Shop Now

Infodad

“Blue” can have multiple meanings in music, and Camden Reeves (born 1974) explores several of them in the works on a Métier release featuring pianist Tom Hicks. This is a short CD, running just 43 minutes, but it explores both sounds and colors in a wide variety of ways – all within an overall approach that will be familiar to listeners who enjoy 21^st-century sounds and techniques.

Tangle-Beat Blues (2013) and Blue Sounds for Piano (2019) are rather lengthy, improvisational-sounding meditations/fantasias. The former starts with quieter, more-extended passages interrupted by exclamatory chordal material, then moves into some “tickling the ivories” passages (also subject to exclamations), and repeatedly sounds as if it will break into jazzlike riffs that never quite coalesce. Quieter, if not lyrical, material near the end leads eventually to an uncertain conclusion in which the music simply stops. Blue Sounds for Piano is not dissimilar in structure or in its propensity for strong contrasts between softer material and abruptly introduced chordal exclamations. It is somewhat more meandering in its earlier portions, before becoming animated for a bit and then reverting to a slower and quieter mode – but not an emotional one, never really seeming to try to explore or project feelings beyond the superficial.

The Nine Preludes (2015-2016) are more interesting in their brief communicativeness. The eighth of them runs four-and-a-half minutes, but all the others are quite short, mostly lasting less than two minutes – and effectively displaying a specific feeling, attitude or technique within each one’s time frame. The emphatic intensity of No. 2, the watery runs of No. 4, the perpetuum mobile of No. 6 that leads to the dissonant bell-tolling of No. 7 – these are some of the well-executed effects of the music, all of which Hicks brings out very clearly indeed. The color connections of the pieces on this disc, all of them receiving their world première recordings, are less than apparent, but listeners intrigued by contemporary keyboard works performed with genuine flair will find much here to enjoy.