Jim Fox, Descansos, Past, EP

The best artists, on this page generally composers, sometimes give you what you didn't know you wanted because you never heard it like this. Jim Fox and his Descansos, Past (Cold Blue Music 0021) does that. It's a fifteen minute piece, a lament, an adagio for pizzicato contrabass and nine arco cellos.

The contrabass comes through with some moody quasi-neo-post flamenco meditations that the nine cellos counter with excruciatingly beautiful but sad blocks of harmonic cloud. It goes back and forth between these poles, more or less, for the duration. The music is dedicated to the composer's friend, composer John Kuhlman (1954-1996). And that explains the mood.

It is heart-rendingly beautiful music, a dirge with a profound feeling of loss. Never has their been a more moving piece of such suchness. It is filled with living sound-memory. Ravishing chamber music! Listen to this one!