Sparr - Works for Piano Solo

D.J. Sparr not only lives on the mystical high plains of the Wild West, he also embodies an unconfined nature when it comes to making music. As comfortable playing a guitar concerto with a major orchestra as he is employing Tibetan singing bowls and banjos for a film score, his ears are as open as his horizons are wide. Electric Bands brings together four of his works for electronically-improved chamber ensembles; a format that allows for moments of magical realism. You might detect traces of layered Nancarrow-type rhythms deftly executed with guitar pedals or you might not; either way, Sparr's effortless combination of composer-thinking and guitarist mind make his music as satisfying for the head as for the heart. I Can Hear Her Through the Thin Wall Singing for electric guitar and soprano imagines what kind of song cycle Debussy might have written if he'd had the full range of modern guitar effects available to him. Meta444 was inspired by a conversation between Killer Mike and Stephen Colbert. It is traditional ritual music for a religion and a place that exists only in the imagination. Sparr's string quartet, Avaloch, for the Momenta Quartet, sprang from a place that very much exists- Avaloch Farm Music Institute, New Hampshire- and it's attendant apple orchards and walks in the woods. But it's a place where time is illusory, and the inhabitants are free of stress and dance with boundless joy. Earthcaster Suite was composed for a documentary about artist Thomas Sayre. Sayre's work blends art and science, addresses the past and future, and joins the natural and man-made in a sometimes-dangerous dance of gravity and grace.