(++++) EXTRA ORDINARY

I Am Simone Biles. By Brad Meltzer. Illustrated by Christopher Eliopoulos. Rocky Pond Books. $16.99. 

     Sweet and cute and well-intentioned as can be, Brad Meltzer’s “Ordinary People Change the World” series is one of those phenomena that only the churlish would dare to critique. The books, which have inspired a PBS Kids show, continue to churn out example after example of people to whom very young readers can look up, knowing that they too can do exceptional things and in so doing can make their own mark on society. 

     But…just a moment. If the books are about “ordinary” people and are entirely devoted to showing how each person on whom Meltzer focuses is extraordinary, then what exactly is being taught here? And if the books are about top-level success in one specific, narrow field, then in what way do they show that the people on whom Meltzer focuses “change the world”? 

     So, all right, looking too closely at these little books does seem churlish to the point of being curmudgeonly, but it will help parents and other adults – who will want to use the books to encourage kids in various ways – to know what these stories really do and what is beyond them. I Am Simone Biles, the latest series entry, is about the Olympic gold-medal winner considered to be the best gymnast of all time. Christopher Eliopoulos makes her adorable, and about six years old, in his cartoon drawings – and one oddity of the book is that six-year-old Biles stays the same in the illustrations even when the text says she is 16, 17, 18, 19, and even in her 20s. This is decidedly peculiar, more than the usual “willing suspension of disbelief” expected from simple, hagiographic biographies targeting very young readers. Even when Biles – who “narrates” the book, which really does include many of her own words – talks about being 27 years old “at the 2024 Olympics in Paris,” the illustration still shows her as a cartoon girl of about six. 

     There are plenty of adults and plenty of people who age in the book, so clearly the decision to keep cartoon Biles at the target age range for readers of the book is a deliberate one. It may help young readers relate to this exceptional athlete, but it also produces a decidedly strange environment – just how strange is clear at the end of the book, where several photos of real-world Biles are offered. 

     Supposing that young readers are sufficiently charmed by the illustrations (which are charming) to read through the whole story, what lesson is Meltzer trying to teach? This goes back to the “Ordinary People Change the World” overview of this series. Simone Biles is scarcely an ordinary person – she is extraordinarily talented, worked tremendously hard for her successes, and has abilities that are far, far beyond anything that 99%+ of readers will ever have. So the “ordinary people” concept does not apply. Furthermore, Biles may have made some changes in her chosen field – the book points out that new gymnastic moves have been named after her, since she was the first to do them – but while this represents a bit of a change in the world of gymnastics, it in no way is a “change the world” situation in the sense of the series title. 

     Interestingly, the most important life lesson to be gleaned from the Simone Biles story – and one that really can be useful to young readers, even though none of them is ever likely to approach Biles’ level in Biles’ chosen field – has to do with Biles’ decision to withdraw from the 2020 Olympics because of mental-health issues. This is certainly included in the book, as are the widespread and often nasty remarks made by people because of it; and Biles’ slow recovery from that dark time does get one page of treatment here: “For strength, I relied on my family, my teammates, my three dogs. And of course, my therapist.” It looks weird to see cartoon six-year-old Biles with her dogs and sports psychologist Robert Andrews – one of several real-world people who make appearances in the book – since Biles was 25 at the time of this particular scene. But for adults looking to extract usable rather than pie-in-the-sky value from I Am Simone Biles, the notion of a mental-health crisis, the seeking of external help to get through it, the willingness to address one’s own needs before trying to please anybody else, the slow re-emergence from despair to an ability to handle the world, are all life lessons that Biles’ story communicates effectively even when they are inevitably downplayed (given the target age range for this book) in order to keep matters as upbeat and triumphal as possible. 

