David Amram - composer, conductor, multi-instrumental virtuoso, and author - is one of the most versatile, acclaimed, and truly unpredictable musicians America has produced. His surprising litany of achievements include the world's record for number of performances of the Brahms Horn Trio (during his military service in the 1950's), musical collaborations with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg, numerous film scores including his acclaimed music for "The Manchurian Candidate", pioneering work in promoting native American and world music, advocacy for music education and youth music programs, and a tour of Cuba in 1977 with Stan Getz and Earl "Fatha" Hines (the first visit by American musicians since the trade embargo of 1962). in 2012, the New York Chamber Music Festival presented an evening of Amram's chamber music performed by acclaimed flutist Carol Wincenc, violin virtuoso Elmira Darvarova, New York Philharmonic hornist Howard Wall, the Face the Music Ensemble, the New York Piano Quartet, and the David Amram Quartet.
D**L
Classical, Jazzy Classical, and Jazz
David Amram is one of the musician-composers with one foot in the jazz club and another in the classical symphonic hall. He also scored films, wrote for theater, and also opera. Jazz has performers on atypical instruments, as oboe and bassoon, even shakuhachi; he is the pioneer of jazz French horn. Amram was sideman to such diverse characters as Lionel Hampton, David Bromberg, Mary Lou Williams, Betty Carter, Joan Shenandoah, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Pete Seeger, and Steve Martin. This live concert album focuses on his chamber music, but even here the jazz elements are present. It opens with Sonata for Violin and Piano with, respectively, Elmira Darvarova and Tomoko Kanamaru. Leonard Bernstein's (with the NY Philharmonic) first composer-in-residence, Amram shows angular and bouncy rhythmic and melodic development, which in the second movement turns to an introspective song akin to a Irish slow air; it concludes with a standard theme and variations, including occasional spunk. Flutist Carol Wincenc continues the concept of Theme and Variation with Red River Valley; the Face The Music string ensemble adds Western northern prairie lushness. Flute and piano [Hsi-Chiao Liao] team for the second movement of Giants of The Night in a scaled back version of the orchestral Concerto. The Andante is based on Amram's Washington, D.C. Blues. Next is Portraits, performed by the New York Piano Quartet and cellist Wendy Sutter. It is scored with variations of a nostalgic theme to emphasize each instrument in turn. Blues and Variations for Monk for Solo Horn stems from Amram's friendship with Monk, and is Monkish in motif. Howard Wall is the soloist. The final tracks come from another friendship, this with Jack Kerouac, and consists of Five Readings from On The Road, which the poet narrated with Amram's jazz quartet.* Here, the narrators are Ekayani Chamberlin, daugher Adira Amram, and Douglas Yeager and the quartet includes David Amram on piano and son Adam Amram on congas. [*Kerouac had recorded some of his poems and readings with Steve Allen and also Al Cohn with Zoot Sims (Rhino).] This album hints of Amram's wide scope of compositions. His film scores for the original Manchurian Candidate and Splendor in The Grass are worth hearing.
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