This release from Philip Glass' Orange Mountain Music label is nothing if not a mixed bag, with a unifying rubric that is barely adequate at best. The performances involved were all recorded at different times and places, although most of them feature Glass' prime European exponent, the Bruckner Orchester Linz, under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies. What keeps the whole thing from falling apart is the fact that the album represents notable career steps forward for many of the featured artists. Vocalist Angélique Kidjo ...
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This release from Philip Glass' Orange Mountain Music label is nothing if not a mixed bag, with a unifying rubric that is barely adequate at best. The performances involved were all recorded at different times and places, although most of them feature Glass' prime European exponent, the Bruckner Orchester Linz, under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies. What keeps the whole thing from falling apart is the fact that the album represents notable career steps forward for many of the featured artists. Vocalist Angélique Kidjo opens the show with an arresting solo version of a song by the delightfully named 1960s pop star Bella Bellow, and then comes perhaps the most notably successful item: Glass' Three Ifè songs, with Kidjo on the vocals. One wouldn't suspect that featuring Kidjo in a Philip Glass composition would work, but it does, in an entirely natural way. Glass sets Yoruba-language texts by Kidjo about the ancient city of If?`, Nigeria, and once again, he inflects his basic style in a way that matches the needs of a performer. After that, one hears the orchestral transcription of Duke Ellington's Black, Brown, and Beige by Maurice Peress and the little-known Symphonische Gesänge, Op. 20, of Alexander Zemlinsky, setting German translations of texts by Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer. He never tried anything like that elsewhere, and the same might be said of Orange Mountain Music, which has rarely featured music by composers other than Glass. A strong candidate for the oddest release of 2022: not dull in the least. ~ James Manheim, Rovi
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