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I love my job.
People send me things. Bruce Kennett sent me this disc, for instance, along with a note
that he guessed I would like it, based on reviews I'd written in the past. Bruce is an
editor-at-large for Listener magazine, and he could afford to be generous, having
already perfectly described this disc as "[dwelling] in a magical space somewhere
between Keith Jarrett and Debussy."
It does -- and lest you utter the dreaded n-word, I
hasten to assure you this is not "new age" music, although I wouldn't blame a
record store for filing it in that section. After all, it has the subtitle
"Contemplative Piano by Dana Cunningham" and a vaguely Oriental-looking gouache
of a gate framing a gate framing the moon on its cover.
And then there's the music itself. It's solo piano, and
"contemplative" fits it like a glove. But for all its gentle beauty, this isn't
the self-indulgent, aimless piano noodling that gave new-age music its bad name. It is
gentle, and Cunningham works in small melodic fragments, frequently repeated and developed
in small changes of key and dynamic, but aimless it is most definitely not.
We don't really have a word for this kind of music, which
never bothered me before -- but it makes it maddeningly hard to tell you what I like about
Ms. Cunningham's playing. The pieces feel loose and improvisational, but they are hung on
a framework that is remarkably firm. This, I suspect is why they remind me so much of
Debussy's Images.
However, despite the fact that there is a structure
here -- and even momentum, of a sort -- impatient listeners will find these songs as
frustrating as trying to pick up mercury with a spoon. They shimmer like light reflected
off water onto a wall. They stop, blink out, resume without moving and then trail off when
the light -- I mean Ms. Cunningham's muse -- moves on.
Keith Jarrett's massive improvisations do come to
mind here, but there's a somewhat eastern feel to Ms. Cunningham's compositions -- their
circular progression and intense artlessness remind me of the Sufi chants and dances
designed to induce trance states. There's nothing here nearly that intense, which is, I'm
sure, completely intentional, yet I find contemplation of these pieces an almost
guaranteed doorway to an inner peace.
That may not be your idea of what music is all about, and
if it is not, I suppose the fault is mine, for I am surely describing clumsily something
that is, in fact, quite graceful and, yes, quite lovely. And, while it neither plumbs the
passions of a Beethoven sonata nor storms the heights of a late Schubert piano piece, Dancing
at the Gate succeeds on its own terms. It is quiet music that encourages quiet
contemplation. And that, these days, is priceless.
Dancing at the Gate is a refreshing restorative --
an hour's retreat from the sharp edges of life. It's a trip well worth the taking and one
I intend to embark upon frequently. Come on along.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