     So I Am Simone Biles is not really about an ordinary person changing the world – it is about an extraordinary athlete rebounding from a severe mental and emotional reversal to attain new heights of accomplishment. It is told in age-appropriate fashion and illustrated in very relatable ways as long as nobody pays too much attention to the clash between Biles’ real age in various scenes and the age of her cartoon protagonist. Young readers will surely gravitate to the book for its high points, but adults will find a much more important teachable moment when Biles hits a serious low and needs to figure out how to resume her remarkable (if scarcely world-changing) athletic career.

(+++) VOCAL CONNECTIONS

Songs by Alexander Zemlinsky, Erich Zeisl, Arnold Schoenberg, and Henriëtte Bosmans. Äneas Humm, baritone; Renate Rohlfing, piano. Rondeau Production. $19.99. 

Angélica Negrón: Pedacito de Tierra. Tamara Ramírez-Torres, María Inés Cerra Castaňer, Juan Aponte, Reinaldo Ayala Aponte, and Arturo Steely, storytellers; Casey Rafn, piano; Ryan Smith, tenor saxophone; José Antonio Zayas Cabán, soprano saxophone. Navona. $16.99. 

Music for Chorus by Ashi Day, Kota Hayton, Natalie Dietterich, Bill Alves, Blake Clawson, Del’Shawn Taylor, Ben Zucker, Charlie Leftridge, Michael Genese, and Matthew Lyon Hazzard. KC VITAs directed by Jackson C. Thomas. Neuma Records. $15. 

     The connective tissue of vocal recitals can be even more tenuous than that of instrumental presentations. Unless a composer specifically creates song cycles, which have inherent connectivity, performers have to figure out how to interest an audience in disparate works whose main reason for inclusion in a presentation is simply that the musicians think they go well together. Therefore, there tends to be a bit of a stretch when figuring out reasons for listeners to consider owning a particular collection of vocal material. Certainly the Rondeau Production release of art-song performances by Äneas Humm and Renate Rohlfing offers first-rate singing, fine pianistic accompaniment, and a chance to explore some repertoire with which most listeners are probably not acquainted. But that is unlikely to be reason enough for most people to own the CD. So the presentation is given a supposedly unifying title, Sehnsucht (“Longing”), and much is made of the fact that the four composers whose works are presented here were Jewish and had their lives significantly affected by National Socialism, the events that led to its takeover of Germany, and the wartime and postwar musical landscape. Thin though they may be, these tie-together attempts at least provide a framework beyond that of “interesting and worthy art songs that Humm and Rohlfing consider worthy of presentation.” So we get seven songs by Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942), two early ones by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), seven by Erich Zeisl (1905-1959), and four by Henriëtte Bosmans (1882-1952). The obscurity levels of the composers do not connect directly to the worthiness of their music: as well-known as he is, Schoenberg is not highly known for these particular songs; Zemlinsky, who was close friends with Schoenberg and received strong musical support from Brahms, is best known for his relationship with Alma Schindler before she married Gustav Mahler; Zeisl and Bosmans are almost entirely unfamiliar names to non-specialists. Familiarity and sociopolitical matters aside, what turns out to be the true unifying factor among these works is how well they all fit within the traditional art-song genre and within the expressive and harmonic expectations of their time. Bosmans’ songs, which are in French, have a somewhat lighter touch than the others heard here, while Schoenberg’s early works plumb considerable emotional depth and show how thoroughly steeped in the German Romantic tradition the composer was at the start of his career – indeed, Abschied, which lasts nearly 11 minutes, delves to an almost operatic degree into the emotional expressiveness of late Romanticism. There is, it must be said, a good deal of portentousness in these songs, and it is only in the most general sense that the notion of “longing” applies to them as a totality. What can certainly be said about this recording is that Humm and Rohlfing work exceptionally well together, to the point of deepening each other’s contributions to the material; and while the vocal elements of the songs certainly dominate the performances, it is often the piano that underlies and underlines the composers’ expressive intent. This is not really a recording that will reach out to audiences unfamiliar with the art-song tradition or captivate listeners who are not already convinced of the value and level of interest of material of this type. But given the exceptional quality of Humm’s expressive singing and Rohlfing’s attentiveness to the nuances of the piano parts, the songs will bring considerable enjoyment and emotional intensity to people who already appreciate their genre and who are interested in exploring a few examples of well-crafted musical presentation by composers who, well-known or not, were thoroughly versed in the effective use of voice and piano to explore and heighten a variety of emotive experiences. 

