Barnes & Noble
Wind quintets have always been at a disadvantage compared to their more established cousin, the string quartet: There's much less repertoire music to pick from, and if you can name as many as three undisputed masterpieces for the ensemble, you're probably in a wind quintet. Besides their talent and charisma, Imani Winds partly owe their breakout success to their reimagining of what a quintet can do -- much as the Kronos Quartet did for strings two decades ago. With The Classical Underground, Imani has released one of the most enjoyable chamber music albums to appear in years. All six of the featured works fulfill the group's mission of fusing European, African, and American musical styles, but there's no sense of artificial "crossover" here. This isn't the music Imani plays when they take a break from "serious" music; this is the music they're serious about, though that doesn't stop them from having fun with it. The first half of the album tours Latin America; from Argentina, the irrepressible rhythms of Astor Piazzolla's Liber Tango (arranged by Imani hornist Jeff Scott) immediately grab the listener's attention, and the Aires Tropicales of Cuban composer Paquito D'Rivera are just as lively and wonderfully played. D'Rivera's finale, "Afro" (featuring guest vocalist René Marie and percussionist Rolando Morales Matos), makes a transition to the African-American styles that dominate the album's second half. An arrangement of the spiritual "Steal Away," by Imani flutist Valerie Coleman, is followed by Coleman's brilliantly virtuosic Concerto for Wind Quintet; it's rare to hear any classical ensemble pulling off the rhythmic complexity that Coleman's work demands. Finally, the quintet adds jazz to their fusion with Lalo Schifrin's La Nouvelle Orleans and an original work by Jeff Scott, the sultry Homage to Duke. The only thing that doesn't ring true about this disc is its title: Perhaps this confident and innovative music making originated in a "classical underground," but Imani has already emerged into the full light of day. Scott Paulin
All Music Guide
Regarding The Classical Underground, Imani Winds' 2005 album on Koch, some listeners may be a little mystified by the title, which suggests either conservatory musicians busking for spare change in the subway, or perhaps a conspiracy of agents provocateurs plotting to subvert concert conventions. In reality, this CD is presented by a thoroughly professional wind quintet that is quite far from hitting the skids, and not really launching a countercultural movement. If anything, this ensemble wends its way safely through the cluttered byways of crossover music -- hardly an underground phenomenon -- to offer polished arrangements that will appeal to both fans of contemporary classical and followers of jazz and international music.
Anyone with even a passing awareness of marketing trends in classical music since the 1990s will find the blending of influences here uncontroversial and unremarkable. Since so many labels have invested heavily in crossover packages, and many classical artists have Afro-Cuban albums, Latin compilations, tango collections, and so on, Imani Winds can't lay claim to any breakthroughs in performing chamber arrangements of works by Astor Piazzolla, Paquito d'Rivera, or Lalo Schifrin, or boast of any startling innovations in the original works by group members Valerie Coleman and Jeff Scott. So perhaps the conceit of five classical musicians shaking up the musical establishment with their alternative, polystylistic approach should be set aside, and the music appreciated for its own merits.
"Liber Tango" by Piazzolla is a lively kickoff for this ethnically flavored CD, and introduces the bright wind colors and strong rhythms that run throughout. The pulsing energy that is marked in Piazzolla is rather more abstractly continued in d'Rivera's "Aires Tropicales," a buoyant suite that periodically sounds as neo-Classically cool as Stravinsky, but is sufficiently good-natured to be accessible and entertaining. Coleman's arrangement of the traditional spiritual, "Steal Away," is a quiet and affecting interlude in the program, but her "Concerto for wind quintet" is a virtuosic tour de force that is the disc's most challenging work, technically for the players and aesthetically for listeners. In the quintet vignette "La Nouvelle Orleans," Schifrin weaves musical themes associated with the Big Easy in a wayward, diffuse potpourri, and this almost works, except for the slightness and frustrating brevity of the piece. The closing work, Scott's "Homage to Duke," is the least satisfying selection; while it shows something of his admiration of Ellington's neglected sacred music, it is too heavily burdened with ideas and the point of the tribute seems lost in a contrapuntal exercise.
Taken as a whole, this is an enjoyable collection of mostly charming works in engaging performances, and all are captured with terrific sound. While The Classical Underground is not a manifesto that will dramatically change anyone's opinion of crossover music, it is certainly an honest effort to treat it as something more artistic and valid than a commercial category. Blair Sanderson
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