October

Even if you buy into the old adage that there’s nothing new under the sun, that hasn’t stopped quite a few composers from trying to reorganize the pieces of the puzzle into a new picture. Often, the process includes stealing pieces from other puzzles, all in the hope of birthing some new sonic image that, if not start-from-scratch original, screws up your ear just enough to make you hear in a new way. Quinsin Nachoff is giving such theory a test drive, utilizing a “diplomatic blend of musical genres” on Magic Numbers, but where sometimes this strategy of appropriation falls down due to an inadequate understanding and/or respect for all genres involved, the collection of players assembled here make for a fluid marriage of a range of musical words. Part of his success may also lay in the fact that the individual voices are not left to wallow in their stereotypes—avoiding the cliché of syrupy orchestra strings meet sax trio, and instead making room for seven instrumentalists in a room to speak in an unforced dialect.

—MS