Perspicacity, by Joel Futterman

Perspicacity

by Joel Futterman

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Gatefold wallet. Liner notes by Marc Medwin. Art by Jphono1. Design by Michael Rank

Includes unlimited streaming of Perspicacity via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Part One 19:20	buy track
2.	Part Two 08:45	buy track
3.	Part Three 16:22	buy track
4.	Part Four 13:36	buy track
5.	Part Five 04:46	buy track

about

Insight arises in an instant of audition, a plurality of sonic convergences in the juxtaposition of repose and motion. It couldn’t be simpler, or more profound. A precipitous descent, a river in miniature bookended by granite slabs, gives way to a pause, concluding the inaugural gesture of the aptly titled Perspicacity, Joel Futterman’s suite of solo piano inventions, a distillation in expansion and a universe in microcosm.

Futterman’s artistry inhabits the interstices in and beyond time. The very next event tells the tale as components of that initial descent fragment and evolve, an inspiration interrogated and revised until a recurrence in magnification at 0:51, one of the many imbuing the five pieces with all of the luminosity in constantly shifting perspective familiar to those along on Futterman’s musical journey. His yearly half-century of solo recordings find summation here, from the lush and expansive stride-soaked ballad of the second piece, through the tintinnabulating inside-the-instrument explorations opening the fifth and encompassing the untamed torrents only Futterman’s cross-hand technique can achieve. Yet, remarkably, with the narrative precision comprising the prerogative of genius, each element becomes the other. Revel in the second piece’s slow expansion beyond tone and time toward freedom in freneticism nevertheless calm at its center. Dig the points and lines, all contained in that opening gesture, as they return a-periodically in the second piece and, most poignantly, in the fourth. That initial declamation itself reappears to form the connections and resolutions cementing the third piece, a vast landscape also dotted by points and brief exclamations bespeaking creation in exaltation.

Beyond the phrases in dialogue and the concluding cadences never completely authenticated, there are moments, utterances of power to open the ear and stop the heart, the shimmering and overlapping drones 8:17 into the first piece or the volcanic infusion of oceanic stride out of which the drones evolve, like sun from storm or ice flow from rapids. This stretch of time captured in all of its attendant multiplicity is neither more nor less than pure creativity in its boldest manifestation, free flight frozen in magnetic concentration radiating, in sharp focus, so many days and years of preparation. Occurrence and recurrence catalyze the whole, pole and antipode in the fluid motion of perceptive conception, each pitch-speck and timbral cloud both universe and genesis. Questions answered and answers interrogated undulate in thunderous arcs, magical maelstroms and introspective eddies expand and contract time, tempo and timbre until the final piece, a distillation of distillations, a perspicacious moment in time as deeply creative as any in Futterman’s venerable corpus. A concluding descent, a mirror within mirrors, completes the circle. Bells, blues, ballads and thunderous exhortations reduce to a shocking and only partial conclusion, bringing the suite to fruition; its end is its beginning.

Marc Medwin

credits

released March 22, 2024

Piano - Joel Futterman

Art by Jphono1

Design by Michael Rank

Produced by Phil Venable

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about

Joel Futterman Virginia Beach, Virginia

Known for his spirited, highly imaginative, and innovative piano technique, Joel Futterman is an internationally recognized veteran pioneer into the frontiers of spontaneous, improvised music. He is considered one of the foremost inventive and adventurous artists shaping the creative, progressive music scene today. ... more

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