Jared Thomas Cocka

On the album "Bach Mirror" the French pianist Thomas Enhco and marimba player Vassilena Serafimova give well-known and less well-known works by Johann Sebastian Bach an innovative sound. Pieces such as the Prelude No. 2 from the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Air from the orchestral suite No. 3 sound new and fresh in the unusual instrumentation of piano and marimba. With their sound painting arrangements, Thomas Enhco and Vassilena Serafimova expose Bach's harmonic-melodic work structures and enable the audience to gain new perspectives on the architecture of his unique compositions.

As a leader, saxophonist and composer Gary Thomas is wildly ambitious. Throughout the 1980s and into the '90s, Thomas experimented with everything from free jazz and funk to heavy metal and hip-hop. Exile's Gate is another such exercise. There are two distinct bands accompanying him here. One is made up of Thomas on tenor with drummer Jack DeJohnette and guitarist Paul Bollenback with organist Tim Murphy and bassist Ed Howard. The other features the latter two musicians, Marvin Sewell on guitar and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. The first band plays Thomas' free-spirited and aggressive originals while the second plays standards for the most part. Only Thomas would think of putting the two approaches together on one record on alternate cuts.

The music of the Ukrainian-born Thomas de Hartmann (1885–1956) has been obscured by his association with the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff, but by the time they met in 1916, de Hartmann was already a hugely accomplished composer. The four works receiving their first recordings here reveal a major late-Romantic voice, downstream from Tchaikovsky, a student of Taneyev, contemporary of Rachmaninov, and alert to the discoveries of Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

Did Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart compose for viola da gamba? Certainly! His father Leopold Mozart bears witness to this. Joseph Fiala, the most famous viola da gamba player of the time after Carl Friedrich Abel, was Mozart‘s close friend and lived in Mozart‘s Salzburg birthplace from 1778 to 1785. Echo Klassik prize-winner Thomas Fritzsch performs on Fiala‘s 1709 Salzburg viola da gamba, which Mozart undoubtedly got to know. Together with Michael Schönheit on an original tangent piano and the ensemble Merseburger Hofmusik, gamba compositions by Mozart and Fiala can be heard for the first time.

Stanley Grill’s REMEMBER is presented by Navona Records. Featuring viola and piano, these inventive works aptly demonstrate Grill’s unique style; rooted in his passion for medieval and Renaissance music, his compositions are as pioneering and contemporary as they are fundamentally traditional. Grill’s work focuses particularly on melody, modal harmonies, and contrapuntal, interweaving lines. The result is a musical experience greater than the sum of the instruments involved. Two themes that permeate much of his work can be found throughout this album as well: a desire to translate elements of the physical world into sound, and a dedication to cultivating and promoting peace through music. REMEMBER offers listeners a fresh and memorable collection of works for viola and piano.

Leon Thomas' debut solo recording after his tenure with Pharoah Sanders is a fine one. Teaming with a cast of musicians that includes bassist Cecil McBee, flutist James Spaulding, Roy Haynes, Lonnie Liston Smith, Richard Davis, and Sanders (listed here as "Little Rock"), etc. Thomas' patented yodel is in fine shape here, displayed alongside his singular lyric style and scat singing trademark. The set begins with a shorter, more lyrical version of Thomas' signature tune "The Creator Has a Master Plan," with the lyric riding easy and smooth alongside the yodel, which bubbles up only in the refrains. It's a different story on his own "One," with Davis' piano leading the charge and Spaulding blowing through the center of the track, Thomas alternates scatting and his moaning, yodeling, howling, across the lyrics, through them under them and in spite of them…