musical gems from the vault include Healey, Davis and Shankar by Roger Levesque
As Indian music master Ravi Shankar, now 91, lapses into retirement, he's using the time to comb through his own private archive of old concerts and studio experiments, presented in a series of previously unreleased single-CD albums titled Nine Decades (on East Meets West Music).

Last year, Volume I presented a concert recorded live on the bank of the Ganges River along with an aural collage of audience impressions from one of his first American appearances.

Now Volume II, Reminiscence of North Vista, offers a hour-plus set of ragas live from his then-new Hollywood home in 1969, a week after he had played the Woodstock festival. Sounds of the crickets and occasional party guests (who used to include The Beatles, Marlon Brando, et al.) add a touch to the atmosphere. His famous friend Alla Rakha handles the tabla percussion with equal majesty.

Volume III, Orchestral Experimentations, goes way back to 1949 and 1954 when the sitarist brought together players from both the North and South Indian classical traditions. The all-original compositions tend toward shorter lengths than most ragas and use up to 20 musicians in some tracks, with ensemble harmonies and a suspension of typical rhythmic cycles that lend an oddly western air to some of the material.

For fans of classical Indian music, these offer a novel perspective on the history of one of its greatest practitioners.

Anonymous 4 weaves a special spell by Kyle McMillan
Although a little of its novelty has worn off and it has been a bit upstaged in recent years by groups following in its footsteps, Anonymous 4 remains as spellbinding as ever.

That was made clear Thursday evening, as the famed vocal quartet appeared on the University of Denver's Newman Center Presents series as part of a 25th anniversary tour and offered a Christmas program like no other.

After a recording that skyrocketed to the top of the classical charts, Anonymous 4 became unlikely stars the 1990s. It was unlikely, because the group specialized in obscure and seemingly arcane vocal music from the Middle Ages.

But performing with unwavering commitment and flawless intonation and precision, the group made those forgotten works from centuries ago sound astonishingly fresh and contemporary.

The surprise has worn off over time but, if anything, the appeal of this music - an antidote against the increasingly high-tech, impersonal world we live in - has only grown stronger.

With the Anonymous 4, there is no accompaniment, no amplification and no fancy staging. It's just four rarefied voices - pure, simple and stunning. It's a formula that has worked for 25 years, and it was as successful as ever Thursday evening.

In this yuletide concert, the group ranged across several languages, including early English and French, and touched on vocal traditions from Hungary to Spain and even Appalachia.

While most of the selections were written sometime in the Middle Ages (none older or more mystical than the dark-hued section from a 10th century Mass that ended the first half), the program also included a couple of contemporary works.

Most notable was "The Wood and the Vine," a semi-narrative new work written in a medieval spirit by David Lang, founder of the new-music ensemble, Bang on a Can. Though probably a bit too long, it nonetheless had its share of striking moments.

For whatever reason, the second half came off stronger than first with highlights aplenty, including Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek's compelling solo version of a traditional Irish hymn, "Flight Into Egypt," and a penetrating trio take on the medieval Hungarian song, "Novus AnnusAdiit."

A Captivating Sextet of Chamber Works from Mohammed Fairouz
There's an embarrassment of riches on Critical Models, the debut solo album by 20-something composer Mohammed Fairouz. And yet the chamber nature of the record's six pieces lends an unshakable sense of intoxicating intimacy.

A contemporary of Gabriel Kahane and Nico Muhly, Fairouz is a composer with an equally distinguished pedigree (he was one of Ligeti's last students), but with a different brand of sound that replaces Muhly's unabashed exuberance for introspective intensity and Kahane's droll humor for incisive wit. Album opener Litany starts off with a whisper of flute, oboe and clarinet, before opening into a richly woven woodwind tapestry of neoclassical rhythms and unsettling fluid lines. The composition ends palindrome-like on the same subtle note that begins the four-and-a-half-minute work.

Litany sets the tone for an album that is a study in contrasts, full of setting and implied text that forms the basis to many of Fairouz's works. Title work Four Critical Models careens between Fairouz's dual identities as American and Middle Eastern, traditional and modern, with distinct references to Edward Said and his brand of orientalist studies (the captivating third movement, An Oriental Model, is most effectively schizophrenic).

Similar multiple identities abound in Piano Miniatures, which includes an homage to Philip Glass at his most kinetic as well as in the vaguely Jordi Savall-ian Airs (for Guitar). Both Four Critical Models and Three Novelettes (For Piano & Alto Saxophone), are strong saxophone features, exposing the instrument's lyrical potential on par with the viola or cello. Taken on the whole, this album is a deluge, but one that's as beguiling as snow in July.

Anonymous 4 picks Culver Center for premiere  by Fielding Buck

The State of the Arts by Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr
The next concert in the SFJazz Series called "Soulful Singers" will feature Anonymous 4 at Grace Cathedral, where the acoustics keep notes reverberating for seven seconds before they fade away.

Dianne Nicolini's Top 5! by Dianne Nicolini
I can't think of a better venue for this extraordinary a capella quartet than the Gothic majesty of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. SF Jazz is presenting Anonymous 4 this Friday night in a program called "Sisters in Spirit".

Anonymous 4 Retrace The Steps Of Their "Much-Older Sisters" by Anastasia Tsioulcas
In their liner notes for their newest release, one of the four women in the a capella group Anonymous 4, Susan Hellauer, says that they are following in the footsteps of "much-older sisters." How much older? 800 years.

All the music on Secret Voices comes from the Codex Las Huelgas, an anthology of 13th- and early 14th-century polyphony and song that was compiled at a convent in northern Spain, the Cistercian Santa Maria la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos. The manuscript was rediscovered in 1904, and in recent years has proved a very rich vein of material for early music performers.

Founded by King Alfonso VIII of Castile at the urging of his wife Eleanor of England, this convent became both a mausoleum for the royal family and a convent for royal women seeking the religious life. The women of the abbey enjoyed a remarkably free and self-directed existence - some claim that for centuries, the abbess was able to perform clerical tasks that are, in orthodox practice, set aside for priests only, including saying Mass and hearing confessions.

While the Cistercian code emphasizes a life of ora et labora - "prayer and work" - and discourages music, the existence of this manuscript proves that these nuns enjoyed marvelous and difficult vocal music. While it's assumed by most scholars that the nuns of this abbey sang the glorious music found in the Codex Las Huelgas themselves, some claim the nuns hired a male choir to sing for them. However, one of the selections Anonymous 4 includes here appears to refute that notion rather bluntly: "Sing out these and other such things,/you cloistered virgins,/ golden nuns,/you are fitted for this/because you were born to cultivate polyphony."

If you're already a fan of Anonymous 4, who released their first album in 1993 and still retain three of their four original singers, you'll be well aware of their unearthly purity, perfect precision and inviting style of programming (for 'Secret Voices,' they have arranged the music to evoke a day at the convent, from first light through darkest night). If by chance you haven't yet made the acquaintance of this fine group - who are as close to superstars as the early music community comes - you are in for a remarkable treat.

Nine Decades Volumes 2 & 3 by Alastair Johnston
NINE DECADES VOL II: REMINISCENCE OF NORTH VISTA (East Meets West EMWM1004)

Imagine for a moment you were the hippest, coolest person in 1968 or 9. Where would you be hanging out? I'd probably be a bobo like Peter Sellers in The Party. Maybe you would be one of the others there: Terence Stamp, Marlon Brando, or a Beatle, chilling in Hollywood with the biggest international pop star on the planet: Ravi Shankar. So it was a week after Woodstock, Ravi Shankar and his accompanist Alla Rakha sat down at home in Hollywood with a few friends (Beatles and actors) hanging out, and played two evening ragas. They are more relaxed and better recorded than the big festival numbers that brought him fame. In fact these may arguably be his best recordings from the late 60s. Fabulous.


VOL III: ORCHESTRAL EXPERIMENTATIONS (East Meets West EMWM1005)

You often read of revolutionary changes in government, when poets become ministers or artists ambassadors. Well, in 1949 when India attained independence from Great Britain, Ravi Shankar was put in charge of All India Radio in Delhi and immediately created a symphony orchestra with musicians and virtuosi from North and South India. His background was in Hindustani classical music but he was also well-versed in Western classical music, having already toured the world as a performer. Though he was unfamiliar with Carnatic music its rhythmic complexity appealed to him. For five years he directed the Vadya Vrind Chamber Orchestra and wrote and arranged music for regular radio broadcast. This sounds really daunting but he is so talented an improviser that Shankar was able to compose and arrange music on the spot, and then quickly teach it to his assembled cast of talents. Chaturlal was a young tabla player who Shankar trained and he accompanied the master for many years. The orchestra comprised sitar, sarod, flute, violin, the haunting, bowed esraj, kasht tarang, nadeswar, swarmndal, dholak and nakara from the North, and from South India, the veena, clarinet, violin, flute, mridangam, and ganjira. The orchestra played live with a few microphones dangling above them, in the studio, so the sound is a bit thin, reminiscent in fact of early black and white Bollywood film soundtracks, but almost all the musicians get to solo at some point so you can hear them work out. Nine selections, taken from air checks, are gathered here. If you need a reference, this is the period right before Shankar performed the soundtracks to Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and the 1957 version of Kabuliwalla, so there is some of that cinematic drama & mystery present.

Recreating The Chants Of Feisty 1200s Nuns by Vivien Schweitzer
The boundless array of restrictions imposed on women over the centuries has included a ban on their singing polyphonic music in the Middle Ages. But it is thought that the nuns in Las Huelgas, a Cistercian convent for noblewomen in north-central Spain, enthusiastically flouted the rule. Indeed, the medieval abbesses at Las Huelgas could even say Mass and hear confessions, privileges revoked by the 19th century.

Anonymous 4, the stellar early-music vocal quartet, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this season with an album called "Secret Voices," which features selections from the Codex Las Huelgas, an anthology of chant and polyphony from the 13th and early 14th centuries. The ensemble offered excerpts from the disc in a lovely program presented by Music Before1800 on Sunday afternoon at Corpus Christi Church in Morningside Heights.

The winning qualities of this perennially popular a cappella group - whose members are Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Ruth Cunningham and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek - are still strong. Their impressive vocal blend, purity of tone and distinctive individual voices, which have helped them sell almost two million copies of their albums on the Harmonia Mundi label, were beautifully highlighted here.

Singing both a cappella and with lively accompaniment from Shira Kammen on vielle, Peter Maund on percussion and Ms. Cunningham on harp, the ensemble began with the simple plainchant of "Virgines Egregie," which it later contrasted with rhythmically lively, harmonically striking and complex selections like "Ave Maris Stella" and "Mater Patris et Filia." The program included an elegant French love motet and a monophonic lament mourning the death of a sister. The jovial "Benedicamus Domino à 3" reflects the "round" that was an integral part of 13th-century British polyphony.

There were solos that highlighted the beauty of individual voices, including Ms. Horner-Kwiatek's glowing soprano.

The warm acoustics and beautiful interior of the church were ideal for the concert, which included instrumental interludes.

The program also featured the solfeggio exercise "Fa Fa Mi/Ut Re Mi," whose text includes the line "Sing out these and other such things, you cloistered nuns: you are fitted for this because you were born to cultivate polyphony."

Cymbals & Symbols Punctuate Rachael Elliott's "Polka the Elk" by Sherri Rase
"Polka the Elk" is Rachael Elliott's latest release and changes the complexion of what the bassoon can do and be as a solo instrument. The first selection, "A Mon Seul Desir," has an urban, searching feel to it. The plaintive quest of the bassoon is supported by piano, as it reaches out and strives for the answer to the question that may not have been asked aloud. There is urgency in the piano, as the bassoon explores the extremes of its range, from mezzo-soprano to baritone profundo, scaling the psyche to a final determination. Considering that the title is shared with a tapestry that contains a riddle, the determination may be a riddle as well. As with the tapestry, is this "according to my desire alone," "love desires only beauty of the soul?" You'll need to listen, and decide.

"Polka the Elk" is an evocative piece punctuated with vibraphone, various percussion and cymbals, and symbols. Does the bell toll for Polka? For us? The overtones clash, mingle as one can imagine the meander of a lone elk, making his or her way in the world, trying to understand what's surrounding the experience. Followed immediately by the cycle "With Eyes Cast Down," this is a piece of great energy that begins with a voice, no lyric, singing lightly, followed immediately by a swirling maelstrom of piano and throaty bassoon. After the storm, the calm and the tonality return. While the balm is felt, there is a thrumming restless energy underneath that foreshadows more thought, coming from minor into an almost uplifting synthesizer/string piano section. The bassoon underpins, then sings its restless wandering, and the piano duets fore and aft. This is music to be felt, spurring thoughts and feelings, colors and moods. Perfect for a rainy afternoon, or just watching the snow float down, "Polka the Elk" will take you out of yourself. Give a listen and feel disconnection, connection and perhaps something more.

The pianist Leon Fleisher adds some American glamour to an appearance by the excellent group, performing Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 4 (For the Left Hand) in a concert that also features symphonies by Haydn and Beethoven (No. 7 in A Major) and a new work by Mícheál " Suilleabháin (a 9/11 memorial piece, with Uilleann pipes); Gérard Korsten conducts. (Alice Tully Hall. lincolncenter.org. Oct. 31 at 8.)

TARIK O'REGAN: Accalm na Senorach: an Irish Colloquy by Steven Ritter
Threshold of Night marked O'Regan's coming of age in terms of international recognition, garnering him two Grammy nominations. The 33-year-old Brit has established himself as one of the premier young composers today, with over 90 compositions and over 20 recordings. You can't ask for much more than that at his age. His influences are legion, but most listeners will be pleased with his basically tonal, modal melodies and choral harmonies.

The National Chamber Choir of Ireland is that country's foremost ensemble of its kind, and one can think of no one better equipped to lead it than Paul Hillier. Though I can't say they surpass his Estonian ensembles they do sing very well, and impart a lot of passion and quite skilled vocalizing to this new piece.

Accalm na Senorach (The Colloquy of the Ancients) is Ireland's most famous and perhaps longest narrative going back to the 12th century. It is a vast collection that includes the most important version of the Finian cycle (a body of prose and verse centering on the exploits of the mythical hero Fionn mac Cumhaill) where the warriors Oisin and Cailte mac Ronain somehow-inexplicably-live long enough (400 years!) to encounter St. Patrick, to whom, and to his delight, as he is told by angels this is supposed to happen, hears the exploits and tales of these two men. It is a fine example of ancient literature that not only supports the necessity and truthfulness of a people's embracing of Christianity, but at the same time not disparaging the pagan past of the people, and having a great saint express honor and admiration toward them.

In this reduction there are only a few tales related, the chorus covering all parts, while a sketched outline of the whole is maintained. A guitar is used to represent Cas Corach, the musician of the underworld, and the integrity of the story in marvelously scattered among chorus and guitar. This was an easy hour to spend, and I was engrossed the entire time, spending much of it enjoying Harmonia mundi's usual high production values and excellent booklet. The surround sound is well-nigh perfect. Enthusiastically recommended!

Quintet hoping to inspire others by Tony Sauro
Jeff Scott remembers his classmates laughing at "this beat-up, ugly old thing."

Now, his French horn helps symbolize chamber music's soul, spirit and future among young people more familiar with french fries.

When he was in junior high school, Scott chose the odd-looking instrument because no one else did.

"Everybody else was playing melodies," Scott said with a hearty laugh. "I was still trying to make a note come out. It was very frustrating."

For most of his life it's been very satisfying, especially during his 14 years with the Imani Winds Quintet, which includes clarinetist Mariam Adam, a University of the Pacific graduate.

