Gary Karr - Bass Virtuoso (1968) Composer - Alec Wilder

The practice of composing music for specific performers is an old one, probably as old as music, but Wilder has adopted it as a way of life. Almost the entire body of his widely varied musical output has been composed for particular instrumentalists, singers, and ensembles. This direct involvement with performance has been the controlling motive of his career.

One cannot fault this practice; one can only applaud Wilder's taste in performers. Among those for whom he has written instrumental pieces are John Barrows (French horn), Bernard Garfield (bassoon), Harvey Phillips (tuba), Karen Tuttle (viola), David Soyer ('cello), Milton Kaye (piano), Joe Wilder (trumpet), Stan Getz (tenor saxophone), and the members of the New York Woodwind Quintet. In all” a remarkable company of players.

Wilder is a sensitive man who reinforces his battered faith in innocence and decency by frequent contact with the young, for whom he composes when the chance arises during his continental wanderings in this season of despair. Recently, while working on a cantata for a chorus of children, based upon a text written by themselves, he was "shattered" to discover that in the modern condition humaine even the innocent have been maimed. The children were asked to write down whatever thoughts the word peace brought to their minds. "You won't believe this," Wilder told a friend; "it simply doesn't seem possible, but some of the kids had to be told what peace is. They didn't know!"

Wilder reads a book a day, hurries from city to city on the few decent trains left in America, and pushes ahead on new work... an orchestral setting for a tuba suite, a suite for bass trombone and piano, and "some other things," perhaps something for Count Basie's Orchestra or a new woodwind quintet. Of the latter he has already completed ten. He has set more than one hundred poems, composed dozens of instrumental sonatas and suites, and composed an admirable catalogue of orchestral and windband works, as well a number of theatre scores. Alec Wilder's popular songs, I'll Be Around, It's So Peaceful In The Country, While We're Young, and Who Can I Turn To? among them, are part of the emotional reflex of an entire generation, a poignant lyrical recall of other times and buried dreams.

"A SINGING BASS: NEW LIFE IN THE LILY POND" — thus did Time (July 5, 1968) salute Gary Karr in a report that took note equally of his astonishing virtuosity and the great interest he has generated in the string bass among composers. Karr, now only twenty-six, has inspired composers as varied in their styles as Alec Wilder, Gunther Schuller, and Hans Werner Henze to write new works for him. Had the double bass ever had a golden age, this upsurge of interest would be the instrument's renaissance and Karr its Brunelleschi. But, this is a time of discovery, not of re-birth.

A singing bass . . . Karr's performances of the Wilder slow movements transmute them into wordless songs. Here his personal style, a passionate lyric intensity, is glowingly revealed. He has perfected the means of evoking in the listener the ironic tenderness, the melancholy, the bitter-sweet resonances, the wintry anguish and rage that course through the characteristic long lines that Wilder has composed. Together, Karr and pianist Bernie Leighton sustain the protracted flow of these dark songs with exquisite musicianship.

Karr is a subtle colorist, meticulously shading the texture and weight of his sound. He makes the bass sing with surprisingly cool delicacy, a spun-out whisper that barely conceals his formidable control of the bow. The sonorities of his lowest register are great-throated and rich. His sound, which has been widely praised, is that of a player of fine musical sensibility reaching out beyond the routinely accepted limitations of his instrument for new depth and nuance in the music he plays.

Karr, a native of Los Angeles, is a seventh-generation bassist in a family of musicians. He has studied with a succession of outstanding bassist-teachers: Herman Reinshagen (New York Philharmonic), Warren Benfield (Northwestern University), and Stuart Sankey (Aspen Music Festival). Leonard Bernstein presented him as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic on a televised Young People's Concert in 1962, the year he made his recital debut at Town Hall. He has organized the International Institute for the String Bass, and he is currently teaching at the Julliard School of Music, New York, the New England Conservatory, Boston, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

A debut recital at Carnegie Hall, pianist in Benny Goodman's orchestra, soloist at the Drake Room — the Beethoven sonatas, jazz played under a demanding perfectionist, and sophisticated "East Side piano" — such are the disparate elements in Bernie Leighton's unique career. Fire, elegance, wit, and an uncommon feeling for the impulse and contour of a musical phrase, whether it spans a measure or a movement, are the unifying qualities that distinguish his performances, no matter what the music in hand.

His keyboard skill became apparent in childhood; he was considered a prodigy in New Haven, Connecticut, his birthplace. He graduated with honors from the Yale University School of Music, where he did graduate work after World War II. During the war an agreeable army assignment permitted him to play chamber music with the Julliard String Quartet. Following his favorably reviewed recital in 1951, he became deeply involved in popular .music as a dance band pianist (Goodman, Raymond Scott, Enric Madriguera) and as an accompanist (Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne). He has appeared often as a TV soloist.

When he performed in Montreal during 1968, Frederic Hand won a handsome commendation from La Presse: "He has, despite his youth, mastered the guitar." The paper praised "the precision, the simplicity of style, and the finesse" of his playing, qualities Hand brought to this recording. His exceptional talent earned him admission to Julian Bream's master classes, and he first performed with Gary Karr about a year ago in a New York Concert. This collaboration led Karr to ask Alec Wilder to compose the Suite for String Bass and Guitar for them, Karr is extremely enthusiastic about Hand's sensitive and musicianly playing.

During his teen years, Hand studied guitar with Manuel Gayol and Alberto Valdes-Blain. He is a native of Brooklyn and attended the High School of Music and Art where he majored in viola and composition. Hand is twenty-one. He is currently studying guitar with Leonid Bolotine at the Mannes School of Music where he is completing his work for a bachelor's degree in music. He appears frequently as a soloist in the United States and Canada.

- Источник оцифровки: автор новости (plastinka/nickhome)
- Класс состояния винила: EX-
- Устройство воспроизведения: Электроника ЭП-017С
- Картридж: Audio-Technica AT440MLa
- Предварительный усилитель: Cambridge Audio Azur 551P
- АЦП: ESI Julia
- Обработка: автоматическое удаление щелчков
- Формат записи (Bit/kHz): 32 float/96