Description
Review
The American Record Guide:The Newest Music II
Bill Faucett, reviewer
“DARK FIRES: Karen Walwyn and Friends”
Albany Records
Karen Walwyn
Pianist
Ellis Marsalis: Fourth Autumn;
David Baker: Piano Sonata 1;
Alvin Singleton: In Our Own House;
Adolphus Hailstork : Trumpet Sonata;
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson: Piano Sonata 2
Branford Marsalis, saxophone
Rodney Mack, trumpet
Jason Marsalis, Percussion
Albany 384 – 74 minutes
Pianist Karen Walwyn’s Dark Fires, Vol. 2 is very much a Marsalis family affair. Walwyn is joined by her husband, trumpeter Rodney Mack, and his cousins Branford and Jason Marsalis; the program opens with a selection by the family elder, Ellis Marsalis. This recording presents the music of five black composers without the accompaniment of political statement-several exceptional works speak for themselves. Marsalis’s contribution, Fourth Autumn for solo piano, is a beautiful and of course jazzy concoction. In the same vein is Alvin Singleton’s In Our Own House, also fascinating and effective.
David Baker’s name will be familiar to serious jazz enthusiasts. His carefully-crafted Piano Sonata is tinted with jazz but is more traditionally “classical” and modernist than one might expect. The reflective second movement is masterly. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s energetic Second Piano Sonata is more standard fare, replete with disjunct melodies, stark harmonies, and the like. The gem here is Adolphus Hailstork’s trumpet sonata, a soaring, delectable piece from 1996 that should have little difficulty establishing a place in the repertoire. Walwyn’s pianism is superb.
Karen (verified owner) –
DARK FIRES, Vol. 2 • Karen Walwyn (pn); Rodney Mack (tpt); 12 Jason
Marsalis (perc); 1 Branford Marsalis (sax) 1 • ALBANY TROY384 (74:12)
E. MARSALIS Fourth Autumn. BAKER Piano Sonata No.
1. SINGLETON In Our Own House. 1 HAILSTORK Trumpet
Sonata 2. PERKINSON Piano Sonata No. 2, "Statements''
As in Dark Fires, Vol. I, which I enthusiastically reviewed in 21:5, pianist Karen
Walwyn has chosen a stylistically eclectic group of contemporary American
pieces. I commented in the earlier review that, although all of the composers on
Volume 1 happened to be black, there was not a strong ethnic component in the
music, with the exception of a few jazz references. The latest collection leans more
strongly to the world of jazz, especially with the inclusion of three members of the
Marsalis clan. The program opens with a lovely ballad by patriarch Ellis Marsalis,
played with warmth and affection by Walwyn. David Baker is the chairman of the
jazz department at Indiana University, but his Sonata 1 for Piano, which he wrote
in 1982 for the late Natalie Hinderas, has a spiky and abstract personality, only
picking up a syncopated swing in the rapid-fire final movement, inspired by the
improvisations of John Coltrane.
Alvin Singleton's quartet In Our Own House seems to refer as much to cultural
unity as to the energy achieved when a group of fearless jazz players get together
and jam. The balance of Jason Marsalis's driving drumming and his brother
Branford's dreamy sax is reminiscent of the recent music of Omette Coleman.
Adolphus Hailstork's Sonata for Trumpet and Piano, written for the hus-band-and-
wife team of Mack and Walwyn, also has a jazzy profile, but Hailstork starts with a
solidly European basis, accented and characterized by syncopation, blues (in the
slow movement), and virtuoso riffing, in the manner of similar Old-World/New
World concoctions from Stravinsky, Martinů, and Copland, to name but
three. Dark Fires, Vol. 2 concludes with the Second Piano Sonata of Coleridge-
Taylor Perkinson, an exciting, motif-packed work based on such Classical forms as
sonata-allegro, theme and variations, and rondo, and it is dark and fiery indeed.
Perkinson's writing is dense, with cascades of notes, but every sound seems to
serve a purpose in this brilliantly conceived work. Walwyn's playing captures the
smoldering power of the music.
As with Volume 1, Karen Walwyn and her friends present a fine clutch of pieces
that touch on a variety of cultural influences with confidence and adroitness.
Excellent recorded sound and robust performances only aid and abet the
cause. Peter Burwasser