JAZZ OR CLASSICAL? Society For New Music: Music Here & Now, Juri Seo: Mostly Piano

Where does classical end and jazz begin?

     Here are a collection of pieces varying in length from seven to over thirty minutes, all “modern” compositions for instruments ranting from a piano-cello-violin trio to small chamber ensembles of strings, percussion, brass and reeds. Modern sounds akin to a rich and wondrous movie soundtrack are found on Rob Deemer’s “Cantos: Hammer; String: Wind” while Bartokian strings and melancholy reeds deliver Old World moods on Zhou Tian’s “Morning After the Deluge.” Gregory Wanamaker’s “Music From A Story Within A Story” is a five part opus with piano, crying strings an brooding woodwinds. Eerie and askance strings and percussion lurk on Mike Woods’ “Libations,” and most intriguing is Mark Olivieri’s “Concertino” which delivers piano themes and small orchestral harmonies that hearken to Gershwin.  Black Tie invitation.

     Juri Seo plays piano, and also composes the pieces for pianists Thomas Resenkranz, Steven Beck, cimbalomist Nicholas Tolle and a handful of guests on this collection of modern intellectualism. Seo works in a trio setting with Clara Warnaar/perc and Sean McClowry on “#three” which focuses on Satie-like playfulness, while Rosenkranz delivers digital dexterity on “Three Mini Etudes in C.” Dashes of Gershwin are percussed by Beck on “La Hammerklavier” while Tolle crashes with the cimbalom on ”Etudes…”.’ The frisky “vi” has Rosenkranz and percussionist Mark Eichenberger going free and frantic. Is any of this on sheet music?