|
|
 |
Asate
LM028-2
Available from CD Baby.
A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
by Mark S. Tucker
(progdawg@hotmail.com).
|
I've noted Andreas Georgiou's CD background here, here, and here, so this time I'll jump straight into the virtues of this disc, which ushers back Eberhard Weber and inducts Airto Moreira and Savina Yiannatou, also luminaries in the chamber jazz / ECM worlds (Moreira possessing an even longer history, a years-past alum of the illustrious CTI label and a very in-demand percussionist). The disc is of a piece with everything else Georgiou has done, and not a single cut in any of his many releases veers one inch from the highest standards.
Where Paul McCandless appeared with his sax on Jua Ni Juu, Harris Lamprakis plays the caval, a flute, here on two cuts redoubling very strong Grecian, Mediterranean, and even Arabic airs. Yiannatou dubs in her angelic melismas, and Moreira is as lush and ingenious as he's ever been. Georgiou has a way of bringing that out even in already hallowed stalwarts, his compositions and shimmering guitar playing re-mounting a drive to perfection that has been sadly decaying in much of the music world in toto in the last couple decades.
Relying mainly on his beloved 15- and 16-string axes, he also pulls in a standard classical guitar and plies it in several spots. While I've referred to the many more other well-known moderns he sits well with, I should also mention that his inventions are kindred to Michael Hedges' ground-breaking work and sit beautifully with the CandyRat label boys, lads and gents who are breaking the ground for the guitar's next milieu. Ah, but there's one more, a long-forgotten ace: Alain Markusfeld, who issued only a few European LPs and, if memory serves correctly, sat in here and there and then disappeared after fusing the old and new in ways that were then (late 70s & early 80s) not widely accepted. The guy was an unorthodox virtuoso and so is Georgiou.
Weber gets some great solos, Georgiou plays like a demon, and Yiannatou is extremely pleasant, but Moreira almost steals the show. His work in Rainforest is incredible but the rest of the showcase spots him just as impressively. The guitarist couldn't have chosen a more suitable accompanist, and one can only hope that future works will bring Airto back again.
Track List:
- Nea Selini (3:53)
- Dhoro Exagnismou (3:23)
- Let the Spirit Flower (7:00)
- Rainforest (10:54)
|
- Anthos Porfiron (2:46)
- ISA (10:30)
- Asate (8:37)
- Sukuma Twende (4:50)
|
| All songs written and orchestrated by Andreas Georgiou. |
Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)
Copyright 2009, Peterborough Folk Music Society. This review may be reprinted with prior permission and attribution.
|
|
 |
Jua Ni Juu
CON 1087
Available from CD Baby.
A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
by Mark S. Tucker
(progdawg@hotmail.com).
|
For a bit of commentary on Andreas Georgiou's wherewithal, refer to the review of Modus Vivendi (here), a release concentrating heavily on his gifts as a guitarist. This release, Jua Ni Juu, reveals his facility in ensemble work with fellow masters Eberhard Weber and Paul McCandless. Weber is responsible for one of the landmarks of chamber jazz, the incomparable Colors of Chloes on the pristine ECM label, and McCandless was a founding member of the seminal world music group Oregon, another ECM staple. If its not already obvious, the point is that once you've made it to the estimable Editions of Contemporary Music, there's nowhere else to go, you've reached the top, and, to be honest, this disc is worthy of immediate induction into that nirvana.
Jua Ni Juu vividly recalls the wild, woolly, heady days of Manfred Eicher's earliest masterpieces, the times when Keith Jarrett, Ralph Towner, John Abercrombie, Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, and a panoply of others were busy fusing the folk, classical, jazz, and progressive genres into a new music form. Jua is musically literate in the stratospheric sense and can't help but evoke a step backwards to when the barriers-breaking spirit of the 60s and 70s still infected the arts, a time when quality and intelligence were hallmarks, not coincidences. Georgiou's guitar work here is fulsome and atmospheric while McCandless turns in one of his most arresting performances outside Oregon, Weber accompanying both with a melodically equal-tempered bass demonstration.
Mark Walker turns in an infinitely engaging session on drums and percussion, a combination of Jack DeJohnette, Jon Christensen, and Jeff Williams (Dave Liebman's old sticksman) in a rare example of exactly why drums shouldn't be merely the metronomic adjunct of an ensemble—in the hands of a visionary, they partner equally in the musical conversation. What's most surprising, though, is Georgiou's turn to the electric guitar in the middle of Jua a Furaha, a rock-fundamented solo that finds its closest contemporary in the Sky releases (featuring John Williams and Kevin Peek) as it welds Fripp with Santana and Abercrombie.
The four cuts here are orgies of artistic imagination and Renaissance entablature, long tapestries of old and new country vistas, spirited pastorales acting like opium dreams for the listener fortunate enough to run across them. If you've been longing for the good old days when you could hardly wait for the next ECM release, the age when the label wasn't enmeshed in weird business contretemps and screwed by pelican-brained imbeciles among the functionaries, then that longing is now fulfilled, here, in this and the many other CDs being issued by Andreas Georgiou.
