SLAV GANELIN / ALEXEY KRUGLOV / OLEG YUDANOV - US
Leo Records – CD LR 757
Vyacheslav Ganelin: piano, electronics; Alexey Kruglov: soprano, alto & tenor saxophones, bassett-horn and alto sax mouthpiece; Oleg Yudanov: drums, percussion.
Recorded September 2015 at the DOM Cultural Centre, Moscow.
Unlike last year’s release, Russian New Music in China, Live in Shenzhen, US is just one piece, That’s Us, with no breaks, no separate ‘tunes’, although the recording does include both encores demanded by the knowing audience.
Right from the start, up and under from Ganelin’s contemplative piano intro, Kruglov kick-starts his tenor into a huge and magnificent, prolonged solo of considerable grace and sophistication, that consumes by its fire a good quarter of the single track’s length. He yields finally to Yudanov, whose percussive licence effects an almost crystalline scaffolding which supports a very foreign-sounding technique for a drummer from a wasteland. Kruglov is not finished yet: after an interim from Ganelin and a stretch of all three entering a raucous discourse, he breaks into a tenor solo that surely includes everything a tenor can conceive of, and he is muscled along by the ferocity of the percussion.
This is an extraordinary album and when the encores are performed, they are comparatively diminished, justifiably, executing in a quieter voice the same convolutions that have transported us to this giddy present. Superb.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Leo Records – CD LR 757
Vyacheslav Ganelin: piano, electronics; Alexey Kruglov: soprano, alto & tenor saxophones, bassett-horn and alto sax mouthpiece; Oleg Yudanov: drums, percussion.
Recorded September 2015 at the DOM Cultural Centre, Moscow.
Unlike last year’s release, Russian New Music in China, Live in Shenzhen, US is just one piece, That’s Us, with no breaks, no separate ‘tunes’, although the recording does include both encores demanded by the knowing audience.
Right from the start, up and under from Ganelin’s contemplative piano intro, Kruglov kick-starts his tenor into a huge and magnificent, prolonged solo of considerable grace and sophistication, that consumes by its fire a good quarter of the single track’s length. He yields finally to Yudanov, whose percussive licence effects an almost crystalline scaffolding which supports a very foreign-sounding technique for a drummer from a wasteland. Kruglov is not finished yet: after an interim from Ganelin and a stretch of all three entering a raucous discourse, he breaks into a tenor solo that surely includes everything a tenor can conceive of, and he is muscled along by the ferocity of the percussion.
This is an extraordinary album and when the encores are performed, they are comparatively diminished, justifiably, executing in a quieter voice the same convolutions that have transported us to this giddy present. Superb.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
