| Montauk Variations | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 06 February 2012 | |||
| Recorded | Dartington Hall | |||
| Genre | Jazz, contemporary classical | |||
| Length | 53:30 | |||
| Label | The Leaf Label | |||
| Matthew Bourne chronology | ||||
| ||||
Montauk Variations is Perrier Award-winning British pianist/cellist Matthew Bourne's first studio album as a solo artist.
The album was inspired by Bourne's trip to Montauk, New York in August 2009 [1] and was recorded at Dartington Hall in Devon. It is composed almost entirely of solo piano, with some cello overdubs. The album contains several personal dedications, including to musicians Keith Tippett and John Zorn. [2] Bourne is vocal about his admiration for Zorn, with whom he has worked in New York, [3] and the choice of recording location is the connection with Tippett, who also recorded an album at Dartington Hall. [4]
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 74/100 [5] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| All About Jazz |   [6] |
| The Independent |  [7] |
| Drowned in Sound | 8/10 [8] |
| The Skinny | [9] |
Montauk Variations received positive reviews across the UK press and was generally praised for its sense of serenity and stillness compared to Bourne's earlier work in "improvisational jazz [and] proto metal outfits". [8] On the Metacritic website, which aggregates reviews from critics and assigns a normalised rating out of 100, Montauk Variations received a score of 74, based on 1 mixed and 5 positive reviews. [5]
All About Jazz wrote, "Montauk Variations is about economy and lyricism. Bourne's use of sharper edges only serves to highlight the sheer beauty of their surrounding soft surfaces, making Montauk Variations an absolutely beautiful album of respite, restoration and renewal". [6] The Skinny praised the album, saying, "Whether mellow and romantic (Juliet) or tumultuously erratic (Étude Psychotique), Bourne’s work is ceaselessly inventive and always absorbing". [9] Drowned In Sound wrote that "whilst the album may be far from simple, it’s certainly the feeling of simplicity that makes this endearing, if not inspiring". [8]
In The Independent , Phil Johnson dismissed the more frenetic moments on the record, saying "There's a bit of mad plinky-plonk, but otherwise Bourne uses space and consonance to create a series of meditations on mood and place". [7]
All compositions by Bourne, apart from "Smile" by Charlie Chaplin.
Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE is an English composer of classical music.
Caprice No. 24 in A minor is the final caprice of Niccolò Paganini's 24 Caprices, and a famous work for solo violin. The caprice, in the key of A minor, consists of a theme, 11 variations, and a finale. His 24 Caprices were probably composed in 1807, while he was in the service of the Baciocchi court.
Kate Elizabeth Cameron Maberly is an English actress, director, writer, producer, and musician. She has appeared in film, television, radio and theatre.
Richard Malden Heckstall-Smith was an English jazz and blues saxophonist. He played with some of the most influential English blues rock and jazz fusion bands of the 1960s and 1970s.
Julie Driscoll Tippetts is an English singer and actress.
Keith Graham Tippetts, known professionally as Keith Tippett, was a British jazz pianist and composer. According to AllMusic, Tippett's career "..spanned jazz-rock, progressive rock, improvised and contemporary music, as well as modern jazz for more than half-a-century". He held " an unparalleled place in British contemporary music," and was known for "his unique approach to improvisation". Tippett appeared and recorded in many settings, including a duet with Stan Tracey, duets with his wife Julie Tippetts, solo performances, and as a bandleader.
Centipede were an English jazz/progressive rock/big band with more than 50 members, organized and led by the British free jazz pianist Keith Tippett. Formed in 1970, it brought together much of a generation of young British jazz and rock musicians from a number of bands, including Soft Machine, King Crimson, Nucleus and Blossom Toes.
Harold Winston "Harry" Beckett was a British trumpeter and flugelhorn player of Barbadian origin.
Roy Babbington is a rock and jazz bassist. He became well known for being a member of the Canterbury scene progressive rock band Soft Machine.
Matthew Bourne is an English multi-instrumentalist, primarily working with piano and keyboards.
Neville Whitehead is a New Zealand bassist and luthier who was an active member of the British jazz fusion community in the 1970s.
Peter Fribbins is a British composer. He studied music at the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Holloway and Nottingham universities, and composition with Hans Werner Henze in London and Italy.
James Francis Brown is an English composer. He studied composition with the Viennese émigré Hans Heimler and then at the Royal Academy of Music, London.
Dictée/Liber Novus is an album by John Zorn which features two compositions: Dictée and Liber Novus.
Enigmata is an album of John Zorn compositions performed by Marc Ribot and Trevor Dunn, conducted by Zorn. It was released by Tzadik Records in 2011.
The Hermetic Organ is an album by John Zorn, consisting of a single live improvisation on the Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ of St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University, which was released on Tzadik Records in June 2012. The performance was held at 11 PM on the evening of December 9, 2011, which Zorn has noted was a full moon, as an encore to a "Composer Portrait" ensemble performance of his works held earlier that night at the Miller Theatre. It is the first release by Zorn to exclusively document his solo improvisations on the organ, his first instrument. In 2014, Zorn released a second volume of improvisations, The Hermetic Organ Vol. 2.
David Chesky is an American pianist, composer, producer, arranger, and co-founder of the independent, audiophile label Chesky Records. He is also co-founder and CEO of HDtracks, an online music store that sells high-resolution digital music.
moogmemory is the second solo studio album by English improvising pianist and synthesiser player Matthew Bourne. His first studio album, Montauk Variations, was a series of compositions for solo piano, but moogmemory sees Bourne performing only on the Lintronics Advanced Memorymoog, a specially altered Memorymoog synthesiser. The album was released on 4 March 2016 on The Leaf Label.
Beings is the third studio album by British indie band Lanterns on the Lake. It was released 13 November 2015 under Bella Union.