     The notion of longing clearly underlies a much-more-recent composition by Angélica Negrón on the Navona label – and here the connections within the material are quite explicit. Pedacito de Tierra (“Little Piece of Land”) explicitly reflects a specific experience in a specific location: it is conceived as “A Story about the Puerto Rican Diaspora in the Twin Cities.” This is, on the one hand, about as narrow a focus as possible; on the other, the limitation to a specific instance of immigrant experience is intended to broaden listeners’ horizons and to work on a much wider level as reflective of displacement and the setting down of roots by any people (not just Puerto Ricans) in any area (not just Minnesota). José Antonio Zayas Cabán is the prime mover of the presentation, which uses five tales told by storytellers from the diaspora and complemented by three instruments and electronics. The idea is to explore cultural identity and what happens to it, beneficially or not, when it is uprooted and placed in a new environment. The personal stories of the five narrators, intertwined with music and underlined by it, serve as touchstones for any sort of immigrant experience even as the narrative details prove unique to the Puerto Rican community and to the specific individuals presenting their own narratives. On the face of it, this is a very narrowly targeted CD, and one aimed at a very specific audience that is highly committed to the concept underlying the presentation: Negrón’s piece lasts just over 11 minutes and is offered as a full-priced recording. So in some ways the packaging and pricing work against the underlying intent to broaden the experiences into ones with which many immigrants or otherwise displaced people can identify. What is attractive here is the storytelling itself, the plainspoken and clearly non-professional narration of the experiences of ordinary people caught up, for various reasons, in a migration not really of their own making. How the storytellers arrive in their new home area, how they adjust, what elements they find easy or difficult, what friction they experience within their own families as well as between themselves and people of other backgrounds – these feelings and more are thought through and talked through, with the three musicians (who collectively call their group {trés}, spelled and punctuated exactly that way) providing points of aural interest, occasional touches of piquancy, and a kind of unifying flow of material that helps connect the otherwise separate narratives. Pedacito de Tierra is essentially a slice-of-life story with musical touches – homage to some very specific personal circumstances while at the same time an attempt to show ways in which those circumstances are, if not universal, at least considerably more widespread. 