They've wafted breezes of hope and inspiration through "under-represented" communities, helped generate fresh new music by young composers and sustained their own spirits as the country's only African-American chamber group.

Also the country's only full-time ensemble of its kind, Imani Winds performs Sunday at University of the Pacific's Faye Spanos Concert Hall. The New York-based group also makes a contractual commitment to its mission. So, there'll be a Friday performance by Sphinx Virtuosi in conjunction with the Stockton Symphony's free after-school education program (see accompanying story).

The Winds' 90-minute program includes the West Coast premiere of "Tsigane," by Valerie Coleman, the group's flute player, and a re-arrangement of Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." It's all part of their plan to keep the music moving forward.

"Chamber music has grown much more affordable," said Scott, 44. "It gets to under-represented neighborhoods in a much cheaper fashion. Children, in general, really get quite a jolt. It re-ignites excitement in young musicians."

Scott's a classic role model. Born in The Bronx, N.Y., as the only child of a factory worker (Beryl Walker) and legal secretary (Jennifer Scott), he started playing the recorder in grade school. He rose from a rough neighborhood by taking a "completely new direction than anyone in my family."

Though he'd "never heard" of a French horn prior to sixth grade - he preferred drawing cartoons - his teacher realized Scott's initial frustration and switched him to a more-manageable mellophone.

She also paid - anonymously - for three months of Saturday lessons at Brooklyn College: "It was a real break with my whole existence."

At Beach Channel High School in Far Rockaway, Queens, he was "known as the artist of the class," creating comic books and "sketching people."

Scott chose to draw his future with a French horn at the Manhattan School of Music: "I have no idea where I would have gone as a cartoonist."

The Imani Winds were shaped there by Coleman, 42, a native of Louisville, Ky., who studied composition at the University of Louisville, Boston University and Mannes College. She was "not the kind to wait on things," Scott said.

Choosing the Swahili word for "faith," she formed Imani Winds with Scott, who also studied at the State University of New York, Stonybrook; Adam, 36, who's from Monterey and went on from Pacific (1995) to the Manhattan School; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, 37, an oboe player from Washington, D.C., who studied at Oberlin (Ohio) College and Manhattan; and Monica Ellis, 37, a bassoonist from Pittsburgh, Pa., who earned degrees at Oberlin and New York's Juilliard School.

They've been together ever since.

Their Legacy Commissioning Project has generated 25 compositions they've performed and "dozens" of others, "some of them we haven't had a chance to read," said Scott, a composer like Campbell.

They've worked with musicians such as jazzman Dave Brubeck's sons, classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Paquito D'Rivera, a Cuban saxophone player, and jazz saxman Wayne Shorter.

Like other forward-looking chamber groups, the Winds play just about "every possible place": bars, lawns, stadiums. Even jail.

"The inmates had to be frisked," Scott said of their experience in Maine. "They were extremely appreciative. The Q&A was intelligent and thought-provoking. We don't dumb it down."

The numbers have gone up at their summer chamber music sessions for young people at Juilliard: from 55 quintets in 2010 to 85 varied alignments in July. They immerse students in the "whole industry, from every angle."

They also have a contractual "rider" mandating outreach or underwritten admission to their concerts for young people from minority neighborhoods.

Imani Winds, who've released five recordings and are working on a re-imagining of "Rite of Spring" by San Francisco's Jonathan Russell for No. 6, take advantage of an unconventional alignment to attract composers and sustain a busy schedule.

On Sunday, they got really "adventurous" at the Columbia University's Sonic Sounds of a New Millennium, performing "Five Chairs and a Table" by Daniel Bernard Roumain, a Haitian-American violin player and composer.

"We hit a table with our hands," Scott said of a composition evoking the African-American struggle. "In sort of a hip, funk rhythm.

"In music, there are three legs to the stool: fans, musicians, promoters. If they all aren't there strongly, it's not gonna work. Venues come and go. Everyone recognizes it's necessary to make it happen, keep it fresh and keep the music moving in some direction."

Rachael Elliott
The intrepid bassoonist and founding member of the genre-defying chamber band Clogs plays tracks off of her debut solo album, Polka the Elk, including weird and wild tunes by David Lang, Padma Newsome and Tawnie Olson. She'll be joined by pianist Cynthia Huard, fellow bassoonist Janet Polk and vibraphonist Bill Solomon.

Irish choir comes to IC on U.S. tour by Samantha Gentry
While on tour in the United States, Alan Leech, a tenor in the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, looks forward to visiting Iowa so he can try the corn and catch a glimpse of the Corn Palace.

And as a musician and lecturer, he said he's also interested in the techniques in music departments at various universities.

The choir will showcase their traditional Irish songs at 7:30 p.m. today in St. Mary's Catholic Church, 228 E. Jefferson St. Admission is $10 for students, $22.50 for youth, $40.50 for seniors, and $45 for the general public.

The National Chamber Choir has made a significant contribution to the growth of music in its country, and it has also toured extensively in Europe, Asia, and South America.

Besides a St. Patrick's Day performance at the White House, this is the group's first tour around the United States. It will be joined by multi-award-winning choral conductor Paul Hillier for the special performance.

Jacob Yarrow, the Hancher programming director, is glad the venue is able to host the special performance.

"The National Chamber Choir of Ireland is one of the great choral ensembles in the world," Yarrow said. "Hancher is proud to present it in its first tour of the United States."

The choir recently released its new album, Acallam na Senorach, which tells the story of St. Patrick and how he met two great warriors of Irish mythology. In Ireland, children learn about these characters while in school, but they don't necessarily know all the details, Leech said.

"The music is very beautiful and at times deeply evocative, particularly the guitar part," he said. "I think Tarik O'Regan's music brings these tales to the 21st century with a fresh and individual voice."

Members of the choir want to see how an Iowa City audience will react to their performance compared with audiences in other countries.

The first half will include pieces by Bach, Brahms, and a brand-new piece by Irish composer Siobhan Cleary, which includes many tongue twisters that have provoked laughter from audiences.

"Some people have been really moved by this music, others exhilarated," Leech said. "I think audiences will be impressed by the sheer scope of the concert, both vocally and emotionally."

Elizabeth Hillard, a soprano in the choir who has been with the group since 2004, said it's always great to perform for new people. She hopes that the Iowa audiences will not only enjoy the music but that they will take away something from it as well.

"The title of our new album translates as a conversation between wise old people of early Celtic Ireland and the early Christians," she said. "There is really an overwhelming sense of peace between the two cultures. Both sides are happy to explore what the other has to offer."

This show will be the second time for her to perform in the United States since 1998. She remembers the friendliness of the people and their willingness to give directions or advice on where was the best place for a meal or drink.

"I am looking forward to coming to Iowa, because this is toward the end of our trip," Hillard said. "It will be great to see so many different parts [of the country]."

Classical Music/Opera Listings for Oct. 21-27
★ Anonymous 4 (Sunday) This excellent early-music female vocal quartet is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a program based on its new album, "Secret Voices: The Sisters of Las Huelgas," featuring chant and polyphony that was collected for and covertly sung by the royal ladies cloistered at the Las Huelgas convent in Spain around 1300. At 4 p.m., Corpus Christi Church, 529 West 121st Street, Morningside Heights, (212) 666-9266, mb1800.org; $32.50 and $27.50. (Woolfe)

Listening Post / Brief reviews of select releases by Jeff Simon
Tarik O'Regan, Acallam na Senorach: An Irish Colloquy performed by the National Chamber Choir of Ireland with guitarist Stewart French and conductor Paul Hillier (Harmonia Mundi). It's no secret that Irish tales of Finn Mac Cool have been around since the 12th century. The Irish epic "Acallam na Senorach" ("Colloquy with the Ancients" or "Dialogue with the Elders") is, according to disc notater Geraldine Parsons, a rival in narrative scale and complexity with Boccaccio's "Decameron," Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and "The Thousand and One Nights." Attempting a choral work of several of the tales is for any living composer a project of no small ambition. The resultant work here by 33-year-old Irish composer Tarik O'Regan is of extraordinary beauty-so strongly tonal that the use of dissonance in it can be as stunning, sometimes, as Josquin DesPrez or Carlo Gesualdo. With just voices and guitar, it could easily be almost medieval, though the music is hardly that. A hugely unusual success but success it is, it seems to me. Three and a half stars.

 by James D. Watts Jr.
The Imani Wind Quintet opened Chamber Music Tulsa's season Sunday with an afternoon of great dance tunes.

This New York City-based ensemble, which has been together for more than a decade, devotes a major portion of its creative endeavors to performing music that comes from outside the typical parameters of "classical music."

Sunday afternoon's performance at the Tulsa PAC, for example, included a work by a Canadian composer Bill Douglas, that blends the tight formalism of baroque music with the primal yet complex rhythms of African music, as well as an arrangement by the group's French horn player, Jeff Scott, of Astor Piazzolla's "Libertango," which like much of this composer's work, takes the rhythms and melodies of dance music and elevates them into art.

Even the one piece that was as close to "standard repertoire" as the Imani Winds got Sunday - an arrangement of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" - was hardly standard. Yet stripping away the strings and percussion of the full score, and focusing entirely on the five voices of the wind instruments, still made for a surprisingly effective piece, one that had all the brutal force and naive beauty of the original.

And it was a ballet score - music that was created so people could dance.

Every piece on the program had a definite rhythmic character - a good, even necessary thing when one is performing music that might be outside the comfort zone of people expecting Beethoven and Mozart. Rhythm immediately draws the listener in - the way that the quintet quickly got the audience snapping their fingers in time with a section of the first piece they played, "Red Clay and Mississippi Delta," an original composition by the group's flutist, Valerie Coleman, which drew strongly from jazz and blues traditions.

As players, the Imani quintet are a formidable bunch, each capable of great expressiveness in their playing. Clarinetist Mariam Adam handled everything from a kind of Dixieland swing to the vocal-like swoops and keening of klezmer music (this in the last section of Gamal Abdel-Rahim's "The East Suite), while bassoonist Monica Ellis' powerfully pure and singing tone made this so-called "clown of the orchestra" sound as uptown-sophisticated and downtown-gritty as you could want.

Rachael Elliott Falls into an Atmospheric Solo
With this week dominated by crisp winds and chilly rain, it's the perfect time to settle into bassoonist Rachael Elliott's debut CD on the Music Starts from Silence label.

Elliott, a founding member of Clogs and one of the sharpest executors of new-music currently on the scene, didn't have to look far when it came to assembling this disc, which features three tracks by fellow bandmate Padma Newsome cozied up to tracks by Tawnie Olson and David Lang. Olson's A mon seul desir opens the ceremonies with a haunting duet for bassoon and piano (here played by the fast-fingered Adrienne Kim). Lower registers and jazzy riffs abound in this piece, best suited for a dark and stormy night.

Desir transitions into Newsome's first piece and the album's title track, which features Podouble bassoons in Elliott and Janet Polk accompanied by Bill Solomon's eerie work on percussion and vibraphone. The album picks up speed in the zoetrope motion of With Eyes Cast Down, Newsome's seven-track darling of an opus that makes use of the composer's talents on viola, voice, piano and harpsichord (the last two instruments doubled by John Orfe) and harkens to Glass at his most decaffeinated and mystical -- the final movement is at once heartbreaking and trancelike and worth several replays on its own.

Strongest, however, are the two final tracks, starting with Elliott's solo take on David Lang's Press Release, a work written originally for clarinetist Evan Ziporyn that mitigates low, sonorous bass lines with higher octave pops to engrossing results. While similar in nature to the bass clarinet, Elliott's bassoon here loans a warmer, at times even more fatherly, timbre to this work -- not a bad way of viewing Lang's piece, originally written in his renegade days of the early '90s. Lang's hyperreality cedes to Newsome's briefest track, a calm blanket of textured chords and repetitions in Bed and Rest. Like the album on the whole, it's a piece into which you want to curl up and hibernate.

Rachael Elliott: Polka the Elk by Deanne Sole
[8/10 stars] Polka the Elk is built around a bassoon. The bassoon, smiling and shining with a round sunny golden glow, is played by Rachael Elliot of Clogs, and most of the composition work was done by one of Clogs' co-founders, Padma Newsome, who also composed the group's 2010 song cycle, The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton, an album I've never heard anyone say a bad word about. He composed the Elk's title track and a longer piece, "With Eyes Cast Down", a charismatic exploitation of a chamber group's nimbleness, its ability to jump from a sudden low sound to a sharp high without the weight of an orchestra hanging off its ankles. There's an Eastern European/Early Music tartness in here that made me think of Michael Nyman before they sapped him over the head with The Piano. The rest of the album is taken up with "Press Release", a bassoon version of David Lang's 1991 work for bass clarinet, and Tawnie's Olson's "A Mon Seul Desir"-the bassoon drawls at an itchy piano-and "Bed and Rest", a group composition, warmer and more indie than the rest, a glance back at the musicians' collaborations with Sufjan Stevens, et al.

Rachel Elliott's Polka the Elk by Mike Telin
Every now and then a CD arrives in the mail with a title and cover art that cries out "Please Open Me", and bassoonist Rachael Elliot's debut solo CD Polka the Elk does exactly that. Even better, Polka the Elk does not disappoint musically. The CD contains eleven tracks of diverse contemporary solo and chamber music for the bassoon by composers Tawnie Olson, Padma Newsome and David Lang.

A mon seul desir, (2005) a hypnotic work by Canadian composer Tawnie Olson, explores the lyric and rhythmic capabilities of the instrument as well as a utilizing interesting color textures in the piano through the use of extended techniques.

In Padma Newsome's Polka the Elk, (2001), Ms Elliott is joined by bassoonist Janet Polk and vibraphonist and percussionist, Bill Solomon. Although the liner notes don't tell us the significance of the title, if you have ever found yourself looking at a herd of Elk - and I have - this piece certainly captures the animals' majestic side. And if you did ask an elk to dance a polka, this just might be the piece of music it would choose. Throughout, the two bassoons playfully exchange syncopated conversational lines over supportive chords and tonal embellishments in the percussion.

The centerpiece of the CD, With Eyes Cast Down (2004), also composed by Padma Newsome, is a dramatic and engaging work in seven brief movements. Here Ms. Elliott seems to be in her musical element, producing a beautiful focused tone in all ranges of the bassoon. Pianist John Orfe and harpsichordist, violist, pianist and vocalist Padma Newsome are excellent collaborators. Hopefully this piece will find its way onto many chamber music programs in the future.

This recording of David Lang's Press Release (1992) is the world premiere of the solo bassoon version (the piece was originally written for bass clarinet). During the nine minutes and 36 six seconds of the track, Ms. Elliott makes easy work of the Lang's acrobatic writing, leaping effortlessly from one end of the instrument's range to the other. There are also some great multi-phonics as well as the astonishing physical feat required during the perpetual motion section.

In the final track, Ms. Elliott is joined by her Clogs Ensemble colleagues, guitarist Bryce Dessner, marimbist and percussionist Thomas Kozumplik, and pianist Padma Newsome, in Newsome's Bed and Rest (2006). This work is the perfect melodic ending to a recording of an engaging, eclectic mix of contemporary music.

The sound quality and balances are excellent throughout. The only distraction is the sound of the bassoon's keys; however, that is a minor flaw in an otherwise beautiful and musically interesting recording.

If the section in your CD rack dedicated to bassoon recordings has any available space, or if you are looking to expand your chamber music section, consider giving Polka the Elk a listen. You'll be happy you did.

Polka the Elk is due to be released on the Music Starts from Silence Label on September 15, 2011. The album was produced by Rachel Elliott and Padma Newsome, with cover art and design by Sophie Hannibal.

