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JazzDigger Home > M - Jazz Artists > Rudresh Mahanthappa > Item 4
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Codebook
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by Rudresh Mahanthappa
Sales Rank: 170962
Price:$16.98
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Album Details
Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or
view the MP3 Album.
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"Mahanthappa and Iyer are emblematic of their generation of jazz musicians. They have found ways to tweak conventional forms to find their voices, rather than laying waste to the structures that preceded them." - WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Mother Tongue is a fine test of the comparisons between Mahanthappa and Steve Coleman. While Mahanthappa shares Coleman's ability to effortlessly stream unusually shaped phrases, their respective sounds are quite different." - DOWN BEAT
"Mahanthappa, the commanding presence at the helm, has a tone that is hard, biting, and emotionally alive. He plays with blinding speed but also draws upon the ardent legato cries associated with Indian double-reed instruments or Hindustani vocalists." - JAZZTIMES
Since the release of Mother Tongue in 2004, Rudresh Mahanthappa has moved to the forefront of the new generation of composers and alto players in jazz. The time in between has seen him take honors in the DownBeat Jazz Critics Poll, receive the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for excellence in composition, and receive a Rockefeller grant to compose music for his Dakshina Ensemble featuring Kadri Goplanath, amongst other things. The time has also allowed Mahanthappa to once again look to the outside world and draw from a system of order for his next project. The result is Pi Recordings' new release Code Book. Mahanthappa has composed the music on Code Book stemming from ideas and concepts related to cryptography. The varied systems provided the groundwork for him to approach the DNA of the compositions on this CD from fresh and previously unexplored angles. A well-known standard could be transformed into an entirely fresh piece, notes could be associated with words and ordered as such, and rhythms further coded and ordered. All of this is to say that another system of order has been applied to music, but has been done so with such care and thought that the result sounds in no way formulated. Instead, it is the work of a composers' hand deftly working within a system, but creating something entirely organic. This CD is a beautiful addition to Mahanthappa's growing catalog of releases and a mature statement from a voice that we now see scaling new heights.
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Listener Reviews & Comments
I will give my Cambridge neighbor below the benefit of the doubt that what he is saying is that he prefers the sounds of Stan Getz and Ben Webster (not Kenny G!) over that of Rudresh Mahanthappa. I love the sound of a lush, lyrical ballad but jazz doesn't need another Stan Getz or Ben Webster. Rudresh and his current piano partner Vijay Iyer are creating and playing some real fresh music. They recently played at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Unfortunately for me it was sold out. Funny I would think that the new Contemporary Institure of Art would be a more appropriate setting than the drapery lined walls of the ISG Museum but it's great that they are bringing cutting edge music to this jazz starved town. Check out the track samples here on this CD as well as Mother Tongue, Blackwater and anything by Vijay Iyer (check out Vijay's collaborations with Mike Ladd if your really open minded and like a challenge). This is not cacophonously challenging in the avant-garde sense such as Evan Parker (awesome as well!). This is powerful, driven, edgy stuff (Pardon the lame cliches but I am obviously not a musician, critic or a student of music). His tone really appeals to me as do his compositions. All I can say is more please!
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Codebook
by Rudresh Mahanthappa
Price:$16.98
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