     The locality is not Minnesota but Missouri for the vocal ensemble KC VITAs (which stands for – and this is more than a bit overdone, although anatomically accurate – “Kansas City Vibrating Internal Thyroarytenoids”). The group’s stated purpose is to “amplify unheard voices” in a way that creates greater community interconnectedness. Whether or not the aim is fulfilled with a Neuma Records CD featuring 10 works by contemporary composers will be entirely a matter of opinion. As so often with modern music that professes to cross boundaries and to have meaning and importance beyond itself, these works will reach out effectively only to people who already know of and support the singers’ aims and approach – or who support something akin to their orientation under other circumstances and want to show a kind of solidarity-of-aims by engaging with this recording. In the long run – or even the short run – whether the music has staying power is determined by the works themselves, not by the gloss they receive or the intentionality of uplift that the singers consider foundational to their self-professed mission. There is nothing uniting the tracks on this disc except for the uniformly enthusiastic and well-blended sound of the chorus itself – certainly the disc will be a treat for anyone who enjoys a cappella choral material as created in a contemporary context. Different works here use different special effects. Ashi Day’s Boundless is brightly declamatory and comparatively unidimensional. The wordless syllabification in Kota Hayton’s Passing trees, far and near is interesting. The electronic overlays in Natalie Dietterich’s chainlink fences are somewhat old hat at this point, although they are employed to good effect. Bill Alves’ Come out cow takes repetitiveness even beyond the usual extent found in certain modern works. Blake Clawson’s there are fields offers expressive lyricism that sets it apart from most of the other works on the disc. Del’Shawn Taylor’s rethinking of Emily Dickinson’s Because I Could Not Stop for Death makes the essentially simple words somewhat too grandiose and features an electronic instrumental accompaniment that expands the material a bit too broadly, depersonalizing it in the process. Ben Zucker’s when we arrive at home has a hymn basis that it extends into cloudlike evanescence, with exclamatory interruptions that create an uncertain overall mood. Charlie Leftridge’s “past the river” (from “prima materia”) is refreshingly straightforward, with some well-crafted vocal blendings. Michael Genese’s Medalyons (from “feeld songs”) is slow-paced and less harmonically daring, both vocally and in its instrumental accompaniment, than most of the other material here – and as a result communicates more directly and to better effect. And Matthew Lyon Hazzard’s The Prow swells and ebbs repeatedly, much like the tide that it presumably seeks to emulate, producing a sense of forward motion and incipient arrival that is a touch forced but certainly well-colored from an instrumental perspective. KC VITAs does not really need its written-out title, any more than the composers who insistently avoid capital letters in their pieces’ names really need to do so; these elements are affectations. But much of the music here comes across better than its self-referential elements would suggest, and the chorus does a generally fine job enunciating the lyrics and projecting the various emotions contained within each piece. Certainly not a disc for everyone or even for a broad audience of contemporary-music fans, this CD is a specialized item that showcases – for those already predisposed to listen to choral music – numerous ways in which today’s composers continue to explore the possibilities of communication via a vocal ensemble rather than an individual voice.

(++++) THE BEAUTIES AND THE CHARM

A Visit to Brambly Hedge: The Making of the World within the Hedgerow. By Jill Barklem. HarperCollins. $22.99. 

     Even readers who consider themselves thoroughly familiar with the works of Jill Barklem (1951-2017) and believe themselves experts in the world of Brambly Hedge that she created – and around which she built eight books from 1980 to 1994 – will find themselves drawn to A Visit to Brambly Hedge, because this wonderful combination of illustrations, background material, narrative and explanatory elements brings Barklem’s creativity to life with as much sensitivity as she herself brought to the imagined world of mice and other Brambly Hedge residents. 

     A great place to start here is toward the back of the book, with the chapter “How Brambly Hedge Began” and its followup, “What Happened Next.” Here readers not only receive insight into Barklem as a person, where she grew up, what her interests were, and how she came to conceptualize the Brambly Hedge world, but also find out something of the course of history where her books were concerned: “Although the first four books had been seen as suitable for children of four up, it quickly became apparent that teenagers and adults as well as small children appreciated and responded to Jill’s work.” This kind of crossover appeal is very rare, and having learned of it – and likely not being surprised by it now that Barklem’s work is so well-known – readers can go from the latter part of A Visit to Brambly Hedge to the earlier pages, and explore for themselves the elements that made Barklem’s stories so appealing to so many people. 

     A Visit to Brambly Hedge was originally published in 2000 as a 20^th-anniversary book (the first four Brambly Hedge books appeared in 1980). The new edition is very much welcome, especially in light of all the hustle and bustle and frantic scuttling-about with which life seems to be filled nowadays. The skittering nature of life was not really much different when Barklem created her Brambly Hedge series, but things seem different when seen through the admittedly somewhat rosy lens of nostalgia. And that was part of Barklem’s point even in the early days of her creativity: she knew the realities of Epping Forest, understood the differences between rural England and London – to which she traveled daily “in an overcrowded, rush-hour train” – and it was precisely the difference between mundane, fast-paced urban existence and the quietude of a spreading forest that led her to conceptualize and eventually create and flesh out the imaginary mice of Brambly Hedge and their homespun everyday adventures. 

