Christopher Rouse Ogoun Badagris

Composed between 1963 and 2005 these four works form a spectrum that demonstrates a tendency among composers of American concert music to draw from a wide range of musical streams – classical, popular, folk and jazz. This colourful programme is performed by the North Carolina Symphony on their first BIS recording, conducted by Grant Llewellyn and with solo appearances by the celebrated jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis and his quartet.

Say you start a group called the Society for New Music, commission composer-stars-in-the-making and do it for thirty years straight, you might expect your scrapbooks to be quite interesting. What you might not realize is that your efforts now constitute a major segment of the backbone of contemporary American concert music and you have premiered a boatload of chamber works by composers who have gone on to distinguished careers. Such is the case with Syracuse’s Society for New Music founded by Neva Pilgrim, who opened their treasure chest of commissioned works from 1972 – 2002 and has put them together as the 5-CD set entitled “American Masters for the 21st Century.”

Blaine L. Reininger & Mikel Rouse - Colorado Suite & A walk in the woods - Made To Measure Vol. 3&6 (1984)
Avant-garde | EAC AccurateRip / FLAC / LOG, CUE | 403 MB | Album art | MP3 320kbps / 44100Hz | 70:32 | 113 MB
Blaine L. Reininger & Mikel Rouse - Colorado Suite & A walk in the woods - Made To Measure Vol. 3&6 (1984)

Colorado Suite is a colaboration with the one and only Blaine Reininger. Rouse met Reininger while living in Belgium in 1983. Rouse was supporting the release of Tirez Tirez's Story of The Year and Broken Consort's Jade Tiger. Rouse and Reininger hit it off and started work on a mini LP for the Crammed Disc label. This led to a UK/European tour with Blaine as front man and violinist and Rouse manning the keyboards. All of this performed to a trusty Roland sequencer, marking Rouse's (but not Reininger's) first use of sequencing in live performance. Rouse would go on to uss e this idea in his large scale multi-media chamber operas.

Tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse is best known for his work with Thelonious Monk, playing with the enigmatic pianist and composer during Monk's Columbia years from 1959 until 1970. Rouse's sound with Monk was so fluid and smooth that's it's easy to forget how many eccentric, jagged turns he had to navigate night after night, and that Rouse did it with quiet, steady grace is a testament both to his sax playing and to the space Monk built into his puzzle box compositions. ~ AllMusic

This 1962 date by tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse celebrates a grander and funkier scale of what Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd did earlier in 1962 with the bossa nova. Unlike Getz, Rouse didn't feel he needed to be a purist about it, and welcomed all sorts of Afro-Caribbean variations into his music. His choice of bandmates reflects that: a three-piece percussion section with drummer Willie Bobo, conguero Carlos "Patato" Valdes, and Garvin Masseaux on chekere (a beaded percussion instrument that is played by being shaken). Add to this bassist Larry Gales, and a pair of guitarists, Kenny Burrell, and Chauncey Westbrook, along with Rouse, and it is an unusual and exotic sextet. Burrell and Masseaux were part of Ike Quebec's band on Soul Samba, but the two recordings couldn't be more different.