Saturday 9 January 2010

Deserving Of A Wider Audience

Tin Pan Ballet is a disk of music from the mid-nineties by British composer Martin Butler and performed by the ensemble Lontano conducted by Odaline de la Martinez. Butler noteably studied with Berio but other influences on his music style have been folk and particularly jazz. The title piece is for the unusual lineup of flute, trombone, piano, cello, synth and percussion. It is a dance piece that shows jazz tinges and the cohesion of a string quartet. Bluegrass Variations is for solo violin, played here by Ruth Crouch. The bluegrass style is buried but discernible in this piece, which was written as a test piece for a violin competition with the aim of being stylistically as opposed to technically challenging. Jazz Machines is more overtly jazzy than the title work and is for flute, clarinet, piano, cello, viola and vibraphone. Perhaps just a touch of Zappa in there somewhere. A standout piece for me is On The Rocks, for solo piano and played here by the composer himself. Butler is an accomplished pianist when time allows and this work he describes as an attempt at a synthesis between cocktail jazz and Debussy. The final piece on the disk is a kind of marimba concerto entitled Going With The Grain, in which the core Lontano lineup of flute, clarinet, violin, viola and piano are joined on marimba by Richard Benjafield. Part of the aim is for the whole ensemble to sound like one giant marimba. With the marimba being the instrument of choice for certain American minimalists, there is a danger of that influence coming through but it is only really discernible in the brief final movement. A varied and enjoyable introduction to an approachable and worthwhile contemporary composer's work.

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