20 October 2016

Woof. Was able today to listen to and review New Trombone Collective,  Etcetera KTC 1355, from 2007, gathering 3 CDs, KTC 1284, KTC 1353 and KTC 1354. That’s one I had bought recently on eBay, more or less at random, among huge bulks sellling cheap that I’m hoarding for some elusive “later” and in the hope that I’ll live 200 years. I’m not sure why I decided to listen to this one…. probably because it fell out of any clear category where I could shelve it… Alas this one didn’t entirely repay the effort. Nothing truly memorable, except for one piece, Martijn Padding’s And trees would sing for tenor and trombone quartet. If I may be permitted to quote myself, “it is highly original in its choice of text – the description by a friend of Dylan Thomas of what would have been the opera that had been discussed one afternoon in 1953 with Stravinsky, that never went beyond that discussion – and a fine and haunting piece, with a very inventive vocal line and trombone score, sounding a bit like a modernized Oberon aria from Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the stuff of nightmares rather than the stuff of dreams”.

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