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JON NELSON
Gran Calavera Electrica (Sunken Gong Records)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes
From the title piece this CD sounds like it should be electric but it's not; it's just some of the highest quality virtuoso trumpet playing I've ever heard.
Jon Nelson is very serious musician who's currently an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York, Buffalo. He's worked in the classical arena with Pierre Boulez and Milton Babbit, and he also worked with Frank Zappa.
Rather than re-record classical trumpet standards Nelson has decided to challenge us with this release. He first gives us Berio's "Sequenza X," a sixteen minute piece that's very abstract, somewhat like Miles Davis without a band, but in a much more exacting classical mode. There is some piano but it's mostly a dark trumpet solo. Listening to the piece is like visiting a dank and mysterious tomb with bats occasionally flying out at you and creepy things scurrying away from your flashlight.
The title composition is a suite of short pieces by Stephen Barber that's reminiscent of Frank Zappa's classical work, with odd time signatures and bizarre, emotive notes, like parts of Be Bop Tango or the material in Boulez's London Symphony recordings of Zappa. Supposedly the theme is that of delivery of new souls to the cemetery by an other-worldly trolley car. Frank would have loved it.
Gran Calavera Electrica is not for the faint hearted. Serious trumpet aficionados will probably get a lot more how-does-he-do-that's out of this than I'll ever know. At least I appreciate the trumpet more now after learning what a central instrument it was to popular music in the 20th Century, especially jazz. I do love the expressive colors Nelson's able to evoke. In a way I think it's begging for a visual component, perhaps abstract animation like in the original Fantasia, but in another way it's more fun to think up the images yourself.
Track List:
Gran Calavera Electrica / Stephen Barber * Sequenza X / Luciano Berio * Short Piece for Trumpet / Morton Feldman * Trio No. 3 / Emil Harnas * RE:JON / Gustavo Matamoros
© 2002 - Rusty Pipes