     A Visit to Brambly Hedge gives “personality portraits” of many of Barklem’s characters, an inside look (through cutaways) at the lovely little homes in which they live, and some absolutely wonderful pages showcasing Barklem’s thought processes, such as her elaborate sketches and explanations of how a real-world mill works, which became the basis of the flour mill in Brambly Hedge. And again and again, A Visit to Brambly Hedge shows how determined Barklem was to keep the lives of the mice pleasant, largely uncomplaining, certainly not threatened by any sort of danger in any significant way – for instance, Dusty the miller does hard, tiring work, “but Dusty doesn’t mind because he knows that the mill provides much of what the mice need to survive the long winter months.” It is this sense of community spirit, of dedication to something beyond one’s own personal interests, that drives the Brambly Hedge stories and gives them the pleasant gloss of fairy-tale nostalgia that permeates them. At the same time, the stories possess a pseudo-realistic feel, thanks to Barklem’s genuine understanding of mouse anatomy (she carefully studied her own pet mouse, Daisy) and her determination to display her “view of the world as a place that can, and should be, friendly, loving and self-sustaining.” Of course that is a naïve worldview – perhaps even more so today than in Barklem’s lifetime – but A Visit to Brambly Hedge makes it inescapably clear that when pneumonia claimed Barklem at the age of 66, the real world lost access to an impossible-but-almost-real world in which the values of trust, community, mutual support, and the joys of simple pleasures insulate the inhabitants against the excesses of modern life. This is why the Brambly Hedge stories continue to speak (gently) to children today – and to adults who have not thoroughly lost their ability to connect with Barklem’s gently magical interpretation of quotidian values and the small pleasures of simply existing within a caring and supportive community.

(++++) INFLUENCED AND INFLUENCING

Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5. London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis. Alto. $10.98. 

Lost American Violin Sonatas, Volume 1. Solomia Soroka, violin; Arthur Greene and Phillip Silver, piano. Toccata Next. $18.99. 

Daniel Schnyder: Concerto for Cello, Percussion & String Orchestra; Concerto Populaire; Ad Aeternam; Jazz Sonata for Cello & Piano; Cello BLU; CUBAC (for 8 cellos); Karachi (for cello, soprano saxophone, percussion & string orchestra). Christoph Croisé, cello; Ruven Ruppik, percussion; Daniel Schnyder, soprano saxophone; Beyond Modern Orchestra; Alexander Panfilov, piano; Peter Gorobets, harpsichord; Swiss Cello Octet. AVIE. $19.99. 

     The social-media notion of “influencers” is nothing but an update – with overriding commercial implications – of the longstanding practice of people being influenced by the past, interpreting and reinterpreting it, and in their turn influencing others. Another word for this sort of influencing is simply “progress.” And this is how art of many types, certainly including music, develops into new forms and approaches. Sibelius, for example, was heavily influenced by Tchaikovsky in his early large-scale works, notably including his Symphony No. 1. But by Symphony No. 2, Sibelius had started to pick and choose among elements of the Tchaikovskian sound world and had begun moving toward symphonic forms that reflected a Nordic sensibility and also approached symphonic structure from some intriguing new angles. Thus, if Symphony No. 1, for all the beauties of its themes and elegance of its structure, is largely a derivative work, Symphony No. 2 shows Sibelius beginning to strike out on his own path, one that involves rethinking elements of symphonic form itself. Symphony No. 2 certainly includes a measure of Tchaikovskian introspection – Sibelius at one point said it was “a confession of the soul” – but it is scarcely self-indulgent, much of the entire work being carefully derived and expanded from the three-note theme that opens the first movement. Cleverness abounds in the symphony, for instance in Sibelius’ holding back of the full first-movement theme until the very end of the movement. There is a sense of the symphony being assembled as it goes along, of it building inevitably toward the grandiose finale that, when the symphony was first heard, was picked up as a musical rallying cry for Finnish independence at a time when Russia was cracking down on many elements of Finnish culture. Colin Davis’ 2006 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, now re-released on the Alto label, has sweep and power throughout, and Davis clearly perceives and sustains a sense of the symphony building more and more power and cohesion as it progresses until the final movement blazes forth in triumph. It is a well-paced, well-considered and thoroughly convincing reading of the symphony – and is paired with an equally impressive performance, from 2003, of Symphony No. 5. A significantly shorter and less portentous work, whose final version (1919) is in just three movements, Symphony No. 5 is a bit of a throwback after the more-modernist No. 4 (although the first version of No. 5 was actually closer to the world of its predecessor). Symphony No. 5, as we have it today, is less innovative than No. 2 and in many ways reflects the composer’s newfound determination to stay largely within the harmonic confines of late Romanticism rather than press on into the various 20^th-century post-Romantic approaches to large-scale works. Interestingly – and Davis is quite adept at showing this – the shorter No. 5 seems to operate on a larger scale than No. 2, its very broad themes and consistency of orchestration and instrumental color lending the work a sense of being tight-knit throughout. Superb instrumental touches such as the final-movement theme inspired, Sibelius said, by a flight of cranes, are combined with some unusual rhythmic elements – notably at the work’s very end – to produce a cohesive impression of beauty and grandeur that seems very much attuned to the grandeurs of northern climes, even though Sibelius intended no such overtly Impressionistic tie-in. 

