All of Me; Bluesette; Night and Day; Misty; All The Things You Are; Over The Rainbow; Take the ‘A’ Train; I Love Paris; A Night in Tunisia; Polkadots and Moonbeams; Santo Tirco.
Roland Dyens
GHA Masters: B0000TMJH8
Legendary guitarist Roland Dyens was a truly original player, a wonderful arranger, and indeed an astonishing player to see live, something I was truly lucky enough to do many years ago at the West Dean Guitar Festival, where he played a concert that I have never forgotten, beginning as he always did with several minutes of improvising, before actually playing his repertoire for the audience. His death a few years ago was indeed one of the classical guitar’s most awful events. Moreover his publications are astonishing in that you have to be a supremely brilliant player to even get close to playing them. I consider myself a really quick reader and a pretty decent player, but his pieces normally stopped me in my tracks.as does the book of these arrangements that I already have, (the exception being Santo Tirco that is not in the publication.)
Therefore hearing these stupendous arrangements played by the man himself is quite an event. Most of these pieces are extremely well – known by most listeners, and yet I can guarantee that you will never have heard their like, as he manages to put his improvisation skills into all of them after playing them reasonably straight first. It is these moments of improvisation that really show what a wonderful unique player he was, and so we get for example Erroll Garner’s Misty, Cole Porter’s Night and Day, and I Love Paris, as well as Over The Rainbow, and Jerome Kern’s All the Things You Are. All are brilliant , and the rest of the album is equally fabulous, beautifully recorded and with playing that sounds effortless, but I can promise you that it really isn’t, and unless you are a fantastic player, you might as well enjoy this album for the genius that it displays, but don’t bother buying the sheet music! A pointless exercise unless you really are that good!
Chris Dumigan
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