The Bassoon: A Cultural History
It's an instrument that's been typecast by pet-food commercials, the movie The Princess Bride, and even composer Joseph Haydn. We learn about the cultural history of the clown of the orchestra, otherwise known as the bassoon, with writer (and bassoonist) Eileen Reynolds and Monica Ellis, bassoonist with the quintet Imani Winds.

Track-of-the-Day: "Small Prices"
Recorded and mixed in one day, Imaginary Johnny's fifth release Dig will undoubtedly impress you. Out on Unfinished Side Productions.

Imaginary Johnny: Dig
A very solid effort from the Brooklyn-based band Imaginary Johnny, Dig is a mix of '70s-style AM radio rock and modern indie. The Boston Globe has described Imaginary Johnny's music as "a blend of Tom Petty pop hooks and Wilco spirit", while the onesheet compares the band to John Vanderslice and Gram Parsons, among others. I'll see those comparisons and throw in The Love Language and Jason Collett. If any of these bands appeals to you, my guess is that you'll find something to enjoy on Dig.

Linked, hosted by Peter Cummings, is a monthly radio show broadcast on Sirius XM Pops (channel 77 XM, channel 79 Sirius) that explores the connection between classical music and other musical genres. This one-hour show combines music and talk, presenting the work of a guest artist as well as the works of artists and composers whose influence the featured guest discusses. The guests are chosen because, in one way or another, they champion the blending of musical genres and thus stretch the experience and imagination of the listener. Linked's featured guest this month easily fits this description: The members of Imani Winds have expanded the sound of classical music with their dynamic improvisational, polytonal playing, innovative programming, genre-mixing collaborations, and deep commitment to music education outreach programs.

Imani Winds's interview with Peter will be broadcast on Saturday, April 23rd at 9am, with repeats on Sunday, the 24th, at 1 and 8pm, and on Monday the 25th at 11pm. Since 1997, the Grammy-nominated wind quintet, composed of four women and one man who play the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn, has become one of the most successful chamber music ensembles in the United States. Two of the members are composers but the ensemble has commissioned new work to "increase the woodwind literature and repertoire" while bridging European, American, African and Latin American traditions.

The group recently premiered works by Grammy-Award winning pianist Danilo Perez and Simone Shaheen, the world-renowned Arab musician-composer. On May 3, Imani Winds is performing a benefit concert in New York City at the Rose Studio in Lincoln Center. And from July 27-August 6th, the Juilliard School will host the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival which offers two exciting programs that demonstrate their deep commitment to music education: The Fellowship Program is for woodwinds, horn players, and pianists who wish to immerse themselves in high caliber wind quintet/sextet performance; and the General Chamber Music Program is an intensive training workshop for mixed ensembles. Deadlines for auditions end within the next two weeks-so go to their site for details.

We hope you will join us for this interview!

Wind quintet revels in being unusual by K. Williams Brown
The Grace Goudy Distinguished Artists Series will close out its season Wednesday with Imani Winds, a wind quintet that turns the traditional notion of wind quintets on its head - sort of.

The group combines traditional works with innovative arrangements that draw on African-American musical traditions, Latin-American-infused beats and others.

"They are a group of phenomenal wind players," said Anita King, a piano professor at Willamette University and the series' coordinator. "They're very interested in music that's alive rhythmically."

Two of the five, she said, are composers, and the entire group seeks new compositions and arrangements to break out of the traditional wind quintet box.

"They'll take classical pieces that were written for orchestra ... and they'll arrange it for the wind quintet in a very creative way," King said. "They include the audience, and they address the audience directly - instead of giving printed program notes, they speak about the music."

The innovation, she said, extends to performance style; the group has been known to sing in voices that King described as "huge, free, beautiful" and draw on pieces that include African, Egyptian and Middle Eastern influence.

Suite Sounds: Imani Winds to play ‘The Rite of Spring’ on May 3 by Alicia Hall Moran
Lenox Avenue is a theater, with the crowds hoping to catch a glimpse of President Obama in Harlem.

Me, I'm heading out to watch a rehearsal of the Imani Winds, five African-American virtuosos who play flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn and bassoon together around the world and on New York City's greatest stages: the Apollo Theater, Alice Tully and Carnegie Hall.

When I arrive, they're in full swing. Nearby on a couch, a little boy sits, listening. His mother, Tiffany Ellis Butts (sister to bassoonist Monica Ellis), scoops him up in her arms as they sway to the music: a woodwind suite lush with Panamanian themes, pierced with upshots of jazz. Pianist Danilo Perez wrote "Travesias Panamanias" expressly for the Imani Winds, as part of their Legacy Commissioning Project.

I try to imagine growing up with this difficult, sonorous, proud music like the boy-who, I learn, is Calvin, a grandson of the Rev. Calvin O. Butts of Abyssinian Baptist. To this child, and to his brother Reed Harris, "Classical music is Black music," Ellis says during a pause. "We are in all dimensions of music."

Let me say, Ellis is an entire situation on bassoon. The pedigree includes being the daughter of jazz saxophonist Clarence Oden and getting trained at Oberlin College and the Juilliard School. She is an imposing beauty with swagger on par with any R&B diva.

"We all come to the table with a soloist's instincts," says Ellis. "When everybody has a powerful voice, where is the homogeneity?"

"Attack the accents," somebody says. And they do.

"Cultivating joy in playing together and breaking the timidity were the issues early on. But at this level, the work is to let go of the overindulgence," says flutist and composer Valerie Coleman, the group's founder. "Less is more."

Coleman, with degrees from Boston U. and Mannes College of Music, advises the National Flute Association. She spins ribbons of sound rapturously atop the ensemble.

"To play simply is really hard," says Toyin Spellman-Diaz, the oboist. "Our goal is to align our sense of internal rhythm-starting, stopping, tapering, breathing together."

Spellman-Diaz has played under the baton of maestros Masur, Barenboim, Boulez, Aschenbach and Rostropovitch. At Manhattan School of Music, where we first met, she joined Jason Moran on his undergraduate jazz piano recital. A decade later, she commissioned his composition, "Cane."

Imani Winds has forged its identity by playing music they love regardless of category, with the best practitioners of the craft. Jazz legend Wayne Shorter "opened up the floodgates of spirituality and truth for us," Ellis professed. Shorter wrote "Terra Incognita" for Imani Winds, his first work for any ensemble other than his own.

Next resident master is Paquito D'Rivera, the indomitable reedist and nine-time Grammy winner. He joins the Imani Winds' nine-day chamber music festival July 26 through August 6 at Juilliard.

Mariam Adam on clarinet bridges classical and jazz performance in ensemble and as a soloist. "Let me pick my poison," she said, reaching for her reed case. The other players laugh. Her facility and fortitude drive the rhythms like no other.

Jeff Scott, on French horn and a resident composer, is ubiquitous on his instrument, whether it's in orchestras for "The Lion King," Alvin Ailey, Dance Theater of Harlem and Jazz at Lincoln Center, on records alongside Terrance Blanchard, Tan Dun and Jimmy Heath or on tour with Barbara Streisand.

Scott was in the pit for one of the greatest shows of all time: Luther Vandross at Madison Square Garden. He sings Ohio Players' "She's a Bad Mama Jama" as he packs away his horn.

The most efficient, cooperative, relaxed rehearsal I've ever witnessed is over. "We choose our music a year in advance," explains Spellman-Diaz. "By rehearsal time we have our own parts learned and ready to play. Rehearsal is for making music with the group."

On May 3, Imani Winds performs "The Rite of Spring" at the Rose Studio at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to benefit the Chamber Music Festival Scholarship Fund. Come mingle with the players, then enjoy a wine tasting and decadent desserts. Proceeds will benefit their scholarship fund. For tickets, visit ImaniWindsFestival.com.

The Sorrow of “Sumeida’s Song” by Sherri Rase
Mohammed Fairouz' newest opera, "Sumeida's Song," had its concert version World Premiere on April 13, at the New York Society for Ethical Culture auditorium, before a very appreciative audience. The Mimesis Orchestra under the baton of Scott Dunn took us on a journey to an early 20th century Egyptian village, in a time astride old and new, where a very vivid clash of ideas takes place.

Tawfiq El-Hakim's 1947 play "Song of Death," spoke so eloquently to Fairouz that, when he read it, he immediately began to translate it to set it as his libretto. The story is both old and new and has the vigor of a tale handed down from much less civilized times than these.

It is the story of a woman whose husband is killed in a blood feud-in these times, we could read this as organized crime incident or gang way-and she sends her toddler son away while leading everyone in her village to believe he's dead. She becomes her own éminence grise, while she plans the undoing of the man who killed her husband and sent him home in pieces in a saddlebag on his own donkey. Her son was spirited away to Cairo where he could become educated and learn how to avenge the father he never had a chance to know.

Seventeen years later, Asakir sends for her son Alwan. Her cousin Mabrouka is with her while she awaits not so much the return of her son, as the vengeance for her husband's death Alwan will wreak upon her enemies. Mabrouka's son, Sumeida, has gone to the train station to retrieve his cousin. Sumeida will sing upon his return, if he's successful in bringing Alwan with him.

Families seem destined to disappoint one another, even in their deepest love, and so it is with Asakir and Alwan. Asakir tells her son what he must do, and as an educated man, he asks if she is certain who killed his father and whether there's not a way to end this blood feud. They have a monumental argument, ending with Alwan heading back toward the evening train, where perhaps he and his mother could have a better conversation from a distance. Asakir is indomitable in her rage and unyielding. Alwan is a broken tool, so she dispatches Sumeida to end his life with the knife that killed his father and should have been used, in her mind, by Alwan to avenge him. Sumeida is successful in his bloody task, feeling he has satisfied his duty and sings upon his return and that is Asakir's final descent into madness.

Biblical in sweep, the opera tells a story of a clash of old thought and new thought and, while written in 2009, comes, for Western listeners, on the heels of the unrest in Egypt that has led to the forming of a new type of government for that region. Fairouz is dedicated to bringing Eastern and Western thought together, and breaking down the barriers that prevent people from being everything they are, and moving forward together.

The cast was superb-Jo Ellen Miller, soprano, was Mabrouka, while Rachel Calloway took the mezzo-soprano role of Asakir. The rich dark tones of Calloway's voice and the clear sweet bell tones of Miller's swirled around one another in the tuneful, modal music evocative of the region. Tenor Robert Anthony Mack sang Sumeida with a verve and sweetness that brought to mind a very young man at the height of his vigor. Randall Scarlatta's baritone gave weight and brilliance to Alwan's big ideas and the echo in the music was broad with the return of exotic and beautiful Eastern modality.

The orchestra has some thrilling moments as well, though at times they were a bit strong, considering that there were vocalists. When this has its stage premiere, the orchestra will be in the pit, and here, the placement of vocalist and orchestra at the same level in the auditorium space was, at times, a challenge for the singers.

The flute had a gorgeous, "bendy" melodic line that I felt was Alwan's father's ghost peering in and twining in and among his family, a bit like Hamlet's father's ghost. Making its first appearance in Act II, during Asakir's aria "The Saddlebag," as she describes how her husband's remains were sent home, the theme returns when Alwan questions his mother about how she's certain, and when she sings "God knows best," it's almost as if Alwan's father is working to set the story right. Alwan's summoning of a vision, in which the village can transcend its present state, and his exhortation to move past blood feuds is where the broadening of the music occurs-big music for big ideas. Undercurrents of minor chords and dis-chords undercut the beauty of Alwan's dream. There is a cello line that seems to highlight the angst for the present and the fear that his dream for the future may not be-prescient, no? This, followed by Alwan's declaration "I won't kill!" seems like a herald's trumpet. This leaves his mother muttering to herself. as Alwan's paean to change fades into resignation, when he decides to go back to Cairo.

Vengeance for the father transmuted to vengeance about the son's refusal to exact it brings to mind recent conflicts in the Middle East brought about by the Bush league. Swift action, swift retribution brings to mind when you do things in haste, you repent them in leisure. This opera has winds of change swirling around and through it, and it's one you must see. For more information about Mohammed Fairouz and his body of work, visit www.mohammedfairouz.com. This young composer is someone to watch.

Phyllis Chen - Mesmers | Album review by Mia Clarke
International Contemporary Ensemble member Phyllis Chen is a lover of all things Lilliputian. The local composer is a hot topic in the niche world of toy piano, and she chose a diminutive format for her sophomore album. Mesmers comes packaged as a nearly edible three-inch CD.

A follow-up to Chen's excellent debut, 2009's The UnCaged Toy Piano, Mesmers is a collection of miniature works penned for toy pianos, music boxes, electronics and mixing bowls. In less discerning hands, such a rigorous penchant for the petite could sound precious. But like fellow toy pianists Fabian Svensson and Andrian Pertout, Chen's talents are no small fry. She sidesteps whimsy and allows the plinky sounds of the toy piano to stand up to its larger relatives.

None of the album's eight tracks clock in over five minutes. Each is handsomely crafted, riffing on the circular gestures that often characterize Chen's works. Heard individually, the songs are fleetingly pretty. The beauty of Mesmers lies in the power each composition develops in context of the whole. Every track relays into the next through a labyrinth of surprises.

The excruciatingly brief 56-second "Passageway" feels like walking through a geode-studded cave, although the light begins to fade almost as soon as the image is conjured. The following "Cobwebbed Carousel" illuminates a dreamy, crystalline soundscape by way of a hand-cranked music box. The entire album is built from such stepping stones, alternating between suspense and relief.

Like minimalist French electronic musician Colleen, another ardent fan of utilizing the fairground feel of the music box, Chen makes the most of the limited dynamic range of her instruments. It is a quirky music world that simultaneously haunts and inspires.

Imani Winds: Tuesday Musical Series at E.J. Thomas Hall (April 4) by Mike Telin
On Monday April 4 at the University of Akron's E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall, the Tuesday Musical Association presented the Imani Winds who delivered a performance that can only be described as stunningly beautiful and technically amazing. Without a doubt, this ensemble is North America's premier woodwind Quintet.

Founded in 1997 the Imanis (Valerie Coleman, flute, Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe, Mariam Adam, clarinet, Jeff Scott, horn, and Monica Ellis, bassoon) have been dedicated to the commissioning of new works by established and emerging composers with diverse musical backgrounds and experiences from around the world. Currently they continue that tradition through their Legacy Commissioning Project, and the evening's program included the World Premier of Travesias Panamenas (Panama Crossings) by Danilo Perez, a work co-commissioned by Tuesday Musical and the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Primarily known as a contemporary/Jazz pianist and composer, Perez certainly knows how to write for wind quintet, as he intelligently combines the rhythms and melodies of his native Panama with a hint of modern jazz idioms. Perez creates wonderful sonorities and rhythmic patterns that sometimes seem to be inviting the listener to dance. Bassoonist Monica Ellis and clarinetist Mariam Adam magnificently handled all of the technical wizardry that Perez threw at them with ease and class.

Opening the concert was Red Clay and Mississippi Delta, by Imanis' Valerie Coleman. Reminiscent of her relatives at family reunions, Colman uses jazzy chords and finger snapping rhythms that invited the audience to join in the fun. Although hints of Gershwin could be heard, Coleman writes with her own pen.

Jason Moran's Cane, also a reminiscence about his family's history in the rural Louisiana town of Natchitoches, "Togo to Natchitoches" grabs one's attention with flute, horn and bassoon solos over nervous, syncopated rhythms. "Coin Coin's Narrative" also has nervous, repetitive elements, this time from the flute and bassoon, punctuated by chords and chatterings from various instruments. Those unsettled rhythms come back in "Gens Libre de Couleur", but are grounded by Stravinsky-like dissonant chords. "Nathitoches to New York" begins with broad chord strokes, which eventually become syncopated and lead on to cheerful oboe and flute tunes and jazzy, bluesy horn licks before the chords return. A swirl of notes brings the suite to an end.

