The Point Of It All

Edit Master Sourced

Artists Robin Holcomb, Talking Pictures, Wayne Horvitz

€29,99 EUR

Tax included.

Vancouver guitarist Ron Samworth and his quartet Talking Pictures collaborated with Robin Holcomb and Wayne Horvitz on The Point of It All, a program of mostly Holcomb compositions, eight of them previously unrecorded. At the time of recording (2009) cellist Peggy Lee was already part of Wayne’s Gravitas Quartet, and Peggy and Robin were performing occasionally as a duo. Ron and Peggy each composed a new song for the occasion, and Robin made an arrangement of “After the Gold Rush.” The results throw a different light on the music of one of America’s most distinctive yet ultimately elusive musicians and lyricists. As Robin put it, “Talking Pictures share an intimacy and intuition that is staggering and which they apply with joyful abandon in not only our mutual improvisations but also in their interpretation of my compositions. It was a wonderful experience for me, one of those rare situations wherein I can not only improvise and do whatever arises in the moment, but can also bring to the table any music I want to – the end result doesn’t have to be only an improvised project, or a chamber music project, or a songs project or a jazz project. There is great logic in their coloration and sense of balance, no matter how seemingly chaotic or contrary....Wayne and I have been playing each other’s music for more than thirty years. Talking Pictures have played together for over fifteen years. There are a lot of historical strands at work.” Ron adds, “Robin’s music is the perfect vehicle for a band like Talking Pictures. There is such a wealth of information in any given phrase – melodic, harmonic and rhythmic, not to mention the extraordinary richness of lyrical imagery in her songs. It’s an improviser’s dream. Our band greatly values ensemble playing where we create unified improvised pieces that explore a variety of textures and moods. Robin and Wayne seem to share that open, collective spirit.” In a post-modern world of sometimes gaudy mix-and-match stylistics, yet another record that confounds easy categorization may not seem unusual. But The Point of It All is unusual. For one thing it takes its time to get where it’s going, and this slow build has a cumulative effect. And, as the title suggests, there’s a lesson of sorts being expounded. There’s certainly something archaic about it, almost as if these songs had already existed as prototypes in another time and place, a lost America of long ago (one of them, “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier,” in fact dates from the American War of Independence). You can hear this in Robin’s voice, which seems to lament even as it celebrates, and you can hear it in the sometimes circus-like and gospel-like tones and timbres of the instruments. Yet this music is very much about the 21st century, a symbolic distillation of the present. It does not mince words, and its catharsis is hard-earned, not nostalgic. It is also, at times, joyful and exuberant, even raucous. It seems to light up from the inside.

Robin Holcomb, piano, vocals Wayne Horvitz, Hammond M-3, piano (3) Ron Samworth, electric and acoustic guitar Bill Clark, trumpet, flugelhorn (12) Peggy Lee, cello Dylan van der Schyff, drums

Tracklist

Total time: 01:06:19

1. Interlude