| Solo | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Studio album by | |
| Released | 2009 |
| Recorded | March 22, 2008 |
| Studio | Brooklyn, New York |
| Genre | Free jazz |
| Length | 2:33:55 |
| Label | Ilk Music ILK151CD |
Solo is a two-CD solo album by bassist/violinist Henry Grimes. It was recorded in March 2008 in Brooklyn, New York, and was released by Ilk Music in 2009. [1]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
| DownBeat | [2] |
Writing for JazzTimes , Mitch Myers commented: "With more than two and a half hours of fairly continuous playing, Solo is a dramatic tour de force. Alternating between long passages on the bass and violin, Grimes plucks and bows with great clarity and imagination, and a seemingly endless supply of bold musical ideas... It's the fearless confidence Grimes exudes on bass that is most impressive, and his stream-of-consciousness solo work puts him right up there in the pantheon of rare improvisers like his old boss Cecil Taylor. Grimes' technical mastery is sometimes overshadowed by his amazing creativity, but his organic skill with string-driven-things should serve as a clinic for devotees." [3]
Bill Meyer of DownBeat stated that Grimes "achieves passages where incendiary abandon transmutes into rough-hewn beauty that cracks the nut of conventional harmony and finds sweet meat inside. Anyone who can warm to Billy Bang or Ornette Coleman's bowing will find something of worth when he hits his peak here... His arco playing still matches melodic fluency to a marvelously cavernous tone, and he's at his most lucid rendering bold, complex pizzicato figures." However, Meyer cautioned: "It runs two hours and 34 minutes, which is simply too long... A more listener-friendly approach that mined the session for its best moments and split them into sections would have resulted in a much stronger album." [2]
In a review for AllMusic, Michael G. Nastos wrote: "While it certainly has its moments, the recording goes on and on and on to the point that it makes for a challenging listening experience, even for the most devoted Grimes fan. Moving back and forth between bowed or plucked contrabass and violin, the tones and themes he constructs tackle a combination of harmonic overtone techniques, soulful bluesy inferences, and soaring stratospheric demonstrations within a relative no-time framework. As one listens, occasional melodic themes do crop up, but you have to be patient in order to get to them. There's a playful attitude as Grimes rambles though whole, half, and quarter notes, plucked or explored harmonics with his bow... How you listen to this gargantuan effort depends on your patience for purely abstract music." [1]
The cello ( CHEL-oh), or violoncello ( VY-ə-lən-CHEL-oh, Italian pronunciation:[vjolonˈtʃɛllo]), is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 and A3. The viola's four strings are each an octave higher. Music for the cello is generally written in the bass clef, with tenor clef, and treble clef used for higher-range passages.
The double bass, also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone, in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four or five strings.
Jazz guitar may refer to either a type of electric guitar or a guitar playing style in jazz, using electric amplification to increase the volume of acoustic guitars.
The violin, colloquially known as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the pochette, but these are virtually unused. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, and commonly have four strings, usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and are most commonly played by drawing a bow across the strings. The violin can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orchestration is the assignment of different instruments to play the different parts of a musical work. For example, a work for solo piano could be adapted and orchestrated so that an orchestra could perform the piece, or a concert band piece could be orchestrated for a symphony orchestra.
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.
In musical instrument classification, string instruments or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Pizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of instrument:
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include classical compositions such as Ravel's Boléro and the Carol of the Bells, and popular songs such as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love" (1977), Henry Mancini's theme from Peter Gunn (1959), The Who's "Baba O'Riley" (1971), and The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (1997).
A variety of musical terms are encountered in printed scores, music reviews, and program notes. Most of the terms are Italian, in accordance with the Italian origins of many European musical conventions. Sometimes, the special musical meanings of these phrases differ from the original or current Italian meanings. Most of the other terms are taken from French and German, indicated by Fr. and Ger., respectively.
Bassline is the term used in many styles of music, such as blues, jazz, funk, dub and electronic, traditional, and classical music, for the low-pitched instrumental part or line played by a rhythm section instrument such as the electric bass, double bass, cello, tuba or keyboard.
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.
Playing the violin entails holding the instrument between the jaw and the collar bone. The strings are sounded either by drawing the bow across them (arco), or by plucking them (pizzicato). The left hand regulates the sounding length of the strings by stopping them against the fingerboard with the fingers, producing different pitches.
The Sonata for Solo Violin Sz. 117, BB 124, is a sonata for unaccompanied violin composed by Béla Bartók. It was premiered by Yehudi Menuhin, to whom it was dedicated, in New York on 26 November 1944.
The term Romani style refers to the way Eastern European music is played in coffeehouses and restaurants, at parties, and sometimes on-stage in European cities. Music played in this style differs from actual Romani music played by Romani and Sinti people, many of whom regard the term "gypsy" as a slur when applied to their community.
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