Anne-Marie Caron, marimba
La Rencontre
ATMA Classique
White Squirrel, Julie Spencer
Letter From Home, Pat Methany
La Rencontre, Oleksa Lozowchuk
Katamiya, Emmanuel Sejourne
Zamba Para Eschuchar Tu Silencio, Guillo Espel
Wind in the Bamboo Grove, Keiko Abe
Cinco Piezas, Astor Piazzolla
This is one of those CDs that the record store would have trouble filing. Sure, Ms. Caron plays a marimba, and parts of the disc are decidedly contemporary classical. But there’s jazz – real jazz – and there’s folk, too. These genres all stand tall, like silos, with honesty and integrity for themselves, but somehow all seem to fit in one place: this album. La Rencontre translates to ‘the meeting’, but I wonder, who is meeting who? Are we meeting Anne-Julie Caron or are all of these musics meeting each other?
The opening track, White Squirrel, gives us an overture that twists and turns around small, 3-5 note phrases, played with the standard accentual shifts. It reminds me of why I began my love affair with new music – the rhythmic shifts and displaced accents keep the listener suspended, waiting for a safe place to land.
Pat Methany’s aptly titled transcription Letter From Home is performed with longing, and molto dynamic tenderness. In two minutes it had me missing an anonymous place in my past, someplace I had been, someplace I miss deeply.
La Rencontre is a three movement piece, certainly the anchor of the CD. It is performed well, but fails to ‘meet’ me halfway in any of the three movements. The third movement lives up to its title of ‘eternal flame’, with some other-worldy tremolo work attempting to transport me to a higher plane where only pure light exists, but I fall short as the piece remains just static enough to keep me grounded.
I love almost any music that is heard in the subway. Katamiya sounds like an arrangement of a catchy folk tune, performed with the soul of an indigenous people. It is Latin jazz inspired, with plenty of syncopation and a familiar harmonic progression.
Zamba Para Eschuchar Tu Silencio is a jazz ballad that I can’t help wondering if it would sound more complete on vibes. The piece still works on marimba (Caron’s musicianship pulls through!) but it feels out of its skin.
Keiko Abe’s Wind in the Bamboo Grove really finds itself halfway through in a gorgeous section where Caron is asked to alternate between using the yarn ends and stick ends of her mallets. To contrast, the piece is bookended by some of the most virtuosic playing heard on the disc.
Dim the lights and put on your dancing shoes for a transcription (by Ms. Caron, herself) of Astor Piazzola’s Cinco Piezas. This is where we truly see the artistry of Ms. Caron. She seems completely at home with these pieces. They seem to speak to her innately, and so she comes to us as a translator, setting up what she knows is coming up next. (But not as annoying as your friend giving away the next line in a movie!) With Caron, it’s more like, “Here, listen to this, you will love it. And this section you must dance to. And now try this…â€
A great solo cd should give you insight into a piece of the performer’s soul. Ms. Caron shows us who she is, what makes her tick, track by track, note by note. This cd is more than a realization of the music on the page, it is a revealing gaze into her sense of humor, her patience, and her humility.
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Metheny, not Methany.