The record opens with Bach. Mika Stoltzman’s album Crossing the Bar starts with the Chaconne in D minor from the Partita No. 2, which she and Steven Lipsitt arranged for marimba and strings. Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project play behind her. The Chaconne runs just over 18 minutes.
From there the disc, on the Avie label, turns sharply. Next comes “Breathturn: Part 1” by John Zorn, with her husband, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, and cellist Fred Sherry. Then an arrangement of Debussy’s “Rêverie” for marimba and strings. The closer is a world-premiere recording of Marimba Concerto No. 1 by Miho Hazama, a GRAMMY-nominated Japanese composer who conducts it herself.
A concerto with a jazz rhythm section
Hazama’s concerto is where the roster gets starry. Richard Stoltzman plays clarinet, Eddie Gómez is on bass, and Steve Gadd is on drums. Reviewers pointed to this piece again and again.
Steph Power of BBC Music magazine called it the clear highlight, a piece that ranges “from jazz-funk to contemporary big band via thoughtful wife-and-husband duos.” AllMusic’s Islem Meghiref gave the album four and a half stars and wrote that Stoltzman plays it with “striking clarity and virtuosity.” The Absolute Sound’s reviewer found the rhythm section “vastly over-qualified” and the finale “pleasantly upbeat.”
What critics said about Bach and Debussy
The Absolute Sound heard Stoltzman’s Bach as “somber yet tragically exultant” and the Debussy as “appropriately dreamlike.” American Record Guide said the marimba arrangement changes the Chaconne “fairly fundamentally,” adding sonic depth to a complex solo work.
CDHotlist.com’s Rick Anderson described a program mixing seriousness and whimsy, played with virtuosity and “deep feeling and musical insight.”
Avie bills Stoltzman as the world’s leading marimba virtuosa and the album as an entry point into what the contemporary marimba can do. The booklet runs 28 pages, and the CD lists at £13.49.
