Across Time makes evident eclectic influences of guitarist/composer Frederic Hand | EarRelevant

CD REVIEW:

Across Time
Frederic Hand, guitar.
All compositions by Frederic HAND:
1. Renewal
2. Ballade for Astor Piazzolla
3. The Passionate Pilgrim
4. The Poet’s Eye
5. I Am
6. Romantic Etude
7. A Waltz for Maurice
8. Simple Gifts
9. There Is a Splendor
10-12. Trilogy
13. Late One Night
14. Cooper Lake
ReEntrant ren02 (New Focus Recordings)
Release Date: April 22, 2022
Duration: 51:53

Jon Ciliberto | 3 JUN 2022

Frederic Hand’s training, career, and life as a classical guitarist point to a wide diversity of musical interests and influence. Born in 1947, Hand was a student of Julian Bream, has been the guitarist and lutenist at the Metropolitan Opera since 1984, with a star-studded performance career accompanying Plácido Domingo, Renee Fleming, Luciano Pavarotti, and is currently on the faculty of Mannes College of Music.

ReEntrant ren02

Hand has also reached general audiences with his work on the soundtracks for film and television, including Kramer vs. Kramer and The Guiding Light (for which he won an Emmy Award in 1996). He also has a fusion band blending medieval, renaissance, and jazz (Jazzantiqua). Unsurprisingly, his compositional work doesn’t fit squarely into a classical guitar box, as evident in his 2022 release, Across Time.

The CD’s music ranges over fourteen tracks across four decades of the composer’s works, with settings of Americana standards (“Simple Gifts”), jazz-influenced early works (“Trilogy” and “Late One Night”), songs (with the composer’s wife, Lesley Hand) set to texts by William Shakespeare and the Italian neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino, and pieces for Maurice Ravel and Astor Piazzolla.

The opening “Renewal” (dedicated to the guitarist João Luiz) “traverses a gamut of emotions experienced during the initial year of the pandemic,” according to the liner notes. It opens with ringing harmonics, matching the CD cover’s soft watercolor detail, but quickly moves into a lyrical theme that modulates unexpectedly, creating tension, but one shot through with thoughtfulness. The piece characterizes the composer generally as it incorporates an “unsettled samba” and free exploration of thematic material (including the harmonics) while avoiding academic terseness.

The CD presents a range of styles, voices, techniques, and ideas: the tango-infused “Ballade for Astor Piazzolla” includes a single string bend in the former leapt out as an expressive choice uncommon in standard classical guitar work, its singularity in the piece creating a tilt or archness, like the individual statement of a tango dancer suddenly arching a leg mid-dance.

Although set to text from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Hand’s “The Poet’s Eye” is sung clearly, without Renaissance ornament or stylization. This direct style matches the brief, clear musical theme of the work, with a seamless alignment of early musical ideas (in the chord progressions) and open contemporary space (in the guitar work).

Hand’s playing is precise and thoughtful throughout. Not a showy player, he is especially adept at bringing out harmonic color without becoming saccharine (as in the “Romantic Etude,” a piece that began with improvisation and retains spontaneity).

“Trilogy” (in three movements) is the CD’s longest, earliest (1977, in a recording from 1982), and most musically complex piece. The composer notes that it appeared from an increasing interest “in the rhythmic and harmonic language of modern jazz […] the result of countless hours listening to Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Miles Davis, and many others.”

Hand’s 1983 LP release notes specific inspirations for each of the three movements: 1) the seminal “Crystal Silence” by Gary Burton and Chick Corea, 2) Bill Evans (“a melancholy thank you to a man whose music I so admire”), 3) Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo Ala Turk.” While clearly starting points for each movement, these influences are kernels or seeds, from which Hand travels by innovative and eclectic means. The rhythmic energy of the third movement, in particular, and the brief, energetic walking bass line that appears just prior to the opening recapitulation show how readily jazz forms adapt to classical guitar technique. ■