Sean Hickey, PENTATONE’s wonderful Managing Director, recommends ‘Dreamcatcher‘ by James McVinnie.
“It’s hard to know where to start when considering the unique release that is Dreamcatcher by James McVinnie. A colleague brought this exceptional program to my attention, and I was certainly intrigued by something both obvious and rare: a program featuring keyboard works, performed on both the concert piano and the church organ. Gabriella Smith’s Imaginary Pancake, starts with fast sustained figurations on the far ends of the piano and which gradually lowers with the left and right hand meeting in the middle. The piece that follows this captivating beginning is no less engaging. Nico Mulhly’s Patterns introduces the St. Albans’ organ in a mesmerizing piece. The second section, Palindromes, will follow you around. At times it has the winsome quality of a Radiohead instrumental.
Laurie Speigel’s The Unquestioned Answer, an arrangement by McVinnie, offers as soothing a journey as the best ambient works of Brian Eno. The title track by Marcos Balter, conjuring the heartless and cruel separation of migrant children from their parents – a perverse obsession of Donald Trump – reminds us that music in an unjust world can perhaps be a helpful, if ultimately lacking, form of healing.
The album’s centerpiece is Giles Swayne’s brilliant organ tour de force, Riff-Raff, a killer title to a killer piece, a test music for any speaker system, and a work that McVinnie seems to drive like a Maserati. The composer crams a history of rock and roll into this modernist and minimalist masterwork. McVinnie offers us all something to contemplate and consider, or to simply enjoy; without a doubt one of the greatest albums of late and proud to enjoy it on PENTATONE.”
Sean Hickey, Managing Director
