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Logic Studio
The ultimate box set. Everything you need to create, perform and record yuor music.
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"Shard" Review Featured In Classical Guitar, February, 2006
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Michael Nicolella
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Review of "Shard"
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By: Paul Fowles
his disc represents what I suspect is a not altogether desirable first for
the pages of CG, the jewel case sporting a stern label bearing the words
Parental advisory - Explicit Content. I'm no authority on U.S. law, but
isn't this the kind of stuff Frank Zappa was campaigning against with his
Statement to Congress in 1985? But rules are rules, and the contents of
this disc were duly heard in camera by my 79-year old mother before being
unleashed on my innocent and impresionable mind. The supposedly offending
item is Grab It! by Jacob Ter Veldhuis, which uses voice samples from
prisoners serving a life sentance who, amazingly enough, let slip the
occasional coarse turn of phrase. So if the six-year-old apple of your eye
expresses a wish to trade one of her Bratz for a Michael Nicolella CD, just
say no. But it should also be stated at the outset that Grab It!, arranged
for electric guitar and boombox from an original for tenor saxophone and
boombox, emerges as one of the most striking items of all in this
challenging but endlessly rewarding release from one of the contemporary
guitar's most gifted stars.
Starting with his own Toccata and Fugue for solo classical guitar, Nicolella
soon establishes his credentials as a composer fully capable of negotiating
the intricacies of this most exacting of contrapuntal forms. Until the
explosive chordal climax, the language is lyrical, even retro at times.
Likewise the sumptuos four-movement Guitar Concerto, in which Nicolella in
the company of Anthony Spain and the NSO offer the premiere recording of a
work first performed in 2002. It all represents a fulfilling and
considerably less weighty agenda than what might be feared, although the
familiar textures of Electric Counterpoint nonetheless represent a welcome
breather in this volley of new ideas.
In the suitably jagged Elliott Carter miniature from which the disc takes
its main title, Nicolella's virtuosity emerges victorious as always in 2'29"
of finger-crunching brilliance. At the other end of the expressive dial,
Joshua Kohl's Ode Tounami, inspired by an indigenous recording from Mali,
finds Nicolella at his most restrained and spiritual. All this, together
with the cosmic electronics of Christopher DeLaurenti's grey angel and a
valedictory slice of 'straight' guitar in David Paul Mesler's Lullaby, makes
for a disc that surely bodes well for the guitar in the 21st century and
beyond.
I have yet to review a Nicolella disc without invoking the name of his
fellow Seattle luminary, a certain James Marshall Hendrix. If the great man
were around today, he would surely be urging us to turn on to the music of
such cutting-edge talents as Michael Nicolella. If I speak less than the
truth, may the spirit of Jimi strike me down with a burning Strat...
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Paul Fowles / Classical Guitar
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