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Daniel Adams - Shadow on Mist

		Price: $14.00 Catalog Number: CPS-8705 Audio Format: CD Playing Time: 67:13 Release Date: 2002
Cover Design : Maya Imani Watson

Track Listing & Audio Samples
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	1.	Isorhythmic Concerto (12:51)
		New Music Tampa Symphonic Wind Ensemble
		Robert McCormick, percussion soloist
		Dr. William Wiedrich, conductor
		Three Movements for Unaccompanied Marimba
	2.	I. (2:28)
	3.	II. (2:05)
	4.	III. (3:00)
		Robert McCormick, soloist
	5.	Alloy (7:26)
		The McCormick Percussion Ensemble
	6.	Ambience (8:17)
		The McCormick Percussion Ensemble
	7.	Lignumvitae (5:10)
		The McCormick Percussion Ensemble
	8.	Shadow on Mist
		The McCormick Percussion Ensemble
		Kim McCormick, flute
	9.	Stratum (5:25)
		The McCormick Percussion Ensemble
		Two Antiphonal Portraits
	10.	I. (4:14)
	11.	II. (7:24)
		The McCormick Percussion Ensemble

Reviews

Percussive Notes - October 2002 - by George Frock

"This CD provides a survey of percussion composition by Daniel Adams. Brilliantly performed by Bob McCormick and the McCormick Percussion ensemble, the collection demonstrates that Adams is a creative contributor to our artistic literature. “Isorhythmic Concerto features McCormick as soloist with the New Music Tampa Symphonic Wind Ensemble (Dr. William Wiedrich, Conductor). Other works include a solo marimba composition and six ensemble works, each contrasting in texture, style and setting. Of distinctive interest is the colorful composition “Shadow on Mist,” which features Kim McCormick on flute and alto flute. Her warm sounds and expressive playing help place this piece among the better works for instrumental solo and percussion. Adams has a gift of making each piece unique and non-predictable."

 

Twentry-First Century Music - January 2004 - Mark Alburger

"Imagine a minimalist collision with Alan Hovhaness and Edgar Varèse. That would give you some idea of where Daniel Adams is in Shadow On Mist, A delightful album of wind and percussion music, mostly the latter.

The collisions start out in Isorhythmic Concerto for percussion solo and wind ensemble. The strident brass and percussion motives have that Varesian edge, but with ritual repetitive schemes that modernize the medieval. An interior saxophone section brings jazz into the mix — initially no more or less so than Varèse — but further enriched with suggestions of swing in percussion and bass.

Three Movements for Unaccompanied Marimba is the earliest work in the collection, and sounds it, as an example of classic modernism. Alloy, for a metallic percussion trio of glockenspiel, chimes, and vibraphone returns to that more mystical Hovhanessian/Reichian world suggested earlier. But it is often very still, suggesting Messiaen and points farther east, albeit in fairly chromatic contexts.

Adams is definitely a fan of like-timbred percussion — all indefinite woods for Isorhythmic Concerto, all metal for Alloy, and virtually all-wind chime (no less than 35 sets!) for Ambience. This is a wonderful piece that cuts out a strong character for itself, evoking rainforest and rapture. Three alarming blown conch shells put this over the top as music worthy of many returns.

Returning to all wood (with the addition of definite-pitched instruments) in Lignumvitae for marimba, xylophone, temple blocks, log drum, wood block, claves, guiro, and rain stick — a related tropical feel is evoked, but much more nervous monkeys on uppers, occasionally doing sambas. With Shadow on Mist we can safely conclude that that Daniel Adams has the academia-meets-the-orient number nailed down in an evocative work of much interest for flute and percussion ensemble. There's a bit of the ecstasy of Boulez and Takemitsu in the big cymbal swashes.

Stratum, for four marimbas, is the second earliest work, and again sounds it, in expanding the compositional pallet of Three Movements to encompass a Crumbian motorism and a nice thrashy attitude at times, encompassing various rhythmic twists. The concluding Two Antiphonal Portraits are an exciting tour-de-force, often feverish and always engaging — with big-bang Shostakovich conclusion."