Music groups come in all sizes these days, sometimes even changing mid stream on an album. Here are a couple examples.
Miya Masaoka plays the traditional koto instrument as she leads a flexible ensemble through three originals. Richard Carrick conducts 2 violins, a viola, cello, synthesizer and a collection of percussion that includes Buddhist prayer singing bowls.
There are three compositions, with the strings getting eerie and the drums thunderous on “The Long Road” for 12 minutes, some electronic space sounds and percussion crescendos for almost 20 minutes on “The Clattering of Life” and dark shadows forming on “Survival.” After all that, there is 16 minutes of solo acoustic bass by James Ilgenfritz who, as they say in the musical Oklahoma, “they’ve taken it as far as it will go.”
Matt Ulery plays bass and tuba in a pair of different settings. A quintet with Geof Bradfield/cl-bcl, Russ Johnson/tp, Rob Clearfield/p and Jon Deitemyer/dr have the leader for six songs on tuba and five for bass. The tuba lead songs are 1-3 minutes long and have an intimet and indie feel. There’s almost a Sunday Picnic at the Park feel on “Horseshoe” and “Depth of Winter.” On the bass lead material, there is subtle piano prancing on “Canopy” while Johnson’s horn is rich and comfy on “Hymnody” and Gradfield’s reeds mix with brass in counterpoint on “Ethery.”
The larger ensemble includes more brass, reeds and strings for a pair of songs. “The Peacocks” has some rich pastoral textures” and “Hubble” lets the string section glide over the suave drum pulse, with harmonies and moods being the main purpose here. Modern Copland?