The Death of the Hired Man
Andrew Violette isn’t one to save his best tricks for first. Sure, Piano Sonatas, The Manhattan-based composer and pianist’s monumental Innova debut, garnered lavish critical praise and established Mr. Violette as one of the most thoroughly original composers working in America today—with good reason. But that was then, back in 2003.
Death of the Hired Man, Andrew Violette’s new Innova release, finds the former Benedictine Monk tackling vocal music with Wagnerian gusto—minus the excess—even as he trades last year’s austerity for extended displays of pianistic pyrotechnics that complement the album’s two compositions to a tee. Granted, he’s not the sole spectacle generator this time out. Soprano Sherry Zannoth contributes mightily to the title track, a setting of the Robert Frost poem, and to The Love Duet, a Walt Whitman treatment that finds her sonically intertwined with tenor Brad Cresswell to marvelous effect. Still, now as always, the focus is on Violette’s compositions—and his uncanny propensity for creating maximum-scale fireworks with minimum personnel.
