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review by Bill Binkelman Alicia Bessette's solo piano recording, Reservoir, is a solid addition to the always-growing field of new age piano music. The artist takes us through thirteen personal musical sketches from her life (according to well-written liner notes by Susanne Rubenstein). Melodic and accessible, yet not too sing-songy or pop-sounding, the songs on Reservoir are easy to enjoy from the first listen, yet they also reward the patient listener's attention through multiple playings. Part of this reward is owed to the disc's excellent engineering (kudos to Benjamin Lipchak) which yields the right blend of immediacy and distance. The music never sounds "too" intimate; the album is expertly recorded and well-balanced (don't minimize this - many a piano album can sound muddy, isolated, or flat). A variety of moods run throughout the recordings, from the cheerful friendliness of "Open Your Hand" (the first track) to the dramatic wistfulness of "Harrington Trail" to the complexities of the shifting time signatures on "Cape Cod Letters." Through it all, Bessette shows both her talent (her control of nuance and shading is admirable) and her soulfullness (I enjoyed the emotional ambiguity of "Shapeshift" which seems to meander from the powerful to the quiet in a matter of seconds). While this is not the more commercially-viable piano music of Kevin Kern or David Lanz (and that comment is not meant to disparage either of them), the music on Reservoir is also not in the least bit inaccessible. Alicia Bessette's playing and composing is obviously heartfelt (the liner notes are revelatory in how they explain what lies behind her music), which one can easily glean from tracks like "Fille and Sweet." While sometimes her reach for drama extends a tad too far (such as on "The Chestnut Tree Dreams") and histrionics replace subtlety, mostly what Reservoir reveals is an artist who is "plugged in" to her muse and responds in kind - with sincerity and passion. Soothing, human, and devoid of some of the usual new age piano clichés, Reservoir signals yet another artist to keep an "ear" on. Alicia Bessette has talent and heart - a combination that is always worthy of attention. |
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