Gamal Abdel-Rahim's The East Side Suite, a fun piece that combines a number of musical styles including a bit of Klezmer, was given a superb reading. Throughout, the Imani played with a collective voice, paying close attention to blend and dynamics.

Composer and saxophonist Daniel Schnyder's Woodwind Quintet, is a twenty-minute work that requires players to be versed in a variety of musical styles. In the hands of lesser musicians, the piece could easily become a series of idiomatic motifs, but the Imanis again presented a cohesive delivery that made all of the musical styles work together. Bravo to oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, who somehow managed to pick up a cold English horn, put on the reed and play the opening chord softly and perfectly in tune. How did she do that?

Joining Imani for the final work of the evening were the members of Lunaris, the University of Akron School of music Graduate Quintet (Cassandra Dries, flute, Michael Resanovic, oboe, Ann Hung, clarinet, Ben Strecker, horn, and Tom Breadon, bassoon) in an arrangement for double quintet by Jeff Scott of Piazzolla's Libertango. Although the audience was told the piece had received limited rehearsal, this fact was certainly not evident in the rousing performance given by the ten players. A perfect way to conclude the evening. Although I sometimes question audiences that are a bit too quick to rise to their feet, this concert more than deserved the standing ovation it received from the large audience.

Concert Review by Warren Gerds
(4 stars out of 4)

Imani Winds quintet played music reminiscent of an abstract painting of many bright colors, a hymn, a foundation, airiness; reverence, a Scottish bagpipe, a chase, a comic conversation between two emphatic people, a requiem, a forceful monologue, Middle Eastern exotica, a grand entrance, delicate lace, conversation at a party and alma mater music. That was just one movement in one piece, Carl Nielsen's "Quintet for Winds." It was the sole work written for wind quintet on the program presented Saturday night, March 26, for Brown County Civic Music Association.

By the time Imani Winds finished shedding light on the versatility of wind quintet music, the New York City-based group stood before a standing ovation at Ralph Holter Auditorium of Green Bay West High School. The first image of five people playing classical music seated in a circle may be of something static. But Imani Winds players are personable not only in spoken introductions but in the way they perform.

The arrangement of Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" seemed like a haunting, living organism through the body/instrument movement of players and their emphasis on notes or passages. Stunning teamwork glues the group: Valerie Coleman, flute; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Mariam Adam, clarinet; Jeff Scott, French horn; and Monica Ellis, bassoon. The audience was asked to give a "Super Bowl welcome" at the start. There was a connection: Ellis is originally from Pittsburgh. That brought a murmur, and Ellis acknowledged with a smile, "You had the upper hand."

Imani Winds had the upper hand on the night, from the opening mischievous scamper of Felix Mendelssohn's scherzo from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to romping klezmer dances featuring a laughing clarinet. The pastoral "Bruyetes" (heather) by Claude Debussy was offset by the wide-ranging Nielsen piece and Scott's ambitious arrangement of Astor Piazzolla's "Contrabasjissimo."

It was an evening of intense concentration by the players and often one of wonder for listeners.

In-studio with Imani Winds
There are wind quintets and then there are the Imani Winds. These five musicians are passionate about commissioning new classical wind quintets, often from non-classical composers, and stretching the boundaries of what is classical music and where it can happen. The Imani Winds joined host Fred Child in the studio for three brand new pieces, each with a rich story behind him.

Winds of Change by Doug Rule
When Valerie Coleman was forming what became the Imani Winds quintet, Mariam Adam says, ''she wanted the players to look like her.'' Specifically, Coleman, a flutist, was recruiting fellow African-American wind instrumentalists.

''I'm not African American at all,'' concedes Adam, ''but I [do] look like her, and I guess that was close enough.'' Adam, a clarinetist and the second member to join the quintet, jokes she's an ''Egyptxican,'' born in California to an Egyptian father and a Mexican mother. The other four members are African American. And there's only one man in the bunch -- the inverse of most classical music groups.

Since forming in 1997, the Grammy-nominated Imani Winds -- imani means faith in Swahili -- has worked to increase and spotlight diversity in classical music. Not just in terms of minority representation, but also repertoire. Adam calls the quintet's genre ''contemporary classical music. It's a new genre, it's an evolution of what classical music is now, and it's just as virtuosic and gratifying.'' The New York-based quintet often works with and performs music by Latin and jazz artists, including Wynton Marsalis, Paquito D'Rivera and Jason Moran. They also perform modern arrangements of traditional classical compositions.

Next Friday, March 4, at the Barns at Wolf Trap, for instance, among a program of newer music is Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, normally scored for a large orchestra. Imani Winds performs the piece, Adam says, as ''an arrangement for [just] a wind quintet, which is kind of an anomaly, but it works really well.''

Adam credits her music teachers while growing up in Monterey, Calif., for helping her see her future was in classical music. She knows her experience isn't the norm, especially now in a time of budget constraints. The key is exposure.

''I think the more [the public] is exposed to groups like ours, the more they'll encourage it and keep the arts in schools.'

Grammy-nominated group provides cultural experience by Hallie Davis
Each piece had a story. One centered on a slave who bought her children's freedom, another was a series in which each section represented a certain part of one's life.

Imani Winds performed these and others in the Student Union Building Allen Theatre on Friday night as part of the Presidential Lecture and Performance Series.

The Grammy-nominated quintet started its day in Lubbock with a master class in the School of Music.

"It was really exciting and very musical," said doctorate of musical arts student Meg Griffith from Dallas. "It got us out of our box; it's not a typical class. "

Though she participated in other master classes in the past, she said this one was different and by far the most fun.

Seeing the group onstage completed the experience for Griffith, who said the performance was incredibly entertaining.

"They're fabulous and so fun to watch," she said. "It's enjoyable to see a group that is so connected."

Oboe professor Amy Anderson said she remembers hearing about the group coming to Texas Tech when it was first mentioned years ago. She said she had heard the group before and was excited to be a part of the plan for them to perform on campus.

"It's great; they're great," she said. "They're really personable, and wonderful players."

Imani Winds' fame preceded them. The group has played with such musicians as Yo-Yo Ma and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and PRI's "The World." Lubbock resident Joyce Knaff said she had heard Imani Winds on NPR.

"They're wonderful; that's why we rushed and made such an effort to get here," she said.

The level and type of fame the group has achieved brings respect to Tech, said Babatunde Onwukeme, a junior petroleum engineering major from Nigeria.

"It's culture," he said. "The whole school gets to see something different."

The Lecture and Performance Series is great for expanding the culture of students, Knaff said. She said the variety of events and the way the series makes them affordable for students is wonderful, and that she and her husband, David, a chemistry professor, come to as many events as they can to encourage the series to continue.

Skeptical at first, Onwukeme said the music was great, soothing, relaxing and definitely different. Tech students could get free tickets, and anyone else could purchase tickets in advance or at the door.

D'Ann Ayers, a freshman business major at Texas A&M, was in town visiting when she heard about the concert. She said she jumped at the chance to see a group that was so well known, though she had no idea what to expect.

"It's a really interesting group of people, " she said. "The way they mix sounds could appeal to anyone."

Ayers said she was also interested in how the event brought together so much of Tech and the community.

A thought-provoking and memorable concert
Imani Winds is a Grammy nominated wind quintet whose exceptional reputation made their performance on Thursday evening a much anticipated one amongst Bermuda's more serious music enthusiasts.

They are a group of African American musicians who in addition to performing and recording, have commissioned much work as part of their Legacy Commissioning Project to stretch and enhance the wind repertoire, while at the same time developing a legacy of their own. The initiative includes the powerfully thought-provoking 'Cane' by Jason Moran, which they presented for their Bermuda audience at the City Hall Theatre, a reflection on the life of the composer's great grand aunt who was a slave and then was freed, going on to open her own plantation in order to buy her children's freedom. This is indeed an intriguing musical portrait of the legendary Marie CoinCoin, and of the days of slavery in Louisiana, the piece reflecting the hum-drum, ambling pace of life on the bayou, at the same time expressing the underlying and enduring discomfort of, and dissatisfaction with, that life. As Marie CoinCoin is ultimately triumphant, the work concludes with the relief of a jazzy movement in the much-loved New Orleans style.

Imani Winds presented Elliott Carter's Eight Etudes and a Fantasy for Woodwind Quartet. The flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon explored the intricacies of this work which began its life as a series of sketches for the students of an instrumentation course that the composer was teaching at Columbia University. Each one was designed to show just what a woodwind quartet can do, exploring compositional challenges, timbres and rhythms amongst much else. Today, the piece is a standard of the chamber wind repertoire.

Third on the programme was perhaps the most traditional of the works that Imani Winds performed: Carl Nielsen's Quintet for Winds Op. 43. Nielson was inspired to write this piece after hearing over the telephone the members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet rehearsing Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante. With a sense of modernity it was debuted in 1922 it also is classical in character and certainly accessible to most audiences.

While these major works were certainly fascinating, and also intellectually quite challenging, this superb quintet, consisting of flautist Valerie Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinettist Mariam Adam, french horn player Jeff Scott and bassoonist Monica Ellis, had started the evening with an easily accessible, lively and exciting piece, Paquito D'Rivera's Wapango, the form of which has vibrant cultural roots as an Afro-Mexican dance.

This cultural excursion included Wanderings by Derek Burnell, a fascinating and vividly performed piece of music that reflects life in Jerusalem, the blend of Jewish and Muslim societies that live there and that are so evident in the variety of musical legacies that each one has built. The concluding movement of the piece is a rendering of urban life that undoubtedly dominates in more recent times.

Imani also performed for us the exciting Libertango by Astor Piazzolla. Written to be 'airplay friendly', this is a particularly fast tango, though entirely characteristic of the dance, with all the heat and passion that one expects, and it was a great piece of music with which to conclude the concert.

Imani Winds' performance provided an evening of diverse music of the more recent period, and certainly one that brought to the fore surprising and innovative aspects of the world of wind, making this a thought-provoking, memorable and excellent concert.

While My Sitar Gently Weeps by Tom Mullaney
Watching the first scene in "RAGA: A Film Journey into the Soul of India", one sees the Indian sitar master, Ravi Shankar, making his way through a crowd of adoring fans. It is sometime in the late '60s, when Eastern music was the rage in America. Shankar is smiling, clearly taken by the adulation of Hare Krishna devotees, flower children and curious, youthful bystanders. We next see him onstage, performing before a large crowd, joined by his long-time collaborator, the great Ustad Alla Rakha on tabla. These two need only a momentary glance and fleeting eye contact to produce an endless cascade of raga rhythms.

That was to be his 15 minutes of fame in America. Yet his musical influence has endured. While he emerged in the 1950s, his fame was propelled by the interest taken by the "quiet Beatle", George Harrison, in Indian mysticism. Harrison traveled to India to study the sitar with Shankar. As a result of that spiritual journey and musical collaboration, Harrison released the album, "All Things Must Pass" in 1970 which contained the songs, "My Sweet Lord" and "What is Life?." He also produced a charity benefit with Shankar in 1971, A Concert for Bangladesh.

By 1972, the music and the counterculture moment had died, done in by drugs, the Kent State killings, the Black Panthers and Weather Underground, Middle America's turn to the right, symbolized by the election of Richard Nixon.

Last October, to mark Shankar's 90th birthday year and give a new generation the chance to experience his music anew, the Ravi Shankar Foundation re-released "Raga", the 1971 documentary along with the first (1967-68) of nine CDs in a series entitled Nine Decades, featuring rare and remastered recordings www.eastmeetswestmusic.com.

I recommend connecting with the documentary before diving into the music. Not only will you witness him rehearsing with the remarkable violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, and the oh-so-young Harrison but it will give you a greater insight into this deeply religious man who gave up the life of a dancer, living the high life in Paris, to study for over seven years with his musical guru and dedicated his life thenceforth to music. He toured America last year at 90 with his daughter, Anoushka. I regret having missed his October concert at Orchestra Hall.

The film and music took me back in time. I was 25 when Shankar came on the scene. The music first struck me as foreign, like but yet quite unlike the twang of rock guitars. Through increased listening, I found the rapid string-plucking produced rich, singing tones that drew me in. As someone who practiced yoga at the time and puffed the occasional joint, this mysterious, other-worldly music fit the alternative practices of the time. Shankar, however, didn't approve of what he termed "the wrong approach to our music and religion, through drugs" and walked away from the fame and adulation.

Another jarring element is to see the deep poverty and squalor of India, circa 1970, at a time when today's news is of the nation's economic rise made possible by technology. How many will share in that good fortune? Will the great mass of the population be left behind the digital divide? Also, the film portrays a country rooted in century-old traditions and religious ceremony. Will India's currently strong embrace of capitalism, consumption and distractions inevitably endanger its spiritual rootedness?

Ragas are the musical voice of the Indian people's prayers. All of Shankar's playing and raga compositions are his attempt to express the soul of Indian culture through the strings of his sitar. Ragas go much deeper than being simply sweet melodies, which is how they were treated in the West. Perhaps this time we can rediscover the true beauty of the music and the musician who remains its most renowned champion.

Regional Spotlight: Imani Winds by Steve Staruch
Their performances are nothing short of life affirming.

The Grammy-nominated Imani Winds bring a full-color spectrum to their music making, blending the creamy and spritely sound of reeds with the pure tone of the flute and the spicy sweet honkings of the horn, creating a flavorful gumbo the is stylish and joy-filled.

Audiences left the Imani Winds Music in the Park Series performance last November smiling from ear-to-ear.

Highlights from that performance are in this week's Regional Spotlight.

The Cherry Tree
A4 has lost none of its perfection of tone and ensemble. This should be a regular item every Christmas.

Anonymous 4: "The Cherry Tree" by Christian Carey
On their latest holiday recording, The Cherry Tree, Anonymous 4 brings together two of their principal musical interests: the chant and polyphony of early English and Irish music alongside repertory from the American spiritual and shape-note singing tradition. This shift between musical eras is accompanied by appropriate shifts in style. The quartet remains impressive in their ability to capture a variety of affects: the suppleness of chant, the vibrancy of early carols, the formalized music-making and rounded tone of polyphonic church music, and the varied inflections of Anglo-American folk music. Thus, fans of their earlier recordings, Wolcum Yule and American Angels alike, will find much to enjoy here.

What's more, the diversity of the programming poses few problems in terms of cohesion. This is, in part, due to careful curating by the ensemble (certainly helps that they have trained musicologists and folklorists among their number!). But the recording is also unified by themes from the miracle ballads of "Joseph and Mary." This story is first found in the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and is famously set in the Coventry Play (c. 1400). It has remained a part of folklore, providing fuel for legends, ballads, and songs since the 15th century. Indeed, it's fascinating to see how many musical responses there have been to the Cherry Tree legend over the years, making the CD both a history lesson and musical delight.

Anonymous 4: "The Cherry Tree" by David Luhrssen
With an ear for beauty and an interest in musicology, not to mention a lovely set of voices, Anonymous 4 is one of the most popular exponents of early music-primarily the sound of Western Europe before the Baroque Age. With The CherryTree, the New York-based quartet applies those voices to a collection of medieval British Christmas carols and Appalachian songs rooted in that tradition. The purity of their singing and the ideals they sing about are like a quilt of fresh snow on the hillside, unsoiled by the pollution and commercialism of the present age.

Culture Watch: What to listen to, read and watch by Mark Swed
"Every year some big-name classical singer comes along with embarrassing Christmas fare.... Next to them, the Anonymous 4, the stellar four-woman early music vocal group in pursuit of a merry olde 14th and 15th century Christmas, are like an aged Belgian ale poured beside a Bud Light."

