a Sea of Faces

Here’s a strange and interesting CD if I’ve ever heard one. It begins with Peter Eötvös’s contemporary piece Levitation, written for two clarinets, accordion, and strings. But don’t break out your polka records for a comparison; this music is more of the style normally described as “contemporary ambient,” with brief shards of musical motifs drifting, interacting, and creating a mood rather than a work with a form that one can grasp. Ironically, I find it much more palatable than some of the contemporary music I’ve reviewed recently, such as Maxwell Davies’s Symphony No. 1 or the piano music of Judith Lang Zaimont. The first section depicts a hurricane scene in which phone boxes and traffic signs float on the violent winds, yet the music is not as violent as the description suggests. Its fragmentary nature, and reliance on a small group of instruments, results in an atonal yet somehow fascinating musical environment.

Violist Brett Dean’s journey with composition started in the late 1980s in Germany, where he was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, but also appeared as an improvising performer and worked on experimental film and radio scores.

Before making history together with the Move and then ELO, Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne both did time in the British psych-rock oddity the Idle Race. Though they were only in the band together briefly, the Race proved to be a testing ground for many of the ideas the two would bring to fruition–both together and separately–with their many subsequent projects. BACK TO THE STORY, originally released in 1996, collects the band's three studio albums, as well as alternate takes, demos, and rarities. It's a must-have for fans of Wood and Lynne, yet is also a key piece for those attempting to complete the vast and complicated puzzle that is British rock in the 1960s and '70s.

Madeleine Peyroux's fourth album isn't the normal mix of standards (contemporary or traditional) with a few songs of her own composing; each of the 11 tracks is a new song written by Peyroux, usually in tandem with producer Larry Klein or a guest. Still, she appears in her usual relaxed setting, with a small group perfectly poised to translate her languorous vocals into perfect accompaniment – organist Larry Goldings, pianist Jim Beard, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, plus producer Klein on bass, Dean Parks on guitar, and Carla Kihlstedt on violin. Fans of vocal jazz may be disappointed to see that all the songs are new ones – many a great conversation could consist solely of the standards she should perform – but they may regret the disappointment.

The sound and band that served Sergio Mendes well on Fool on the Hill remain intact on Crystal Illusions, with few modifications. Dave Grusin is right there with a lush, haunting orchestral chart when needed; Lani Hall is thrust further into the vocal spotlight, as cool and alluring as ever in Portuguese or English. Mendes remained on the lookout for fresh Brazilian tunes, and he came up with a coup, one of the earliest covers of a Milton Nascimento tune to reach North America, "Vera Cruz" (with Hall's English lyrics, it became "Empty Faces"), as well as Dori Caymmi's "Dois Dias."