Album Notes

Stereo Review: “Recording of Special Merit”

New York Daily News: “Four Stars – Excellent”

Guy Klucevsek consistently offers some of the most listenable new music heard today. Kyle Gann comments that “Klucevsek is one of those natural-born musicians incapable of turning out an unmusical phrase,” noting the “graceful musicianship that informs his every gesture.” So it’s not surprising that Stereo Review awarded this CD a “Recording of Special Merit,” calling it “a funny and original album by an unusual artist.”

“One of only two or three important accordion composers” (The New Yorker), Klucevsek has also commissioned a wide variety of composers, including Fred Frith, Aaron Jay Kernis, Alvin Lucier, Christian Marclay, Somei Satoh, Lois V Vierk, and John Zorn. He has also performed and/or recorded with Laurie Anderson, Anthony Braxton, Bill Frisell, and the Kronos Quartet.

Klucevsek’s “original, sweetly postminimal vocabulary” often draws on world folk music. The title piece on the CD is based on Hasidic wedding music, while the lovely Viavy Rose Variations is based on traditional melodies from Madagascar, and the moving Perusal is inspired by Andean pan-pipe music. The rhythmically infectious Three Microids is a tribute to Bela Bartok, and the heartfelt Bandoneons, Basil and Bay Leaves was written in memory of Astor Piazzolla.

Other pieces include John Zorn’s zigzagging Road Runner, William Duckworth’s smoothly exotic Slow Dancing in Yugoslavia, and Fred Frith’s oddly humorous The Disinformation Polka.