Reid Anderson Quartet Dirty Sh

The late Hans Keller regarded Hindemith as one of the few composers able to produce what he called 'intrinsic' quartets, that's to say quartets addressed in the first place to the player (the listener being, as Keller put it, "a more or less welcome eavesdropper"). This collection includes the recently re-discovered early work in C major. The performances are technically and musically excellent. As a previous reviewer has noted, there is much to be said for listening to them in the order in which they were composed, so as to follow the development of Hindemith's style over a period of three decades.

The Tokyo Quartet became one of the most prominent string quartets in the world and continues a reputation for insightful interpretations.

Individually, Kronos Quartet and Sun Ra are two of the most groundbreaking names in contemporary music. The former is the legendary San Francisco-based string quartet that laid a blueprint for what concert music could become, working with the likes of John Cage, Tanya Tagaq, and Astor Piazzolla. The latter was a singular jazz and avant-garde bandleader, as well as a philosopher and poet, who honed an extraordinary strain of cosmic experimental music from the 1950s until his ascension in 1993. As a capstone to Kronos Quartet’s 50th anniversary, the group has joined forces with the Red Hot Organization for the new album Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra. It’s stacked with some of the most innovative artists active today — everyone from multidimensional electronic musician Jlin, to Moor Mother and DJ Haram’s radical noise / rap project 700 Bliss, to abstract hip hop luminaries Armand Hammer, to avant-garde hero Laurie Anderson, to minimalist pioneer Terry Riley.

These recordings of Beethoven's early quartets are excellent. The Tokyo String Quartet's technique has never been in doubt and needless to say, just as all great string quartets, the members are perfectly synchronized, playing together as one, as if controlled by a single mind.

Steve Reid Ensemble - Daxaar (2007) {Domino DNO 165}
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© 2007 Domino Recording | DNO 165
Jazz / Groove / Afro-beat / Jazz Funk / African Jazz

A drummer from the Bronx in Senegal should feel right at home, and Steve Reid apparently does on this collaboration, although he seems quite content to take a back seat, working with percussion and bass to build a platform for other instruments. There's no attempt to make the disc sound specifically African – what comes out is a natural mix of the jamming between the musicians (except for "Welcome," which features Isa Koyate, vocals, and very distinctive kora). There are touches of funk, Afro-beat, jazz ("Jiggy Jiggy") – just something amorphous, whose roots are definitely on one side of the Atlantic, but which have grown and developed elsewhere.

The Tokyo quartet plays with very much sense of the architecture of the music. If you like your Beethoven played with restraint, refinement, sense of the interior drama of the music, this is it. The Tokyo quartet is never over-dramatizing, but let the music speak for itself.