Imani Winds - The Classical Underground (2005)

Regarding The Classical Underground, Imani Winds' 2005 album on Koch, some listeners may be a little mystified by the title, which suggests either conservatory musicians busking for spare change in the subway, or perhaps a conspiracy of agents provocateurs plotting to subvert concert conventions. In reality, this CD is presented by a thoroughly professional wind quintet that is quite far from hitting the skids, and not really launching a countercultural movement. If anything, this ensemble wends its way safely through the cluttered byways of crossover music -- hardly an underground phenomenon -- to offer polished arrangements that will appeal to both fans of contemporary classical and followers of jazz and international music.

Anyone with even a passing awareness of marketing trends in classical music since the 1990s will find the blending of influences here uncontroversial and unremarkable. Since so many labels have invested heavily in crossover packages, and many classical artists have Afro-Cuban albums, Latin compilations, tango collections, and so on, Imani Winds can't lay claim to any breakthroughs in performing chamber arrangements of works by Astor Piazzolla, Paquito d'Rivera, or Lalo Schifrin, or boast of any startling innovations in the original works by group members Valerie Coleman and Jeff Scott. So perhaps the conceit of five classical musicians shaking up the musical establishment with their alternative, polystylistic approach should be set aside, and the music appreciated for its own merits.

Liber Tango by Piazzolla is a lively kickoff for this ethnically flavored CD, and introduces the bright wind colors and strong rhythms that run throughout. The pulsing energy that is marked in Piazzolla is rather more abstractly continued in d'Rivera's Aires Tropicales, a buoyant suite that periodically sounds as neo-Classically cool as Stravinsky, but is sufficiently good-natured to be accessible and entertaining. Coleman's arrangement of the traditional spiritual, Steal Away, is a quiet and affecting interlude in the program, but her Concerto for wind quintet is a virtuosic tour de force that is the disc's most challenging work, technically for the players and aesthetically for listeners. In the quintet vignette La Nouvelle Orleans, Schifrin weaves musical themes associated with the Big Easy in a wayward, diffuse potpourri, and this almost works, except for the slightness and frustrating brevity of the piece. The closing work, Scott's Homage to Duke, is the least satisfying selection; while it shows something of his admiration of Ellington's neglected sacred music, it is too heavily burdened with ideas and the point of the tribute seems lost in a contrapuntal exercise.

Taken as a whole, this is an enjoyable collection of mostly charming works in engaging performances, and all are captured with terrific sound. While The Classical Underground is not a manifesto that will dramatically change anyone's opinion of crossover music, it is certainly an honest effort to treat it as something more artistic and valid than a commercial category.

Review by Blair Sanderson