     On the other side of the Atlantic in Sibelius’ time, classical music in the United States was barely beginning to find its way. It was a time of open-air bands (Sousa’s being by far the most notable) rather than concert halls, a time when tremendously innovative composers such as Charles Ives were picking their way through bits of Americana, touches of European classical material, and many elements that were entirely outside the purview of what we now think of as “serious” music. But it was also a time when American composers were determined to absorb the best possible influences from European Romanticism, and specifically from the German school. The result was the creation of numerous exceptionally well-made but now totally obscure pieces steeped in German Romanticism but providing, here and there, hints of thematic and rhythmic material associated with the New World. A fascinating first-in-a-planned-series Toccata Next recording that offers world premières of three violin sonatas by entirely obscure American composers provides a fascinating entry point to the world of American classical music at a time when it was struggling to find its voice and move beyond its models – in some ways mirroring Sibelius’ efforts an ocean away. The composers here are as thoroughly unfamiliar as the specific works offered: Rossetter Gleason Cole (1866-1952), Henry Holden Huss (1862-1953), and Henry Schoenefeld (1857-1936). Those dates are interesting: Sibelius lived from 1865 to 1957, although he produced little in his final several decades – so he and these three Americans were essentially contemporaries. However, there are few glimmers of originality, minimal attempts to incorporate new elements into the solidly (and stolidly) Romantic world of the three violin sonatas that Solomia Soroka performs (Cole’s with her husband, Arthur Greene, on piano, the others with pianist Phillip Silver). The exact dates of composition of the three sonatas are unknown, but their Romantic provenance is clear from the start of each one – and throughout all of them. All have a Brahmsian glow, a warmth and elegance of line that make them very pleasant to hear although less so to re-hear: they are scarcely insubstantial, but what they want to communicate comes through clearly enough on a first hearing so that there is little beyond surface-level beauty to be extracted from them on subsequent listenings. Cole’s four-movement work, published in 1917, is the most-substantial of the three sonatas, its four well-balanced movements having touches of Americana here and there, its overall sound such that it makes perfect sense for the work to have been dedicated by Cole to Max Bruch. The three-movement Huss sonata, which dates to about 1894, contains contrasting elements of strength and lyricism within an overall meditative and rather melancholy feel. It is not a study piece, but it sounds a bit like one, with everything in its place but nothing particularly innovative or unexpected thematically, harmonically or emotionally. Schoenefeld’s three-movement sonata, published in 1903, is marked Sonate quasi Fantasia and does have a sense of fantasy about it. It is a virtuosic work mixing drama with expressiveness, intensity with gentle flow, and the concluding Vivace in rondo form gives Soroka plenty of chances to put her technical abilities on display. All these works are worthwhile for the light they shed on a particular period in American classical music-making, and all are notable for showing the extent to which serious American composers of this time period were beholden to the German Romantic compositional and performance traditions – and were expert at learning and absorbing them, although reluctant to push beyond their boundaries. 