Music to Knowell 2010: This year's top five holiday releases by Dennis Polkow
The all-female early music vocal quartet known as Anonymous 4 has recorded a number of Christmas albums over the years, and can even be heard all over the soundtrack of "The Nativity Story" where their ethereal approach to music making is an integral part of the fabric of that sacred tapestry. What is distinctive about "The Cherry Tree" is that it focuses on songs, carols and ballads of the Anglo-American tradition, which means that they are by and large in English, if old English, and therefore what is being said is immediately discernable thanks to the group's extraordinary ensembling and diction. "The Cherry Tree" itself is heard in an Appalachian setting and poignantly tells the story of a jealous Joseph who, when his pregnant wife asks him to pick some cherries for her on their way to Bethlehem, tells her to ask the father of the child to do so.

Dr. Christmas presents 17th annual survey of new Christmas CDs  by Gerry Grzyb
15th century English carols dominate "The Cherry Tree - Songs, Carols and Ballads for Christmas", the seventh seasonal release from the women who comprise the Anonymous 4, one of the best selling acts in all of classical music. Most of the music will actually be familiar, and the singing--well, the singing of this quartet has always been other worldly.

Anonymous 4 Goes Caroling  by Charles T. Downey
The peerless and now resurgent vocal quartet Anonymous 4 won last year's Ionarts Best Christmas Concert award last year, with their Cherry Tree program at Dumbarton Oaks. They are currently in the lead to win this "coveted" award for a second year in a row, with Thursday night's concert at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. The program, called Noel: Carols and Chants for Christmas, is drawn from five of the group's celebrated Christmas albums: the most recent one is last year's Cherry Tree program, recorded on a CD we have already highly recommended; the group re-released a 4-CD set of the others (Wolcum Yule, Legends of St. Nicholas, On Yoolis Night, and A Star in the East) a few years ago, which is a bargain (at $28.99) for anyone who does not already own any of those discs. Tickets were reportedly sold out, but the dusting of snow that fell earlier in the day apparently kept a few concert-goers home.

Something about the austerity of the music selected -- lots of chant and other monophony, with many simple hymns and carols in unusual versions -- hit all the right Christmas buttons, as if you had wandered into the home of four talented and knowledgeable women and got to listen as they celebrated Christmas with a few old favorites. I was reminded inevitably of a scene in The Lion in Winter (at 5:22 in this video), a movie I habitually watch again at this time of year (you think you have a tricky time navigating the family reunion at Christmas): only candlelight could have improved the atmosphere. Gregorian chant selections heading up many of the sets, one for each of the five CDs (with no intermission), set a simple but intense tone. The mostly unmetered chant pieces flowed freely in tempo, in pleasing contrast to other monophonic and polyphonic pieces to which the group gave a more regular pulse, never too slow but also not over a certain boundary into a rushed tempo.

Four solo selections from the Cherry Tree punctuated the breaks between sets, highlighting the different sounds of each voice: Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek rich and motherly in Qui creavit caelum, Ruth Cunningham clear and pristine in Lullay my child, Marsha Genensky bright and folksy in The Cherry Tree Carol, and Susan Hellauer a little rough at places, in Tydings trew and in the polyphonic selections, from what was obviously a persistent cough (but it added a bit of whiskey color to the lowest notes). Whereas most of the polyphony was of the homophonic conductus variety at which the group excels, the four-texted motet Exordium/Nate dei/Concrepet/Verbum caro was a most intriguing jumble of harmonies and Babel-like word confusion.

Selections from the 20th century were woven among the medieval ones with striking ease: John Taverner's setting of William Blake's poem Little Lamb and A god, and yet a man?, a piece originally for double chorus by Geoffrey Burgon, a television and film composer who died this past September (probably most famous for the score of Monty Python's Life of Brian -- see the obituary by Terry Jones in The Guardian). Just as these rather different repertories -- medieval chant and polyphony, vernacular and Latin carols, post-tonal and folk music -- mixed together easily, the country encore Beautiful Star of Bethlehem, by Arthur Leroy Phipps (of the Phipps Family), seemed just as sincere.

Album: Anonymous 4, The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols & Ballads for Christmas (Harmonia Mundi) by Andy Gill
Their name might be derived from a musicological reference to a 13th-century musical theorist, but Anonymous 4 could easily serve as an indication of how seamlessly the four womens' voices blend together in these acappella arrangements of 15th-century carols.

Though each is showcased on solo ballads, it's their facility with harmonies, whether the English triadic form of "Nowel Syng We Bothe Al And Som" or the more intricate polyphonies of "Mervele Noght, Iosep", which impresses, as does their inference of the subtle differences between the European singing style and that of the New World used in "The Shepherd's Star".

Anonymous 4's 'Noel' concert: Holiday in harmony by Joe Banno
The artistry of the female vocal quartet Anonymous 4 has never been about melding near-identical voices into a homogeneous whole. Rather, what makes this group special is the way it forges a sweetly concordant sound from a set of significantly different voice types.

The uniqueness of those voices was showcased at the group's a cappella concert, "Noel: Four Centuries of Christmas," at the Terrace Theater on Thursday. Each member of Anonymous 4 (which has changed personnel over the ensemble's 24-year history, yet has retained its distinctive vocal personality) sang an early-music solo from their most recent Christmas CD, "The Cherry Tree." Susan Hellauer's earthy, folky, straight-toned alto in "Tydings Trew" occupied a different stylistic world than Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek's classically honed, richly glowing soprano in "The Song of the Nuns of Chester." And there was a wealth of difference between the fragile purity - so like that of a boy treble - in Ruth Cunningham's delivery of "Lullay My Child," and the no-nonsense way Marsha Genensky hooked into the notes of "The Cherry Tree Carol" with a rural-American twang.

Yet all of these singers offered the kind of carefully molded phrasing and subtle musicianship that made this intermission-less, 75-minute concert (covering a range of music from the Middle Ages to the present day) an arresting listen: In plainsong selections, their disparate sounds found common ground, while such carols as contemporary composer John Tavener's pungent William Blake setting, "The Lamb," and William Billings's 18th-century fugue, "Bethlehem," drew striking timbral counterpoint from this crazy quilt of voices.

Noel in the Museum, Medieval Edition by Vivien Schweitzer
Despite a hiatus of sorts in recent years, on the eve of its 25th-anniversary season, Anonymous 4 seems as strong as ever, continuing to demonstrate the qualities that have made it a perennially popular a cappella ensemble. In the Metropolitan Museum's acoustically vibrant Medieval Sculpture Hall on Tuesday evening, the four women sang with their trademark vocal blend, sparing use of vibrato and purity of tone in a program called "Noel: Four Centuries of Christmas."

They offered songs from their previous four Christmas albums on Harmonia Mundi and excerpts from their most recent release, "The Cherry Tree." That disc centers on the 15th-century English song "The Cherry Tree Carol" and features medieval English and Irish works, and American songs inspired by them.

The Met program opened with medieval selections from the ensemble's disc "On Yoolis Night," including the two-voice "Gabriel, Fram Heven-King," and "Ecce Quod Natura," in which the group expanded two-voice polyphony into richer, triadic harmony. A section called "Christmas Music From Medieval Hungary" included chant and an arresting four-voice motet in an unusual harmonic and contrapuntal style.

Under the heading "Legends of St. Nicholas" came polyphonic selections dedicated to that saint, including one of the oldest songs in the English language. The ensemble sang with buoyant pulse in the lively and harmonically striking "Conductus: Fulget Nicholaus."

Also on the program were spirited renditions of a traditional Cornish wassail song; "Star in the East," a 19th-century American folk hymn; and a harmonically pungent arrangement of John Tavener's song "The Lamb."

The women revealed their distinctive voices in solos from "The Cherry Tree Carol," including a traditional Kentucky rendition of the title song - a 15th-century English ballad about Mary, the miracle pregnancy and the jealous Joseph - which Marsha Genensky sang with a slight twang.

Susan Hellauer sang the monophonic 15th-century "Tydings Trew," which relates the story of the Annunciation, and Ruth Cunningham the gentle "Lullay My Child." With a pure, lilting voice Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek rendered "Qui Creavit Celum" ("Song of the Nuns of Chester") a treat.

The program concluded with 18th-century Americana: William Billings's "Bethlehem," a rhythmically vigorous fuging tune.

5 Best American Contemporary Classical Albums Of 2010 by Daniel Gilliam
My suggestions, thus far, have focused on composers rather than ensembles. With Imani Winds' 2010 release, Terre Incognita, three jazz composers are presented: Jason Moran, Wayne Shorter and Paquito D'Rivera. If there's one thing we learn from this disc, it's that composers are composers. The stylistic definitions of a "jazz" or "classical" composer are pointless here -- it's just good music. Imani Winds' members have earned a reputation for expanding the recorded wind-quintet repertoire, but in a way that's culturally significant.

Christmas music aficionados have much to be thankful for by Eric. B. Harrison
New-this-season classical Christmas CDs include these notables:

Anonymous 4 / The Cherry Tree / harmonia mundi

A-

This album has the distinction of being one of the few Christmas compilations that contain almost nothing with which any average listener will be familiar, much less jaded over.

The almost legendary a cappella women's quartet - Marsha Genensky, Ruth Cunningham, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek and Susan Hellauer - has put together a program of medieval English carols and Anglo-American songs and folk hymns inspired by the 15th-century miracle ballad "The Cherry Tree Carol," which they perform in a lovely 1917 Kentucky arrangement.

Most of the numbers are in Latin or latemiddle English that Shakespeare might have been able to decipher but you probably won't, at least not without the help of the gorgeous decorative pull-out booklet that provides program notes, the fruit of Anonymous 4's exhaustive research (in English, French and German), full lyrics and translations (ditto).

"The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols and Ballads for Christmas" - Anonymous 4
This vocal group decided to break up a few years ago; I'm really glad they changed their minds. This is their 18th CD with harmonia mundi, and their first original recording in 4 years. For the first time they mix the medieval European music that made their career with the New World hymns and songs that have occupied them recently. The hymns and ballads are from 15th Century England (plus some plainchant from 14th century Ireland) and the songs are from the American hymnal, with "The Cherry Tree" carol being the focal point for the program. As per usual, with excellent liner notes and full song texts. (harmonia mundi 093046745363 / 807453)

Quartet shines in holiday program by Walter Tunis
"Shine on." - That was the salutation sung with typically unaffected reverence last night at Transylvania University's Haggin Auditorium by Anonymous 4. It was a fitting finale, to be sure. In the stage debut of a Yuletide program that journeyed through centuries old music from Hungary, Ireland and England, the coda came from an encore performance of the country delicacy Beautiful Star of Bethelem penned by Knox Country songsmith Arthur Leroy Phipps.

That the acclaimed a capella troupe of Marsha Genensky, Ruth Cunningham, Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, an ensemble known primarily as an early music vocal ensemble, would bring its worldly singing to rest on Kentucky's doorstep shouldn't seem too surprising. It's repertoire, especially of late, has taken rustic Americana turns (explore the group's 2006 album Gloryland for proof). And certainly one of the more audience-friendly moments during this 85 minute performance was an American variation of The Cherry Tree (which doubles as the title track to a new holiday CD by the ensemble) sung with a modest but effective Appalachian lilt by the Californaia-riased Genesky.

The Cherry Tree was one of four songs performed individually by each of the members that separated the 85 minute program, titled Noel: Four Centuries of Christmas, into five segments, each of which was devoted to a separate Yuletide recording Anonymous 4 has released over the past 17 years.

The other three introductory songs were English works hailing from the 15th century. Hellauer sang the carol Tydings trew to introduce a collection of medieval songs and motets from Hungary. Horner-Kwiatek used Song of the Nuns of Chester as a prelude to the more polyphonic singing of the liturgy Legends of St. Nicholas. Cunningham sang the lovely Lullay my child before a segment devoted to Wokum Yule, an album of predominantly British carols.

The quartet presented the audience as much information as it could about the material, including contemporary translations of lyrics from Latin and Middle English. As such, the shuffling of programs was an almost continual aural backdrop for the evening. No matter. While the performance was true to Anonymous 4's scholarly and exact approach to vocal ensemble singing, the centuries and styles often seemed to blend into music of vast atmospheric proportions.

Sure, the traditional Cornish carol Can wassel (Wassail Song) offered its holiday sentiment in broad, welcoming strokes. But the rest of the program possessed a wonderful lightness both elegant and ghostly.

"Unearthly" was a description penned in the program. No argument there. What Anonymous 4 delivered last night may have been occasionally picked from The Cherry Tree. But the overall musical scope seemed as timeless and magical as Christmas itself.

Holiday Music-Classical
Dec. 14 at 6:30 and 8:30: Taking in a Christmas concert amid the intimate grandeur of the Met's Medieval Sculpture Hall is an essential New York experience. Anonymous 4, the beloved all-female early-music vocal quartet, headlines the series this year, singing a collection of holiday-themed chants, carols, and motets. (Fifth Ave. at 83rd St. 212-570-3949.)

16 Christmas Discs by Tom Gibbs
At some point a good while back I remember reading that Anonymous 4 - Harmonia mundi's vocal supergroup - was hanging it up - yes, retiring from performance. How could that be - each of their succeeding albums had accolade upon accolade heaped upon it, concerts sold out everywhere - how could such an artistic, critical and commercially successful group of women simply retire?? As it turns out, they never did quite retire, returning every couple of years with a new offering that of course once again gets layered with superlatives and praise - I guess retirement works out pretty well for some folks!

Their latest offering, The Cherry Tree, takes its name from the medieval "Cherry Tree Carol," and brings us a remarkably good mixture of sacred and secular motets, songs and carols from England, Ireland and America that span a period from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries. I've heard a good many offerings of medieval based Christmas celebrations that were little short of total snoozes - this one is anything but, and music making this grand truly deserves a celebration! It's sometimes hard to believe listening to this incredibly well recorded album that only four voices are making the remarkable sounds heard here. While my original intent was to basically scan through this disc, once it started playing, I simply found myself at the edge of my chair in rapt attention and anticipation of each upcoming song - the phrase "ear candy" is definitely appropriate for this superb recording! The singing throughout covers a wide range of styles, from polyphony to folk hymns, and surprisingly (to me, at least) seems not at all out of place alongside much more traditional and even popular Christmas music. And those marvelously fluid voices! The sound of Anonymous 4 has often described as angelic - I'll have to risk overuse of the adjective here, but what better choice of material for angels to be singing!

Of course, it doesn't hurt when the recording is as magnificent as this multichannel SACD from Harmonia mundi - the sound here is truly resplendent, and offers a palpable and believable aural impression of the four voices in the acoustic of the two recording venues, Skywalker Sound and the Sauder Concert Hall at Goshen College in Indiana. The overall clarity of the sound here is just breathtaking, and the absolute lucidity of these four beautiful voices deserves nothing less. Very highly recommended, for holiday listening, and beyond!

Holiday CDs offer escape for classical music lovers by Sarah Bryan Miller
The intelligent, virtuosic quartet Anonymous 4 - Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek - is back with another beautiful recording of early English, Irish and American vocal music for Christmas. The A4 are scholars as well as singers, and the disc is filled with often unfamiliar, but always lovely, melodies and that suit the season. Their thoughtful performances are the perfect antidote to commercial Christmas music.

Anonymous 4's The Cherry Tree
The four female vocalists of Anonymous 4 are known for popularizing medieval music with their pure, unadorned style of singing. In their Christmas programs -- of which they have made several -- this approach represents a departure from the grandeur of the season. Their latest album, The Cherry Tree, is a case in point: it brings together 15th-century English carols with four early American hymns for the holiday season. It's our Album of the Week.

