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Sparks Fly Upward
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Alex Cline Ensemble: Alex Cline (percussion, kantele); Peter Erskine (conductor, shaker); Aina Kemanis (vocals); Jeff Gauthier (violin); Wayne Peet (keyboards); G.E. Stinson (electric guitar); Michael Elizondo (bass).
Recorded at O'Henry Sound Studios, Burbank, California on April 25th & 26th, 1998. Includes liner notes by Michael Bittine.
Personnel: Alex Cline (kantele, drums, cymbals, percussion, gong); G.E. Stinson (electric guitar); Jeff Gauthier (violin); Wayne Peet (keyboards); Joe Montineri (snare drum).
Audio Mixer: Rich Breen .
Recording information: O'Henry Sound Studios, Burbank, CA (04/25/1998-04/26/1998).
Photographers: Mutsy Erskine; Rich Breen .
This is a series of haunting experimental jazz and new music tableaux, each dedicated to a loved one or an artistic influence. The first track honors Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky. Fittingly, it's a half-hour-long epic of silences, stillness, and epiphany, with mournful strings and thunderous drums capturing Tarkovsky's mythic reverence for nature and the unknown. Aina Kemanis's vocals and Jeff Gauthier's violin coalesce to form lovely rain clouds after the passing of Cline's drum storms. "Rose Window" follows on a snaking stand-up bass line before Kemanis's vocals ride lulling synth pads towards melodic heights. The next track finds drum and piano signaling each other in an avant-garde game of call and response before fading into realms of ethereal vocals and droning Buddhist bowls. "Audacity" starts with pounding drums and lonesome string refrains before careening into addictive blasts of unglued electric guitar and funky organ. With the line between composition and improvisation impossible to trace, this is obviously a work of true passion and artistry. The players use the composition's structure as a guidebook through the borders between East and West, mortality and eternity, quiet meditation, and raging passion.
