iSound

Percussive outbursts set against long Romantic lines, interrupted by snippets of Beethoven and Rossini, fragments of recorded bird calls and radio broadcasts, performers whispering, different musical languages interacting and colliding, a soprano in the balcony – all can be heard on this CD of works composed by one of today’s masters of musical collage and stylistic time-warp. Elliott Schwartz’s music has been described as “beyond eclecticism” (Tim Page, New York Times), and lauded for its “ebullient personality… fertile imagination and bright spirit” (Patric Stanford, Music and Vision).

“Hall of Mirrors” is the title of one work on the disk – an extroverted, free-wheeling suite for saxophone quartet and piano – but it could apply equally well to all four pieces recorded here, as numerous “mirrors” – echoes, displaced registers, melodic and rhythmic variants, literal reflections, crazy fun-house distortions, and incursions from the real world beyond the concert hall – keep...