The "Cherry Tree Carol" is familiar to fans of American folk music, having been recorded by Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris and other artists. A 15th-century miracle ballad of Joseph and Mary, it is one of several selections that the English imported to the U.S., and it is performed here in an arrangement from a 1917 Kentucky hymnal. Other early American songs are taken from the 1835 collection Southern Harmony, including the traditional "The Shepherd's Star," William Knapp's "A Virgin Unspotted," and William Billings' four-part fuging tune "Bethlehem."

Mostly, however, the carols Anonymous 4 sings are 15th-century English airs with texts in Middle English ("Noel syng we bothe al and som") or Latin ("Veni Redemptor Gencium"). As one has come to expect from Anonymous 4 over the past quarter century, their performances are carefully shaped, with subtle dynamic nuances and a sparing use of vibrato. What's more, the album is sequenced in a way that creates a counterpoint between the English polyphony and American hymns that is constantly engaging.

3 CDs offer new twists on your yule favorites by Edward Reichel
The four female singers who are Anonymous 4 have taken early music to a new level. Their insightful performances that are historically accurate, yet vibrant and meaningful, have reinvigorated early music and made it more accessible to a larger audience.

For their 18th recording on the harmonia mundi label, Anonymous 4 has turned to Christmas music, but not to your standard favorites. They've chosen 13 English and Irish pieces from the 14th and 15th centuries along with four early 19th century songs for the Christmas season.

As one has come to expect from this vocal quartet over the past quarter century, their performances are exquisitely crafted and sung with feeling, eloquence and wonderful expressiveness. These are beautiful, heartfelt songs and performed only as Anonymous 4 can. It's for these reasons that "The Cherry Tree" should find its way under your Christmas tree this year.

Holiday CDs for a classy Christmas by John Fleming
Have yourself an early music Christmas with a vocal ensemble. The women of Anonymous 4 have been making beautiful medieval music since 1986, and after a four-year hiatus, their new CD, The Cherry Tree (Harmonia Mundi), is a typically smart blend of scholarship and holiday cheer. These carols and ballads are sung in Latin, old English and modern English, and many deal with the Virgin Mary, such as Hail Mary Full Of Grace and A Virgin Unspotted. The miracle ballad of the title is performed in several versions, including one from east Kentucky.

The Cherry Tree by Simon Heighes
"Another tasteful offering from the phenomenally successful Medieval-close-harmony group Anonymous 4 ... once again their sweetness of tone and ringing purity of intonation really cleanse the palate and lift the spirits.... This CD is absolutely made for giving."

Gift guide: Ring in the season with new and traditional holiday music by Lawrence B. Johnson
This newest of Anonymous 4's Christmas CDs extends a string of glorious celebrations of the season by the a cappella women's quartet. Mostly, the carols Anonymous 4 sings here are 15th century English airs with texts in Middle English ("Noel syng we bothe al and som") or Latin ("Alma redemptoris mater"), but there's also a lovely digression to the 19th century with William Knapp's sunny "A Virgin Unspotted." The "Cherry Tree Carol" spans both ages, as a 15th century song performed in an arrangement from an early 20th century Kentucky hymnal! The singing throughout is angelic, radiant, irresistible. GRADE: A

A cappella group Anonymous 4 blends Old English and Appalachian music  by Rich Copley

Anonymous 4, The Cherry Tree
A celestial collection of medieval and more modern (well, 19th-century) carols, ballads, and spirituals from the early-music quartet. Both intimate and expansive, the performances are breathtaking. But so is the material. It would be impossible -- and criminal -- to play favorites, but the folk hymn "The Shepherd's Star" is mysterious and exalting, and the title cut (in which a small miracle leads Joseph to accept the larger miracle of the Immaculate Conception) is nothing short of sublime.

Yuletide CDs to widen your repertoire and your pleasure by David Stabler
Medieval English carols and American folk songs from one of the premier early music groups. The music is mellow, the feelings restrained. I love the rolling thunder of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas albums, but this is their opposite. The trademark vocal blend of the four women is unwavering, while the spare textures allow nuances to shine like candlelight. An intimate listen.

For Imani Winds, strength isn't necessarily in numbers by Rob Hubbard
How do you take a work that revolutionized the use of an orchestra ... and perform it without an orchestra? America's most renowned woodwind quintet, the Imani Winds, did it Sunday afternoon, distilling Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" to its essence in an arrangement for five wind instruments.

It may not have packed the punch of a full orchestra, but it was nevertheless an astounding achievement, the piece that sealed the deal on this Music in the Park concert's overarching impression: That these five gifted musicians have blended themselves into a very special ensemble with a uniquely simpatico sense of rhythm.

For those who braved St. Paul's icy streets to reach St. Anthony Park United Church of Christ, it was a concert of fascinating sonic textures. While the Stravinsky's audacious ambitions made it the standout, the concert was filled with intriguing works, all well performed.

Like "Red Clay and Mississippi Delta," an original composition by the group's flutist, Valerie Coleman. It was a fine fusion of classical structure and thrilling jazz-flavored flights, with clarinetist Mariam Adam and bassoonist Monica Ellis blowing through some explosive solos from the John Coltrane school before the audience had the once-in-a-lifetime experience of snapping its fingers to keep the beat beneath an oboe solo.

There aren't many classical music groups that could execute a work with such a bluesy base, then turn around and deliver some sun-soaked Latin jazz on Cuban composer Paquito D'Rivera's "Kites." Throw on French horn player Jeff Scott's intriguing arrangement of Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla's musical epitaph, "Contrabasjissimo," and you have an ensemble intent on showing off its facility for dance rhythms.

Which served them well on Jonathan Russell's arrangement of "Rite of Spring," a work of erratic pulses and hypnotic dreamscapes. More than any piece on the program, this was a showcase for Ellis' exceptional skills.She not only delivered that memorable opening - perhaps the most famous bassoon solo in all of classical music - but also put grit and muscle into sections handled by an army of percussionists and low strings on the original.

A suite spliced together from the imaginations of Egypt's Gamal Abdel-Rahim, Spain's Manuel de Falla and Eastern Europe's klezmer tradition allowed clarinetist Adam to wail away the walls between Arab and Jewish cultures. And a whirlwind double-time conclusion let the group's almost telepathic way with rhythm shine through once more.

Raga (1971/2010) by John Sunier
This fine documentary from the early 1970s has been lovingly restored and covers the life of famed sitar master Ravi Shankar (now 90 years old), with a narration track by Shankar himself. It follows him on a return visit to India to see both his musical guru, Baba Ustad Allauddin Khan (who was nearly 100 years old at the time), and his spiritual guru as well. At the same time it truly does explore the soul of India, giving in some sections a feeling of life there at the time more involving than any other film I've seen on India.

His life as a musician and teacher in both the U.S. and Europe is shown, along with his opening of doors to Western appreciation of Indian classical music and culture. He credits the genuine interest of George Harrison with aiding in this process, and also expresses some misgivings about how he was looked up to as a guru himself and made incense and the guru shirt famous with the younger generation. He mentions how he made sitar-makers rich. The film also reveals the early history of Shankar, who started in Paris as a child Indian dancer, and became friends with Yehudi Menuhin there. He performed with his brother Uday Shankar's troupe. There are many scenes with his students and clips from his breathtaking performance at the 1968 Monterey Pop Festival (I was there). The footage of performances with Menuhin made me want to get out my Angel CDs of their unique collaborations.

One section near the end of the film does seem dated now. It attempts to portray the influence of things East Indian in Western life via rapid-fire stills (only a few frames each) in an eye-boggling barrage of images. (I did the same thing in a couple of my own films.)

Although Shankar is proud of the platform for Indian classical music he built in the West, he was also at the time strongly critical of the approach of many young people to the music and the religion thru drugs. He even walked away from some concerts when his audience didn't behave properly. He has re-released Raga as part of his new label - East Meets West Music - to draw attention to the special relationship Indians have with their gurus - more serious and abundant that most would believe. It is most informative and also very moving.

Though there are still some exposure problems and instances of dirt on the images, the remastering is generally good. The original was 35mm so the picture quality is high. The soundtrack music is fascinating - especially a portion with Shankar's original music combining Indian and Western instruments in an ensemble. Though the soundtrack has long been available on a separate LP and then CD, this DVD includes a little card with a URL that allows the purchaser to download free MP3 audio files of the soundtrack score. All the members of the jazz group Oregon were involved in the film, including the late percussionist and composer Colin Wolcott, and Richard Bock - founder of World-Pacific and Pacific Jazz labels - is also credited.

Classical artists celebrate Christmas with popular carols, ancient voices by Michael Huebner
Five stars out of five.

The female a cappella quartet, Anonymous 4, never fails to deliver compelling, well-designed programs and recordings. These performer-scholars, who have produced 20 albums of ancient, folk and modern music, have produced a new album of carols, ballads and hymns, each of the 17 tracks revealing the angelic sound and impeccable clarity that have become their hallmark.

Most are from 15th century England, sung with lucid diction in Middle English and Latin. The carols are not carols in the modern Christmas sense, but those of Medieval England, which range from unison chants of the ballad carol, "Lullay my child" to the beautifully unfolding, four-voice counterpoint of "Veni redemptor gencium."

Excursion to America include two tunes ("Shepherd's Star," "Star in the East") from the 1835 shape-note hymn book, "Southern Harmony," which have an inexplicable link to the medieval forms despite their time-and-place disconnect and distinctive open harmonies.

The entire album focuses on the nativity, from Joseph's wonderment about how Mary "grows large" despite their chastity ("Mervele noght Iosep") to "The Cherry Tree Carol," in a wondrous version from early 20th century Kentucky.

This is the perfect album for those wishing to expand their Christmas carol repertoire and get closer to the true meaning of the holiday.

"Terra Incognita" by Edward Reichel
Imani Winds is a quintet of incredible woodwind players who through their remarkable musicianship and striking technique make everything they play seem easy. And that description almost does them a disservice, since the music they play is anything but simple. And they have a vast repertoire that besides the standard woodwind quintet literature also includes many works that cross genres. The Imani Winds have brought a freshness to the repertoire that has been long overdue. And while they've reinvented the genre they also stay true to its roots.

The group has just released a new album, "Terra Incognita," that features three works written for the Imani Winds: Jason Moran's "Cane;" Wayne Shorter's "Terra Incognita" and Paquito D'Rivera's "Kites," with D'Rivera on clarinet and Alex Brown on piano.The album shows once again that the quintet is a remarkable exponent of new works.
The three works blend jazz, blues and classical idioms cleverly and creatively. And these pieces are certainly up their alley. They give thoughtful, perceptive readings that are wonderfully musical through their heartfelt and sincere playing.

If one has yet to discover the Imani Winds, this is the album by which to do it. The music is compelling and the playing is stellar.

Best entertainment bets for Nov. 21-24 by Rob Hubbard
Who would think a woodwind quintet could be hip? The Imani Winds seem to be, thanks to premiering works by Jason Moran and creating arrangements flavored with Latin jazz, blues and a global stew of other influences. The Grammy-nominated group is also a prominent advocate for kids of color exploring classical music careers. Among the works in this Music in the Park Series concert are pieces by Paquito D'Rivera, Gamal Abdel-Rahim, Astor Piazzolla and what promises to be an intriguing arrangement of Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."

ANONYMOUS 4: 'THE CHERRY TREE: SONGS, CAROLS & BALLADS FOR CHRISTMAS' by Ben Ratliff
Intelligently and responsibly, the American a cappella group Anonymous 4 has built an album around one 15th-century English song, "The Cherry Tree Carol," on the subject of Joseph, Mary and the miracle pregnancy. Anonymous 4 has gone about it in wide focus: it includes medieval English and Irish precedents to the carol, and related American songs rooted in British caroling. The record presents triadic harmonies and the group's immaculate handling of art-song polyphony, and then the song itself, sung by only one of the singers - Marsha Genensky - in Kentucky Appalachian style. (The group will perform a Christmas-related concert at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 14 at the Metropolitan Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall; information: metmuseum.org.)

A whole world of music by Mike Greenberg
Not that there isn't plenty of life in the old stories, but it's good to hear some new ones now and then, from different climes, with different points of view, told with verve and skill.

Enter the Imani Winds. First heard locally a few years ago in a memorable Carver Center concert joined by Paquito D'Rivera, the New York-based woodwind quintet made a very welcome return visit to town on Nov. 14, this time on the San Antonio Chamber Music Society series at Temple Beth-El.

The troupe started in familiar territory with an arrangement of the Scherzo from Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but the rest of the program was contemporary and culturally diverse.

Most interesting were pieces by Julio Medaglia of Brazil, Wayne Shorter of the United States and Daniel Schnyder, a Swiss native living in New York.

Medaglia was represented by his Suite "Belle Epoch in Sud-America." It comprises three compact, almost-too-short movements with Brazilian folk feeling in their bones, wrapped in a sophisticated skin of disciplined compositional craftsmanship. There's also a quirky wit to this music, especially in the tango "El Porsche Negro" and the rollicking chorinho "Crazy Baby Clarinet."

Shorter started his career as one of the most thoughtful of the hard-bop saxophonists of the 1960s, but his subsequent journey took him far afield into free jazz and fusion. Eventually he latched onto the extended classical tradition, but with distinctive twists.

He composed "Terra Incognita" for the Imani Winds, which gave the premiere in 2006. The piece allows the players to improvise and to alter its structure freely, so it can't be fully pinned down, but the constants are dense, very beautiful harmonies, lovely melodies or melodic fragments, and lively interplay that sometimes recalls Arnold Schoenberg's counterpoint.

Schnyder's Woodwind Quintet melds the Modernist classical tradition with jazz, pop and blues ideas. The fast opening movement and the superfast finale also include good deal of delightful nuttiness. For the two middle movements, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz switched to English horn and delivered some bluesy feeling, most notably in the slow movement's tender theme.

The Imani Winds' flutist, Valerie Coleman, is also a composer. There's much to like in her three-movement "Afro-Cuban Concerto" -- some elaborate and very engaging solos, ambitious counterpoint, an attractive neo-classical idiom with infectious Afro-Cuban rhythms and inflections. But the music in the first two movements seems too studied and conservative. In the finale, however, Coleman busts loose, communicates more freely and builds to a wild conclusion.

All five players were first-class. In addition to Coleman and Spellman-Diaz, they were clarinetist Mariam Adam, bassoonist Monica Ellis and hornist Jeff Scott. Adam was given the biggest cache of showy material, which she played with considerable aplomb. Not least was her virtuosic and convincingly stylish -- or perhaps the right term is shtetlish -- work in a pair of klezmer dances.

Shankar's India by David Luhrssen
Ravi Shankar was still a relatively young man when director Howard Worth traveled with him for Raga: A Film Journey into the Heart of India, but he was already a master musician acclaimed in his homeland and recognized around the world. The 1971 film, out now on DVD, is a great example of documentary filmmaking in the age before everyone with a digital camera could point at a topic and claim to be a documentary filmmaker. Rendered in splendid full color and edited in rhythm with its subject, Raga unfolds at a leisurely pace as Shankar goes from stage to stage and narrates a journey-on foot and by rail-through India.

Shots of Western counterculture audiences at Shankar concerts are fascinating to behold. Many of the people stare slack-jawed, as if convinced that raga is cool if only because the Beatles say so. Others seem transfixed and transported, even though some study is required to fathom the depths of the Indian classical tradition. Shankar is unfailingly gracious, yet in scenes of him teaching sitar to George Harrison, his voiceover admits: "It is strange to see pop musicians with sitars." He seems more at home with classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, whom he regards as a colleague.

