Ned Karastev

Here are three 20th-century violin concertos written within a 30-year period in three totally different styles, played by a soloist equally at home in all of them. Bernstein's Serenade, the earliest and most accessible work, takes its inspiration from Plato's Symposium; its five movements, musical portraits of the banquet's guests, represent different aspects of love as well as running the gamut of Bernstein's contrasting compositional styles. Rorem's concerto sounds wonderful. Its six movements have titles corresponding to their forms or moods; their character ranges from fast, brilliant, explosive to slow, passionate, melodious. Philip Glass's concerto, despite its conventional three movements and tonal, consonant harmonies, is the most elusive. Written in the "minimalist" style, which for most ordinary listeners is an acquired taste, it is based on repetition of small running figures both for orchestra and soloist, occasionally interrupted by long, high, singing lines in the violin against or above the orchestra's pulsation.

Slava Ganelin & Ned Rothenberg - Falling Into Place (2006) {Auris Media Aum007}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 406 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 188 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 21 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2006 Auris Media | Aum007
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Free Improvisation / Avant-Garde Jazz

New York-based reed master Ned Rothenberg managed to perform twice during his last family trip to Israel two years ago, and in both instances he collaborated for the first time with Israeli musicians. Two duets from Rothenberg concert in Jerusalem with free-improv bassist JC Jones were documented on Jones' second release (Duos II, Kadima Collective, 2005), and now this collaboration with iconoclastic composer Slava Ganelin, Falling into Place, recorded live in concert in Jaffa, has been finally released.

Ned Rothenberg - Ghost Stories (2000) {Tzadik TZ 7061}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 280 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 145 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 34 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000 Tzadik | TZ 7061 | Tzadik Composer Series
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Modern Creative / World Fusion

A downtown mainstay for twenty years, composer/multi-woodwind performer Ned Rothenberg makes his Tzadik debut with a stunning CD of chamber music. Acclaimed for work in a wide variety of contexts from the multi-metric funk of his Double Band to the large chamber jazz of Power Lines, Rothenberg here shows both range and focus in works for unprecedented instrumentations that have epic scope. Asian and western instruments combine in scores mixing improvised solo features with through-composed ensembles. Ghost Stories is one of Rothenberg's most accomplished works.