Chris Norman Ensemble: The Flowers of
Port Wiliams
(Chris Norman, wooden flutes, Scottish small pipes;
David Greenberg, fiddle; Andy Thurston, guitars; Jonathan Jensen, James Blachly, bass;
Brian Melick, percussion; Michael Emery, violin; Stephani Winn, viola; Laurie Anderson
Bishop, cello. Dorian DOR 90289. Ronn McFarlane, prod., Craig D. Dory, Joseph F. Korgle,
engs. DDD. TT: 60:07)
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Chris Norman is best known as the flute-player for
the Baltimore Consort, although now that he has released five records under his own name,
that might change. His specialty in his own recordings has been the incredibly rich
musical culture of Quebec and Maritime Canada.
Now there's a school of earnest, but not all that
compelling, early music performance that has its analog in folk music and is typified in
Neil Innes' Bob Dylan impersonation, "I've suffered for my art -- now it's your
turn!" There's none of this "listen, it's good for you" attitude on
Norman's records. He's playing this stuff because he loves it.
And what's not to love? The melodies are beautiful -- they
haven't lasted several hundred years because they were "interesting." They've
lasted because people love them.
It's not music I'm familiar with, but Norman's performances
on this disc, on The Man with the Wooden Flute [Dorian DOR–90166] and on The
Beauty of the North [Dorian DOR-90190] show it to be hauntingly compelling stuff.
These are recordings that are almost too beautiful to bear -- these ancient melodies,
which hark back to Scotland, Ireland, and France, exert a powerful attraction.
Norman has surrounded himself with musicians who know how
to play dances. The reels, waltzes, jigs and ballads are a diverse lot, and Norman and
ensemble play them with consummate artistry. The songs rock -- and if you think
"rock" is a strange word to apply to a Breton waltz, then you just haven't heard
what the Chris Norman Ensemble can do with it. And at the center of it all is Norman
himself, who plays wooden flute as gracefully as the most modern concert flute, although
you'd never hear such warm, organic, mellow tone from a sliver flute. Norman's not just a
virtuoso, he's a flute-playing wonder.
His Beauty of the North is one of those records I
just can't get enough of -- if you can wrap your mind around such a concept, it's the folk
equivalent of Kind of Blue, a recording that simultaneously sets the mark and
defines a genre. The Flowers of Port Williams may be even finer.
For one thing, it sounds even better than Beauty,
which is pretty much in a class of its own when it come to natural recordings. I'd rate Flowers
better primarily because it offers better acoustic bass sound. Beauty seemed to
place the string bass too far from the microphone to capture the true impact of that
instrument. Flowers doesn't quite capture all the slam of a plucked double bass,
but it perfectly reproduces the woody depth of its bottom end.
Recorded at the Troy Savings Bank, Flowers has
oodles of natural reverberant sound, which reinforces and complements Norman's own breathy
richness. This is a demonstration-quality disc, especially in the way that it contrasts
the soft warmth of Norman's flute against the aggressive bite of David Greenberg's fiddle
or the finger- picking brilliance of Andy Thurston's guitar.
But as much as I'm an audio-weenie, when I listen to The
Flowers of Port Williams, I'm not thinking about how well recorded it is or about how
natural its reverberant cushion is. No, I'm transported by its gentle beauty and by The
Chris Norman Ensemble's perfect presentation of a fascinating collection of tunes --
because, when you get right down to it, this record is packed with songs that make me
laugh, make me cry and take me away from the everyday world to one of its own creation.
A perfect world? Possibly -- a perfect album? No doubt
about it.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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