|
Through music Jeff Greinke pursues an elusive sublimity. Summoning the gentle gravity of the Ambient Chamber Music style his Other Weather (59'06") is performed in a measured motion. Played on conventional ensemble instruments (piano, cello, viola, violin, French horn, clarinets, flutes, percussion) the 11 tracks combine a range of colors and textures, harmonies and melodies, moods and spirits. From shapeless Ambient zones to somewhere more incisive and emotionally rapt, his gently unfurling works bloom over time - each benefiting greatly from patient listening. Its emphasis on interiority offers, to those who will hear, personal truths. As soon as one clarifies, another is born. In becalmed poetic brevity each perfectly paced piece generates a unique idyll of uncommon sensitivity. Reverberant piano notes hover at the center of some compositions, while, further in, through Greinke's elegant arrangements, his troupe together rises - playing slowly and dreaming freely. Inducing a heightened state of mind and heart the musical form resonates with the music's message. So how then does Other Weather make such a remarkable impression? How does it achieve its rare quality? Perhaps because Greinke's years of experience experimenting endows it with a reach denied to other musicians. The deeper spatial impressions Ambient Music affords and the furtiveness it encourages bestows a sedate equilibrium - known especially well to this artist. His beautiful music is for more than just taking refuge. It offers time to recalibrate your mental ordering of the Universe, and your place in it. The flowering of such thoughts will show the designs of Other Weather - which aims for the heart, by way of the mind.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 11 March 2021 |
