A Ballad for Many - Don Byron
Don Byron and the Bang On A Can All-Stars occupy front-row positions in the interstices where jazz, world music, and avant garde art music meet. Put them together in this stimulating new album, A Ballad For Many, and you get a lively, genre-busting experience. All of the compositions are by Byron, including “Eugene,” written as a live accompaniment to a silent episode of Ernie Kovacs’ 1960s TV show. Its six sections feature tick-tock percussion, a Rachmaninoff-like cello solo, and a general “jazz-meets-cartoon music” feel. The other multi-section piece is Byron’s music from The Red-Tailed Angels, a documentary film about World War II’s famed Tuskegee fighter airmen. Its 9 evocative cues range from a brief cello solo to Ellingtonian tone painting to martial rhythms. The closing section features Byron soloing, a jazz clarinet flight in tribute to the brave fighter pilots who broke barriers in a Jim Crow society. Another highlight is Basquiat, a moving homage to the Haitian-American artist who won fame and died young. It has dazzling Byron solos that include piercing forays into the upper stratosphere where Basquiat dwelt–in Byron’s words, “a brother who knew high art things he wasn’t supposed to know, and ended up in high places where he wasn’t supposed to be.” –Dan Davis
