Alison Brown - Stolen Moments
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CD Details
Artist: Alison BrownEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-05-10
Music Label: Compass Records
Soundtracks:
- The Sound Of Summer Running
- The Magnificent Seven
- Homeward Bound (featuring the Indigo Girls (Amy Ray, Emily Saliers)
- The Pirate Queen
- Carrowkeel
- Angel (featuring Beth Nielsen Chapman)
- McIntyre Heads South
- One Morning In May (featuring Andrea Zonn)
- (I'm Naked And I'm) Going To Glasgow
- Prayer Wheel (featuring Mary Chapin Carpenter)
- Musette For A Palindrome
Music reviews of Stolen Moments
Music Review: Proficient & aqueous banjo ... pleasurable aural experience
Rating: 5 Stars
Playing Time - 50:35 -- Individualism in music is a goal for many musicians who enjoy the challenge of pushing their technical skills into realms of innovation and adventure. The impressively virtuosic Alison Brown has a broad base of experience to draw upon. Her travels have taken her from Connecticut to California to Tennessee. From her earliest bands (The Stringbenders, Gold Rush), the 1991 IBMA Banjo Player of the Year went on to play, record or tour with the likes of Northern Lights, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Michelle Shocked, New Grange, and others. She owns her own record company (Compass Records), and in 1996 formed her Alison Brown Quartet. A bit of trivia is that her tune, "Girl's Breakdown" (from her Grammy-nominated "Fair Weather" album) was used in early 2000 as the official wake up music for the crew of the U.S. Space Shuttle Destiny on their mission to the International Space Station. So what next for someone whose music has reached the depths of outer space?
"Stolen Moments" is an astounding display of melodic invention that continues to characterize this one-of-a-kind player. Her expressive musicality incorporates elements of many genres from Celtic (her own "Carrowkeel") to pop (Jimi Henrix's "Angel" or Paul Simon's "Homeward Bound" or Jim Rooney/Bill Keith's "One Morning in May"). These pop numbers include some superb vocals that make the album whole (courtesy of folks like Amy Ray, Emily Saliers, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Andrea Zonn). Mary Chapin Carpenter also appears. While credits aren't clear, I assume that she's one of the four singing "Boomchicks" (Thighdalia, Aureola, Ovaria, and Fallopia) who appear on "Prayer Wheel." Instrumental new acoustic jazz is well represented in cuts like "The Sound of Summer Running" and "The Magnificent Seven" (written with John Doyle) that has a seven-beat meter in the tune's head.
With the exception of "One Morning in May," arranged without banjo, the 5-string finds itself laying just right into the greater ensemble mix while piano, bass, guitar, fiddle, drums, and even a little mandolin create the kaleidoscope of sound. Some of the luminaries picking along include Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Sam Bush and Mike Marshall (mandolin). Mike seems right in his element on Brown's playful "Musette for a Palindrome." Seamus Egan plays an emotive low whistle on one track, "Carrowkell," while the similarly Cletic-flavored "(I'm Naked and I'm) Going to Glasgow" includes Solas guitarist John Doyle. John R. Burr's gives us some superior, jaw-dropping piano accompaniment that evokes a more smooth jazz sound. As much as I dislike drums in acoustic music, Kenny Malone's percussion is downright tasty in this particular context. Alison's husband, Garry West, plays bass.
Alison Brown is a confident musician who continues to make creative and courageous statements with her music. She's a daring stalwart whose proficient and aqueous banjo playing leaves us with pleasurable aural experiences that know few borders. (Joe Ross, staff writer, Bluegrass Now)
Description of Stolen Moments
Stolen Moments showcases the Grammy winning banjoist, Alison Brown at the peak of her abilities. Drawing from a myriad of influences, there is a fluid musicality to her genre-bending album. In Brown's estimation, it's her most musically successful record to date. "For the first time, I feel like I've created a true hybrid sound that suggests its influences -bluegrass, jazz, Celtic music - but when taken as a whole isn't any one of these things. It may not be easy to put a label on it, but that's fine with me since that's the musical world I live in as a musician and with Compass records. To my ear, Stolen Moments comes off as a very accessible and listenable record with a consistent sound from track to track."Anchored by Brown's technically rich and highly musical banjo, instrumental tracks range from the odd meter newgrass hoedown of The Magnificent Seven to the more delicate jazz-hued sensibility of The Pirate Queen and the Gregorian-chant inspired Carrowkeel. Playmates include bluegrass greats Sam Bush (mandolin), Stuart Duncan (fiddle) and Mike Marshall (mandolin) as well as Irish mavericks John Doyle (guitar) and Seamus Egan (flute), ex-Pretenders and Paul McCartney Band guitarist Robbie McIntosh and long time band mate John R. Burr (piano) as well as Nashville legend Kenny Malone (drums).
Brown also features an all-female cast of vocalists on four of the album?s tracks. The Indigo Girls appear on a neo-bluegrass arrangement of Homeward Bound, Compass label mate Beth Nielsen Chapman delivers a delicate version of the Jimi Hendrix?s classic Angel, and Mary Chapin Carpenter and Andrea Zonn are both Brown?s co-conspirators from the Boomchicks (also including Sally Van Meter and Sally Truitt) an in-your-face all-female group formed for the Telluride Bluegrass festival four years ago. "The Boomchicks are such a unique bunch and I thought the Boo Hewerine song Prayer Wheel would be a great vehicle for Chapin?s singing and everyone?s playing ? as well as having the right vibe for a band that came together in the Colorado mountains." Finally, fiddler/vocalist Andrea Zonn, who tours regularly as a featured guest with the Alison Brown Quartet, offers a sweet version of the folk classic One Morning in May, artfully arranged to feature John Doyle and Brown?s twin guitars stylings.
With her impeccable musicianship and consummate taste, Alison Brown takes the banjo far from its rural traditions. If this is roots music, it no longer has any dust on its boot heels, as she engages in sophisticated interplay with Stuart Duncan's soaring fiddle on "The Sound of Summer Running," takes a Celtic romp with Sam Bush's sprightly mandolin on "The Magnificent Seven," and fashions a tone poem of atmospheric impressionism in "The Pirate Queen." Though instrumentals dominate, guest vocalists include the Indigo Girls on a revival of Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound," Beth Nielsen Chapman on a spiritually radiant rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Angel," Andrea Zonn on the folk ballad "One Morning in May," and Mary Chapin Carpenter--billed as "Thigdalia Boomchick"--backed by a female chorus of Boomchicks on Boo Hewerdine's "Prayer Wheel." Brown's eclectic synthesis of bluegrass/jazz/classical/folk/new age is closer to NPR than Grand Ole Opry, more fitting for Sunday brunch than a Saturday night hoedown. --Don McLeese
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