Carl Herring
Carl Herring
Burnt Sienna
(avg)
Composers: Various
Label: JCL Records
CD No: JCL512
Available: Out now
Guitarist Carl Herring's album title deliberately evokes the warm colours of sunnier climes, 'the earthy, honest, rustic and immediate quality' of the music he's chosen to record.
There's certainly a Mediterranean shimmer to the opening and closing tracks, both penned by Herring and revealing a composer of genuine facility and a solid sense of structural and melodic shape.
The opening track, Surya's Mirror, hints at the influence of flamenco, jazz, world and contemporary music - all fields in which Herring (who graduated with first class honours from the Royal Academy of Music in 2003) has proved his artistic fluency.
Guitar aficionados will recognise Baden Powell's Valsa Sem Nome, Villa-Lobos' Chôros No 1 and guitarist Sergio Assad's brilliantly sympathetic arrangement of Piazzolla's Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas. For sheer dazzling rhythmic and melodic invention, though, Atanas Ourkouzounov's Four Bulgarian Dances steal the show.
It's evident that Ourkouzounov has completely absorbed his native idioms and the result is an extraordinarily pictorial representation of Balkan village life.
Herring's lovingly crafted response is as technically impressive as it is empathetic. The work's rhythmic oddities and contrapuntal challenges pose no apparent technical difficulties for him; the result is music-making of real style. Highly recommended. Paul Cutts
This was the Star CD in Muso issue 35 (June/July 2008)
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