Michael Blake: Dance of the Mystic Bliss

Woodwind player Michel Blake creates wondrous pieces of music for dance with a creative team of Guilherme Monteiro/g, Mauro Refasco-Rogerio Boccato/perc, Skye Steele/vi-rabeca-gonji, Christopher Hoffman/cel and Michael Bates/b. All of the songs take multiple directions, making the listener pay close attention to the subtle shifts of ideas and textures. What does this look like on stage?
There’s a mix of gypsy violin and dreamy  tenor sax on “Love Finally Arrives” with a mix of festive tones and rhythms on “Sagra”. Blake’s flute adds to the melodrama of “The Meadows” andgoes from folksy to neo bop on ”Prune Pluck Pangloss”.Monteiro  glides around Hoffman’s cello on the evocative “Le Couer Du Gardin” and slithers around the percolating percussion of “Little Demons”, with things getting a bit frisky and chaotic on the edgy “Topanga Burns”. Blake reaches far on this one, and his grasp is a good one.

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