Track List:
- Kua Ni Juu (10:53)
- Jua a Furaha (9:56)
- Jua Ni Kuchwa (9:17)
- Shauri Yia Mungi (21:39)
|
| All songs written by Andreas Georgiou. |
Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)
Copyright 2009, Peterborough Folk Music Society. This review may be reprinted with prior permission and attribution.
|
|
 |
Modus Vivendi
CON 1089
No online source found for this 1994 release
A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
by Mark S. Tucker
(progdawg@hotmail.com).
|
Though virtually unknown on these shores, Andreas Georgiou is a master guitarist who has—through not only unorthodox and innovative approaches but also deeply traditional reverences to the instrument—managed to attract some of the cream of the European chamber jazz establishment to his recordings, particularly Eberhard Weber, Paul McCandless, and Savina Yannatou, though they don't appear here. Even just the briefest listen to this CD illustrates why, however, they readily flock to his work.
Georgiou plays 15 and 16-string guitars (as well as a standard electric), instruments sporting a fretboard wider than most men's forearms and, thus, not always the easiest axe to grapple, though he makes it seem as though such were childplay, his fingers disporting themselves a la Ralph Towner, Egberto Gismonti, Alain Markusfeld, or any of the most accomplished fretsmen. To listen to Georgiou's work is to understand the wider implications of the possibilities of the instrument. Modus Vivendi is basically a solo performance augmented occasionally by Dimitris Karaganis' flute and sax, but, hearing Karaganis, it's evident why the guitarist would then attract McCandless: only the most conceptually adept could possibly work in tandem with him.
More arrestingly, the entire CD was recorded live in straight takes with no overdubs, the equivalent of older documents from LP audiophile labels that presented immaculately recorded two-track of-the-moment events breathtaking for their vivacity and freshness. Modus Vivendi indexes perfectly with those. At no point in the entire recital are his powers less than extremely impressive. Even the simplest passages ring with nuance and authority while the complex runs and chordings are luxurious and mesmerizing. This CD, and every single release by Georgiou, is an immersion in modern classical structuring and post-classicalist thought and exposition…nonetheless clearly retaining the timelessness of long bygone days.
Track List:
- Gyula's Systea (5:17)
- Modus Vivendi (12:29)
- Nostalgia (6:33)
- Pragmatism (4:32)
- Sunshine (6:54)
|
- Andro's Systema (5:17)
- Stile me Mana sto Nero (3:17)
- Painters II (2:48)
- Space-Time Continuum (5:28)
|
| All songs written by Andreas Georgiou except Stile me Mana sto Nero (traditional. arr. by Georgiou). |
Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)
Copyright 2009, Peterborough Folk Music Society. This review may be reprinted with prior permission and attribution. |
|
 |
|
I'm running out of adjectives and adverbs to adequately encompass Andreas Georgiou's blindingly brilliant work. Having run through the marvelous Jua Ni Juu, Asate, and Modus Vivendi, Vananda now makes its way to the fore and features not just the usual stellar sessioneers but also the Yeravan Symphonic Orchestra. Does this guy never stop topping himself?!?!
A strong side attraction here is Floros Floridas' spectacular but unfortunately brief sax work on two cuts, especially Constantia, a direct correlate to Paul McCandless' legendary prowess and, to my ears, infused with an outside edge not unlike Steve Lacy's (whom I strongly suspect McCandless also found inspiration in). Eberhart Weber's back, thank goodness, as his colorations are inimitably complementary to Georgiou's playing and composing, as is Savina Yiannatou with her gently vaulting wordless vocals. Pianist Kora Michaelian joins in on a pair of tracks to add a ghostly dimension in tonal / atonal tinklings and ornamentation.
Three cuts here harken back to Modus Vivendi, two duets with Weber and a solo from the bassist. Gathering sounds akin to Alex Skolnik and Stanley Clarke popping, pinging, and pizzicato'ing their nimble fingers off, then Georgiou switches to a highly abstract Ralph Towner mode and Weber keeps the burbling skittering bass pyrotechnics going. For over 15 minutes, they keep up an interplay that's terrifyingly agile and as beautifully chaotic as Picasso's Guernica until settling into a long tranquil mid-section that's a cornucopia of stylistic improv.
Lament, at the close of the disc, is another duet, this time arising from a spectral landscape eerily similar to some of Towner's Solstice work, a chiaroscuro of Penderecki-esque creepiness and poltergeists. The guitar sounds like a bass, and the bass becomes an unsettling creature far off in the dark. Somehow the two also manage to convert their axes (5-string electric bass, fretless electric guitar) to a shenai and tanpura! Don't ask me how. Bowing? I couldn't say but it's unreal, absolutely amazing. Once again, Georgiou is singlehandedly resurrecting the high period of ECM, and if that alone isn't reason to check into his work, then I'm completely stumped as to what it will take.
Track List:
- Constantia (Composer: Georgiou / Orchestrator: Georgiou) (6:37)
- Vananda (Composer: Georgiou / Orchestrator: Kora Michaelian) (3:52)
- Gathering (Georgiou / Weber) (15:32)
- Knowledge (Composer: Georgiou / Orchestrator: Georgiou) (1:50)
- Afro (Composer: Georgiou / Orchestrator: Georgiou / Michaelian) (12:47)
- Crossing the Nile (Composer: Georgiou / Orchestrator: Michaelian) (2:59)
- Lament (Andreas Georgiou) (17:30)
|
Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)
Copyright 2009, Peterborough Folk Music Society. This review may be reprinted with prior permission and attribution.
|
|
|