In an emotional scene, Shankar visits his beloved baba, the man who taught him to master the sitar, by then nearly 100 years old. "In this life you must do one thing and one thing persistently," baba insisted. It's a lesson to be relearned in our multi-tasking society.

Much of Raga's narration is a lament about the toxic effect of modernity as Shankar rues its corrosive effect not only on India's traditional music and dance but also of the historical values with which me made sense of the world. The rootless, shallow indifference Shankar worried about in 1971 have only worsened since; nowadays superficial knowledge of everything, including raga, is available at the touch of a few keys, yet understanding seems more elusive than ever.

Virtuosic Unity from Imani Winds by Peter Van Zandt Lane
The New York-based quintet, Imani Winds, performed an eclectic array of mostly 20th- and 21st-century works at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday, Nov. 7. The concert experience given by Imani Winds is without doubt linked to the group's enormous success as a touring and recording chamber ensemble. While performing a substantial program of relentlessly difficult music, the group constantly engaged the audience in informal discussion on the pieces - thus bringing the aesthetic approach to wind music from Elliot Carter to as comparable a level of audience accessibility as Piazzolla.

The only pre-20th-century piece on the program was an arrangement of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream "Scherzo." The arrangement still contained some modern flair, since the piece concentrates a tremendous amount of busy figuration from a larger ensemble into five instruments, with seemingly no downscaling of complexity. Flutist Valerie Coleman was hardly given a single chance to breathe in this arrangement, but lost none of her vibrancy along the way. The group displays an exciting sense of unity: a special, virtuosic kind of unity that teeters between feeling organic and mechanical, which was an unfailing virtue of the performances throughout the program.

Jason Moran's Cane revealed some of the top-notch music that Imani Wind's commissioning efforts are contributing to the wind quintet repertoire. The programmatic narrative of the piece followed the story of Marie Therese Metoyer or "Coincoin," a freed slave who became a successful businesswoman and an icon of Creole culture in Louisiana. Moran's connection to Coincoin goes beyond that of regional influence, as he is in fact one of her descendants. The style of the first three movements were largely characterized by shifting contrapuntal rhythmic textures underneath alluring melodies. The piece moves forward at a swift rate, having at least some grounding in post-minimalist techniques. The final movement wails in a contrasting, loose Dixieland idiom.

The two following works represented more established (though I dare say not quite as engaging) examples of the 20th-century chamber wind literature. Nielsen's Neoclassical, pseudo-romantic Quintet for Winds has become a standard for wind quintets everywhere. The ensemble breathed color and life into the piece, and the tone of horn player Jeff Scott and bassoonist Monica Ellis fused nicely. But the variations, despite even the most extraordinary performances, are rather non-stimulating. Elliott Carter's Quartet, a very early piece of the composer's career, explores very limiting musical ideas over eight short etudes. The etudes sometimes feel like quirky composition exercises, but the closing movement delightfully pulls all of the materials together in a Fantasy that exhibits Carter's colossal facility for counterpoint and convincing development.

Derek Bermel's Wanderings integrates Jewish and Muslim influences into its first movement. West African rhythms are the root of the second movement, "Two Songs from Nandom." There seemed to be little material that ties the two movements together, which was perhaps the motivation for the title. The first movement, "Gift of Life," contained some interesting effects, and clarinetist Mariam Adam seemed completely comfortable with the Yiddish stylizations demanded by the piece. Interestingly, the bassoon was even asked to bend pitches in Klezmer fashion, which made for some really interesting ensemble sounds. The piece barely scratches the surface of the cultural dichotomies it claims to engage, but works quite well on a purely musical level.

Closing the concert was horn player Jeff Scott's arrangement of Piazzolla's Libertango. In addition to being a talented instrumentalist, Scott shows deft facility for orchestrating for the finicky medium that is the wind quintet. Coleman once again danced the off-axis tango melodies with virtuosic spectacle. Ellis's tone and dynamic control was deserving of awe, as was the agility of oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz. Libertango was a fun, high-energy close to an exceptional performance.

Young and hip Winds blow through classical repertoire by Harlow Robinson
Imani Winds blew stylishly into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday afternoon, bearing an assortment of music old and new, and yes, borrowed and even blue.

Now recognized by many as the leading wind quintet in America, Imani revels in challenging preconceptions about "classical'' music and musicians. All five of its members are young - no gray hairs in sight. All are African-American. Only one is male. Their on-stage demeanor is hip, casual, and chatty, with informatively humorous commentary by each player.

Imani has also shaken up ideas about the kind of music that wind quintets - oboe, flute, clarinet, bassoon, French horn - can present. For many, a wind quintet conjures up visions of beer garden oom-pah-pah or high school band practice. An Imani performance takes you to considerably more exotic destinations.

Imani flutist Valerie Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mariam Adam, bassoonist Monica Ellis, and Jeff Scott on French horn opened with a virtuoso rendition of an arrangement of the scherzo from Felix Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream.'' Ascending and descending scales cascaded back and forth at breakneck speed, tossed between the instruments like jugglers doing tricks. Here and throughout the recital, Ellis coaxed from the ungainly bassoon a wonderfully mellow, rich, and complex tone.

Then came something darker and more substantial: Jason Moran's recently completed "Cane.'' Drawing on the quintet's shared African-American heritage, "Cane'' takes its title from a Louisiana river and tells the tale of the slave Coin-Coin, who fought to gain her freedom in the 1700s. The most evocative of the four movements, the last, explodes with wailing bluesy sounds of New Orleans jazz and Mississippi River traffic. Moran is a composer to watch; he won one of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius'' grants.

Something more familiar followed, Danish composer Carl Nielsen's Quintet for Winds (1922). The neo-classical Menuet recalls Prokofiev's jocular irony. In the finale, Nielsen spins out intricate variations on a solemn hymn tune, in the style of Charles Ives.

In the second half, Imani dazzled through the playful complexity of Elliott Carter's "Eight Etudes and a Fantasy,'' then waxed soulful in Derek Bermel's "Wanderings,'' a Middle Eastern travelogue mixing Jewish and Muslim motifs. Buenos Aires was the afternoon's final destination, in Jeff Scott's clever arrangement of a raucous tango by Argentine tango king Astor Piazzolla.

Liberace, Lear among performing-arts picks for November by Jim Higgins
The a cappella queens of women's early music visit Kenosha's Carthage College to perform "Secret Voices: The Sisters of Las Huelgas," a program of 13th-century polyphony and sacred Latin song sung by a convent of noble and aristocratic women "despite a rule forbidding the singing of polyphony by the women of their order."

Liberace, Lear among performing-arts picks for November by Jim Higgins
The a cappella queens of women's early music visit Kenosha's Carthage College to perform "Secret Voices: The Sisters of Las Huelgas," a program of 13th-century polyphony and sacred Latin song sung by a convent of noble and aristocratic women "despite a rule forbidding the singing of polyphony by the women of their order."

The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols & Ballads for Christmas by Stephen Eddins
The nearly inexhaustible supply of medieval and Renaissance music for the Christmas season has happily provided Anonymous 4 with material for yet another holiday album. The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols & Ballads for Christmas draws on English and Irish sources as well as several from the New World: William Billings, Southern Harmony (1835), and a 15th century English ballad carol in a version collected in Kentucky in 1917. The American selections are especially fascinating, ranging from the exceptionally sweet folk hymns from Southern Harmony to the intricate counterpoint of Billings' late 18th century fuguing tune, Bethlehem, probably the most advanced music written by a North American up to that time. The singers invest the pieces with a distinctively American folk sound without resorting to twangy cliches, often in startling contrast with the straight, pure tone used in the English repertoire. That is hardly a surprise given the group's history and demonstrated skill in adapting to a broad variety of national and regional styles of vocal production. What is unchanging in their work is the life and spirit that the singers breathe into this music; there is nothing academic sounding about their scrupulous attention to the subtleties of the various vocal styles they bring to these wonderfully attractive pieces. The sound of Harmonia Mundi's hybrid SACD is characteristically clean and warm, with a natural, intimate ambience. The CD should interest any fans of the group, anyone looking for appealing new Christmas music, and anyone who loves top-notch a cappella vocal ensembles.

ANONYMOUS 4/The Cherry Tree
There's been some sassy, new Christmas albums coming out this holiday season but this is the first one we've gotten that does the middle period justice. Hymns, carols and ballads from the 15th Century fill out the program by this well respected vocal unit who knows how to perform in a way that really makes you feel like a grown up. This is what a traditional, family Christmas should sound like as Santa's zero hour approaches. Well done.

Imani Winds team with Shorter, Moran, D’Rivera for Terra Incognita by John Kenyon
I have been sitting on this review for weeks, unsure how to start, and frankly, not at all confident that I was qualified to review the disc it in the first place. It's not that I don't enjoy the music; in fact, Terra Incognita from Imani Winds is one of my favorite releases of the year.

The problem is that I come to this with little experience with chamber music. I know what I like, but don't always feel that I have the knowledge to accurately and insightfully convey that to a reader.

A conversation with a friend about the much larger issue of the alarming dumbing down of our country, however, gave me the strength to forge ahead. Please indulge me for a moment. Essentially, our talk centered on the performing arts, where tough times and an increasingly sedentary populace content to sit at home and watch reality shows on 52-inch TV screens has made it difficult to program anything remotely challenging. That's why things like dance (save for broad crowdpleasers like "Riverdance"), experimental music and cutting-edge theater can seem a bit scarce these days.

My friend's challenge, as someone who must work to convince people to come to these shows, is to reassure people that they have the capacity to understand and enjoy the work at hand. One need not have a degree in dance to appreciate modern practitioners of the form; a background in the theater isn't required to enjoy a multi-media extravaganza. And, I don't need instruction in musical theory to completely dig Terra Incognita.

So, while the Imani Winds are not what I would consider my usual thing, perhaps the definition of my "usual thing" needs to be broadened. I won't go into too much detail lest I use a term incorrectly or unintentionally mislead. I'll just say that these five musicians have created music here that is stunning, bridging genres in such a way that perhaps the labels we affix to things to facilitate understanding will eventually become moot.

Terra Incognita is the first recorded music from the group's Legacy Project, an effort that found Imani Winds commissioning compositions from top jazz performers. The composers represented on this first collection are heavyweights: Wayne Shorter, new MacArthur genius award winner Jason Moran and Paquito D'Rivera. Each entity involved in these compositions is trying something new. For the composers, it is writing for a group in a form that is precise and largely without improvisation. For Imani Winds, it is performing the work of artists who thrive on swing and improvisation.

The point where these two intersect proves to be fertile ground. Moran's "Cane," influenced by the jazz pianist's family history in rural Louisiana, evokes that feel in a more wistful, melancholic way than could be conveyed with traditional jazz instruments, while the groove inherent in his songs nudges the players to inject the slightest hip-shake into their performance. Shorter's title track feels the most traditional in terms of what one expects from a wind quintet, though his harmonic ideas seem to stretch the players, thereby expanding their comfort zone. And D'Rivera's piece, "Kites," uses the instruments most sympathetically, his lines recreating the feel of kites soaring over his native Havana.

The group - flutist and founder Valerie Coleman, horn player Jeff Scott, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, bassoonist Monica Ellis and clarinetist Mariam Adam - is willing to take risks, and those risks are rewarded. And at the same time, they continue to expand the repertoire of wind quintets through this commissioning project.

Do I wish I had the vocabulary to more accurately reflect what it is that is so mezmerizing about this album? Sure. Do I need that background to thoroughly enjoy it? Not at all. This is soulful, sophisticated music that takes the brilliance of jazz composition and the refined structure of chamber music and creates a hybrid that ought to appeal to fans of either genre and beyond.

The best news is that these are three of 10 Legacy Project commissions from Imani Winds. I had the chance to hear the group perform the world premiere of a piece commissioned from vibraphonist Stefon Harris last year that was magnificient, and hope that this piece, as well as commissions from Simon Shaheen, Danilo Perez and others will appear on future albums to further this crosspolination exploration.

The Cherry Tree by Rick Anderson
The female vocal quartet Anonymous 4 made its name with recordings of spare, sometimes stark early music, but in recent years it has branched out (profitably) into folk hymns and spirituals. This holiday-themed release finds the group in both modes, delivering medieval English ballads and Anglo-American hymns and fuguing tunes in its inimitably smooth but scholarly style. It's yet another wonderful Anonymous 4 release, and most libraries should plan for demand.

Anonymous 4, "The Cherry Tree" by Mary Kunz Goldman
Anonymous 4, "The Cherry Tree" (Harmonia Mundi USA). Though officially broken up as a full-time ensemble, the Anonymous 4 get together on special occasions, CDs being one of them. This album focuses on medieval English carols and Anglo-American spiritual songs. It's kind of a schizophrenic concept, most of all when you get to "The Cherry Tree Carol," which, though it dates to the 15th century, is sung here as a twangy Appalachian carol. It seems not quite to belong. Anonymous 4 has branched out before, so to speak, into American song but it's always best at luminous medieval and Renaissance music, the kind of music that fills most of the rest of the disc. A chain of 14th century Latin chants from Ireland and English chants from the 15th century spotlight the group's purity, synchronicity and control. "A Virgin Unspotted" by 19th century composer William Knapp and a counterpoint-rich "Bethlehem" by early American composer William Billings tie together the new and old worlds. 3 and a half stars

Live at WNYC: The Imani Winds by Amy Pearl
In its new album, Terra Incognita, the Imani Winds has broadened its repertoire by recording works by Jason Moran, Paquito D'Rivera and Wayne Shorter-all well-known Jazz composers.

Why work with Jazz composers?

"I think it's a testament to the evolution of Imani Winds," Bassoonist Monica Ellis says. "And it's about the fact that we are always trying to push boundaries and we are always trying to think of a new idea that can further the wind quintet as a group and the repertoire that it represents."

The group plays "Kites," a piece by Paquito D'Rivera, and clarinetist Mariam Adam says D'Rivera "thought of wind and wind blowing and the image of kites came to him."

Christmas Music with Anonymous 4 and Stile Antico by Bernard Gordillo
The renowned vocal quartet Anonymous 4 has released yet another terrific recording; this time centered on early Christmas music and entitled The Cherry Tree. Containing 15th-century English carols and early Anglo-American songs, the program is beautifully delivered in the touching, meditative, and poetic way we've come to expect from the ensemble.

The Cherry Tree by David Vernier
As fans of Anonymous 4's first 18 or so recordings you may remember this legendary group's first attempt at retirement from the studio--2003's phenomenal best-seller American Angels; or, was it 2005's The Origin of Fire, or the American Angels 2006 followup, Gloryland? However, it seems that, like a certain NFL quarterback who keeps returning to do what he knows and loves, to ever more acclaim, this very successful quartet has returned once more--and plans for future releases are in progress. In the music world, retirement can be a very good thing, especially when you've really nothing more to say, or when your skills and technique are failing. But this never was the case with Anonymous 4, and evidence of continued recording projects and concert performances is most welcome: the world absolutely needs music like this--of such purity and grace and beauty, supplanting the seedless hull of popular fashion with a sustainable harvest of spiritual sustenance and sheer musical pleasure. No one will ever deplore Anonymous 4 for its excess!

And although the mere idea of Christmas as a religious holiday celebration is fast disappearing from mainstream consciousness, these carols and songs preserve and continue to enliven a rich and meaningful tradition. And even if you're not a particularly religious person you can revel in these carols' possible origins in the songs of ancient and very secular feasts and festivals. Regardless, music that's been around for hundreds of years and still touches people needs no publicity machine, no slick marketing campaign, no media blitz to artificially certify its value. Like all of Anonymous 4's repertoire, this is music that celebrates its elemental form, and as such is more affecting and memorable than anything concocted by today's formulaic songwriters and highest-tech production studios. (Let's see how many people are performing Lady Gaga in 500 years.)

