Search - Kenny Wheeler :: Long Time Ago

Kenny Wheeler is a rare musician, at home in the mainstream and the avant-garde, as original and skilful a composer as he is a trumpeter, and possessing both elegance and depth. Subtitled "Music for Brass Ensemble and Soloists," this CD presents Wheeler's compositions for a brass choir of four trumpets and four trombones (two tenor, two bass) with Wheeler on flügelhorn, John Taylor on piano, and John Parricelli on guitar as the principal soloists. It's music of great beauty and lyric majesty, as Wheeler the composer creates rich chords and evolving melodies and then surmounts them with solos of a special grace. At times there's a feeling of rays of sunlight breaking through dark clouds (or stained glass windows), as the music embraces moods from the somber to the joyous. There are influences and resemblances here, to be sure, from the Miles Davis/Gil Evans collaborations and the German composer Paul Hindemith, and Wheeler sometimes suggests the tonal language of Booker Little, the brilliant trumpeter who died in 1961. But more significant is the way Wheeler has absorbed those influences into his own vision, combining wide and close voicings in his charts to create a lustrous splendor of interacting brass overtones. "The Long Time Ago Suite" is the centerpiece; over 30 minutes long, it's a triumph of continuous linear development. Elsewhere, Wheeler touches on the elegiac with "Ballad for a Dead Child;" the fugue with "Going for Baroque;" and the miniature with two brief versions of "One Plus Three" for three overdubbed flügelhorns. This is music beyond category. --Stuart Broomer