     In contemporary classical music, by contrast, influences of all sorts abound, and it sometimes seems that whatever historical precedent there may be for a particular work is of less importance to composers than whatever non-traditional elements they can attach to it. That is true even for composers adept in classical forms, such as Daniel Schnyder (born 1961; pronounced SHNEE-der). A new AVIE disc features cellist Christoph Croisé (himself a composer as well as a performer) in two large-scale works that he commissioned: Concerto for Cello, Percussion & String Orchestra and Concerto Populaire. Each of these three-movement pieces, respectively from 2021 and 2023, adheres to standard movement arrangements in theory and to more-or-less standard contemporary sound in practice. Middle Eastern melodies and rhythms mix with Latin American sounds in the Concerto for Cello, Percussion & String Orchestra, in which Schnyder – unusually for a modern composer – actually plays to the strengths of the cello, specifically its warmth and depth, part of the time (primarily in the second movement). Unsurprisingly, the percussion plays a considerable role in the work, but it is generally well-integrated with the rest of the ensemble and does not seem to be used purely for effect – although all the players, on all instruments, certainly get a workout in the finale. Concerto Populaire is for soprano saxophone, cello, percussion and string orchestra, and it too goes out of its way to avoid sounding too “European,” much less in the Germanic tradition: the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa peer through again and again. The work is cut from much the same cloth as the Concerto for Cello, Percussion & String Orchestra, but the prominence of the soprano saxophone – adeptly played by the composer – lends it an aural flavor that differs to some extent, even though the influences on the two concertos are largely duplicative. The five remaining works on this very-well-recorded CD are shorter and make less of an attempt to communicate on multiple levels. Ad Aeternam, whose première Croisé gave in 2017, is a memorial and tribute to the late cellist Daniel Pezzotti; it is suitably elegant and sad if perhaps a bit formulaic in its expression of sorrow. The one-movement Jazz Sonata for Cello & Piano is, unsurprisingly in light of its title, a blend of jazz and traditional classical material, and while the instrumental balance is effective enough, the work seems more gestural than genuinely heartfelt. Cello BLU, another Croisé commission, would be expected to be fascinating for using the cello with a harpsichord rather than piano. But the musical blending here, as in other Schnyder works, is pretty much standard stuff: a bit of Gospel here, some R&B there, a sense of “the blues” from time to time (hence the title), but ultimately a less-than-fully-successful attempt to unite and contrast the two instruments. CUBAC is more interesting: originally written for brass ensemble, it is here played on eight cellos, and as its title more-or-less indicates, it includes elements of Cuban music contrasted with material taken, or more accurately developed, in the manner of Bach. The persistent dissonance is somewhat overdone and is on the verge of becoming almost unpleasant by the end of the piece, but escapes that fate by virtue of spinning nearly out of control to a highly dynamic conclusion. Finally, Karachi appears as a three-minute encore to the disc: it is the fourth movement from Schnyder’s Nay Concerto, the title referring to a Middle Eastern bamboo flute. Rearranged for this recording, the piece is suitably bouncy and bright enough to make an enjoyable encore, and sufficiently close spiritually to the blending of various musical styles elsewhere on the CD so that it makes an effective closer. Ultimately, this (+++) CD nicely explores Schnyder’s propensity for specific types of rhythmic, harmonic and instrumental blending and contrast, with the two multi-movement concertos offering the greatest aural variety and the remaining pieces showing how Schnyder enjoys turning again and again to musical sources beyond the largely European ones that are traditionally thought of as the foundations of classical music.