So, is there a review somewhere in here? Anonymous 4 fans already will be looking for the first opportunity to buy this new release--it combines the group's signature early chant and polyphony, this time mostly from 14th- and 15th-century English sources, with several selections representing English imports to the New World, including the title Cherry Tree Carol (Kentucky, 1917), The Shepherd's Star (from Southern Harmony, 1835), and William Billings' four-part fuging tune Bethlehem.

You can hardly believe the purity and clarity of the voices--and I know I've said this with every new Anonymous 4 disc release--which are recorded so intimately that if there were a flaw anywhere you'd notice. But you don't. No wonder these singers regularly are compared to angels and similarly otherworldly beings.

Highlights include any of the polyphonic pieces, but particularly the 15th-century English carols Veni redemptor gencium and Alma redemptoris mater, the latter reminiscent of the well-known carol There is no rose of such virtue (not included on this program). Fans of early American tunes will appreciate the folk hymn entries from the 19th century, rendered by these very accomplished singers in a style appropriate to time and place, but with restrained use of vocal slides and syllabic inflection that makes you want to come back rather than retreat, a performing philosophy similar to the group's tasteful and respectful interpretive style on American Angels and Gloryland. The sound, from an appropriately "otherworldly" venue, Lucasfilm's Skywalker Sound, and from the more earthly Sauder Concert Hall at Goshen College, Indiana, is as extraordinary as the singing, which--and I don't hesitate to say it again--is possessed of superhuman clarity and faultless intonation. Don't argue with this; just buy it.

Imani Winds Take Us on an Journey to Exotic "Terra Incognita" by Sherri Rase
Throughout this summer, QonStage has been reviewing music that is ideal for stay-cations or day trips, but Imani Winds' "Terra Incognita" is the soundtrack for your honest-to-goodness vacation.

Lovers of modern jazz will recognize the names of the composers of these pieces-Wayne Shorter has written the title piece, "Terra Incognita." Considering it translates to "unknown land," it is perfect for going to faraway places with strange sounding names. Shorter typically writes strictly for his own group, so for him to have written this for Imani Winds is an honor for them indeed. Imani Winds commissioned this piece for their Legacy Project and they are not our parents' woodwind quintet. Grammy nominated and classically trained, Imani Winds carries forward modern classical sounds, with culturally infused blessings from, just in this album, Cuba, Louisiana and the land unknown.

Cuban composer Paquito D'Rivera's "Kites" is a beautiful piece and he brings his clarinet to add even more color to the quintet's work. Alex Brown is on piano and you can hear Havana through Mr. D'Rivera's work, as he evokes the Cuba of long ago.

Jason Moran's "Cane" has Creole flavor. The culture itself is a pastiche and you'll taste a number of different flavors in this four-movement piece. The three pieces here fit together so well that if you want to begin a trip, or even your work or weekend day, with some thrumming energy, this is the album for you.

Each composer's influence is clear and, while you can listen to this in the car or on the 'pod, for the initial hearing, give yourself a block of time to savor it. You will continue to hear more and more in it, and you owe it to yourself to taste the flavors of this music in a fine and quiet place.

If you would like to catch Imani Winds live, information about their tour schedule may be found at imaniwinds.com. Plan to haunt your favorite classical CD seller on August 24, the day that "Terra Incognita" comes home to you.

In review--Blowing in the Wind

Imani Winds prove they do it all by Edward Reichel
In their 14-year existence, the Imani Winds have turned the woodwind quintet genre on its head. They've expanded the horizons and repertoire well beyond the strictly classical. But they're not really a crossover group. They're all classically trained musicians who also happen to be well versed in other styles of playing. They quite simply can do it all and they do it well and with an enthusiasm that is infectious.

The Imani Winds were in Utah this week, their second trip to the Beehive State in six months. Last March they performed at BYU and Thursday, playing basically the same program, they were in St. Mary's Church in Park City as part of the Utah Symphony's Dear Valley Music Festival. And they gave the audience a good idea of what they are all about.

They didn't play any works from the classical repertoire. Instead, they played pieces by composers who are either jazz musicians or who have been influenced by jazz. And surprisingly this kind of music works well when played by a combo consisting of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn. The five made the music swing and come alive.

The concert opened with two works by members of the ensemble.

Flutist Valerie Coleman's 2009 piece "Red Clay and Mississippi Delta" started things off. The work is biographical since it's a musical portrait of Coleman's family. Written in the style of a scherzo, the piece is light and airy, and the five captured its playful nature easily.

Next came hornist Jeff Scott's "Homage to Duke," a tribute to Duke Ellington that was inspired by the great jazz legend's sacred music. Scott created a very soulful and tender piece that the ensemble played with feeling and nuanced expressions.

Closing out the first half was jazz pianist Jason Moran's four-movement "Cane," a work written for the Imani Winds as part of their ongoing commissioning project.

As with Coleman's "Red Clay and Mississippi Delta," Moran's piece is also biographical, detailing as it does his ancestral connection to northern Louisiana. It's a colorful work that runs the range of expressions. It's in turn serious and earnest and also humorous and light hearted.

"Cane" is a richly textured piece that has a lot of character. The quintet gave a vibrant reading that brought out the nuances of the score compellingly.

The group started the second half of the concert with Paquito D'Rivera's "Kites Over Havana." Originally written for woodwind quintet with solo clarinet and piano, Coleman arranged it for quintet. It's a bright, light and whimsical piece that they played with lyricism and fluid lines.

Daniel Schnyder's Woodwind Quintet followed next. An eclecic piece, it seems to go in all directions in each of its four movements, yet the ensemble brought cohesiveness to the piece as a whole.

The concert ended with two exuberant klezmer dances.

Traditional They Ain't: Imani Winds at Rockport by Fred Bouchard
Wind quintets are a relative newcomer to chamber music literature; they date from the German court era and were championed initially by composers Anton Reicha (1770-1836) and Franz Danzi (1763-1826). Strong contributions in the last century came from notable exponents like Carl Nielsen, Samuel Barber, Irving Fine, Elliott Carter, Alec Wilder, and Ingolf Dahl.

The Imani Winds - flautist Valerie Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mariam Adam, French hornist Jeff Scott, and bassoonist Monica Ellis - played a lively and cheerful, yet consistently challenging contemporary program to an enthusiastic full house in a Sunday matinee on June 27 at Rockport. It's their third Rockport visit, and they feel like family.

The group's overall sound is smooth and suave, conceptually rich, with spiky attacks, spicy flavors, and a perpetually sinuous rhythmic momentum. Formed in 1997 by graduates of Juilliard and Mannes, Imani has honed a fresh, iconoclastic edge for their quintet. Working, touring, and teaching full-time, their attitude of loose, cheery professionalism is more in tune with jazz groups or rock bands than 'chamber ensembles.' Imani's obvious delight in exploring the intention of each composer commits them to a sense of ownership and exhibits a collective energy smacking of rock and pop groups. Traditional they ain't: among other gigs, Imani toured European festivals in 2009 with premier jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. "Imani" ("faith" in Swahili) reflects both the members' African-American heritage and their innovative leap in launching an on-going venture that commissions new works from a multi-cultural coterie: Cuban clarinettist Paquito D'Rivera, Shorter, Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, Thelonious Monk shoulder-stander Jason Moran, and Palestinian oudist Simon Shaheen.

The Imani players set a genially familiar tone in the handsome Liu Hall by taking turns announcing the music. (Architectural highlights of the space include a glass wall backdrop (a la Brooklyn's Bargemusic), patch-worked Asian (not Rockport quarry) limestone, slats of Douglas fir woven with wrought iron, teardrop and egg-case light sconces, and stretches of sea-foam green paint. For thorough analysis of the exquisite acoustics, read David Griesinger's June 15 column here.

Imani boldly programmed works by living composers, the first by their own flautist. Coleman (b. Louisville, 1970) wrote Red Clay: Mississippi Delta as a bravura blues piece, crisply ornamented, demanding much from Ellis and trumpet-like calls from Adam, with finger-snaps for all. It had the earmarks of an exhilarating showstopper in the manner of pianist/composer James P. Johnson. (Coleman and Scott as composers lean markedly into jazz's syncopated rhythms, improvisatory gestures, and crossbred Hispanic dance forms. Their completely original concept album - one of four Koch International releases - on the life of American-born Parisian danseuse and entrepreneur Josephine Baker works jazz singer Rene Marie and percussionist Joseph Tompkins into their merry troupe.)

Arturo Marquez (b. Mexico, 1950) whisked a fluid continuum of summer and river in his Danza de Mediodia that linked languid and hectic pacing and contrasted a warm inviting rumba melody line shared by Diaz and Ellis with more blustery, fluttery comments and raggedy staccatos by Scott and Ellis. Danza suited the contrast of dark skins in white outfits, silhouetted against a blue harbor with flitting gulls and sails.

Five Poems of Karel Husa (b. Prague, 1921) portrayed stark, quixotic imaginings of bird-life from 'unwritten' poems: walking (bustling Ellis), happy (exuberant Adam), lamenting (piquant, plaintive Diaz), fighting (wildly peculiar sonorities). The last, "Bird Flying High Above," pitted Scott, mightily striving for lift against the deep, gravity-bound chorale of his colleagues, for all the world like a loon or swan, paddling hell-for-leather and bell-beating to rise from a pond.

The Elliott Carter (b. New York, 1908) selection was the short, spiffy Woodwind Quintet (1948), not the brittle centenarian's better-known Eight Etudes and a Fantasy (1949). Two four-minute movements flitted between lightning shifts - buffo (Ellis strutting) to grazioso (Diaz eyebrow-arching) as quick as a face reflects mood swings. Imani negotiated thorny disputations and easy agreements with a well-oiled familiarity and tight dynamic shading.

Miguel del Aguila (Montevideo, 1957): Woodwind Quintet #2 presented four tableaux that transported the audience in space and time over half a fleeting hour. Unison voices with orotund Scott intonations depicted a rolling vessel; tapping keys gave shape to a lively danzon where over-the-top fortissimos, Diaz smears cutting Scott howls and Adam wailing over all threatened chaos before a woozily exaggerated rallentando calmed matters. Offstage Diaz and Coleman conjured dark shades of the spirit world, while Scott and Ellis chugged along in a limbo of Hallowe'en haunts. The finale, a swirl of turbans and robes, evoked the Arabian Nights, with Diaz mimicking a Turkish duduk and Scott wielding a tambour. Scott's dashing, dancing take on late Argentine bandoneon guru Astor Piazzola's Libertango brought down the house, but neither the glass curtain nor the glass ceiling on Imani Winds.

20 new and recent jazz albums definitely worth checking out by Richard Scheinin
Ravi Shankar. "Nine Decades: Vol. 1, 1967-68" (East Meets West). The legend has gone into his private archives, and the first disc in a projected series is mostly given over to a 48-minute raga. Recorded live on the banks of the Ganges River in 1968 - with Alla Rakha on tablas and Kamala Chakravarty on tamboura - the improvisations rise to a boil with their ancient newness. You can hear why Coltrane got hooked.

The Real Ravi Shankar by TJNelson
Ravi Shankar - Nine Decades Vol. 1 167-1968 (East Meets West Music, 2010)

Okay, if you were Ravi Shankar and you, family and friends started up a record label what would be your first release? Ravi Shankar, of course. Being the first name you think of when discussing Indian music or sitar virtuosos, and you can ask any of the hippy dippy stoner folks or the pretzel formed yoga friends in your life, Ravi Shankar is almost a genre to himself and for many of first real exposure to world music. So, why not go back and find the essence of the musician?

In the liner notes of Nine Decades Mr. Shankar writes, "Our motivation was simple: In the last few decades I've seen various recording companies releasing my music with little or no imput from me - repackaging releases with new art work and new titles and effectively misusing the public's trust." He goes on to add, "...my ragas have been sold as generic 'new age' mental and physical well-being potions, a tactic that ignores the classical musical form in which these ragas were composed and erases the history that live in each."

Now, Nine Decades is the real deal. Pulling from a 1968 live performance on the banks of the Ganges River and a live recording from 1968 in Allahabad, India, Nine Decades unravels Mr. Shankar's original ragas. One cannot help but be stunned by the power these recordings evoke. Being live recordings from the late 60s, some sections are a little sketchy, but you also get a little scene setting with the opening track "Raga Gangeshwari" with the opening notes provided by a couple of local birds. The mastery that lives in this track simply exudes Mr. Shankar's musical force.

Interestingly enough this recording possesses that mysterious mystical quality of the raga that made every hippy, new age guru or soul searching, disillusioned musician think that he or she had had their first mind expanding experience. And, this is where the second track of Nine Decades comes in. The second track of the CD is a compilation of responses from audience members after a 1967 Ravi Shankar performance. The responses are indeed precious. Oh, if we'd only could be that innocent and not so jaded again.

My favorite track of this CD is the last track, "Durga Suktam and Mahishasura Mardini Stotram," recorded in 1968 with the temple priests in Allahabad, India. This is where music meets devotion. There is a raw, precious quality to this recording, something that is beyond our high-speed networks, our jet-setting pace and media hungry lives. This track is a group of monks in this particular place and at this particular time in history. This is where music has no other time or place - it is simply for the now. Of course, the irony that this is coming at me from a recording is not completely lost on me, but I still can't help but find it hypnotic.

Ravi Shankar - Nine Decades Vol. 1 167-1968 is a wonderful start to a life's retrospective. All I can hope is the Mr. Shankar keeps them coming.

On Jazz and Immigration by Neanda Salvaterra

Nine Decades, Vol. 1: 1967-1968 by Rick Anderson
Ravi Shankar fans will be ecstatic to see this release of a previously unissued live recording from 1968. Recorded at an open-air concert on a hand-held microphone, its sound quality isn't stellar, but the playing is. The disc also includes--somewhat strangely--interviews with audience members, and some fascinating examples of Vedic liturgical chant. This is the first in a new series of archival Shankar recordings.

Ravi Shankar Nine Decades: Vol. 1 (1967-1968) by Jerry A. Ozipko
I first heard sitar master Ravi Shankar live at the Jubilee Auditorium in 1973. The music was hypnotic and the performance electrifying. This recording is the first in a projected multi-volume series of rare and previously unreleased recordings selected by Shankar from his massive performance archive. The major work on this disk readily transports the listener back to Shankar's early days. "Raga Gangeshwari" (essentially three fourths of the duration of the album) was recorded live at an outdoor concert in a temple on the banks of the River Ganges outside Allahabad, India in 1968. Although recorded on primitive equipment, it still has presence and character not unlike Shankar's 1973 concert. The brief liner notes are by Shankar himself, allowing him to express his artistic and musical philosophies as well as general aspects of his compositional process. This is a MUST for Shankar aficionados.

Ravi Shankar: Nine Decades Vol. 1, 1967-1968 (East Meets West Music) by David Luhrssen
The first in an ambitious, projected series of albums culled from the personal archives of Ravi Shankar focuses on the two-year period when the sitar master found himself at the center of Western counterculture. One of the tracks is actually a sequence of cassette-recorded responses to Shankar's music by a young American concert audience. The mini-interviews mingle fascination with an awareness that the classical music of India existed in modes beyond their experience. The other tracks were recorded in India, including a 48-minute raga taped along the banks of the sacred Ganges and another piece recorded with the chanting of Hindu temple priests. It's not a CD for beginners, but rather for aficionados interested in the context of Shankar's music and its reception in the West during the 1960s.