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Showing posts from November, 2011

Time - Steve Howe

During a long and productive solo career Steve has pointed his guitar in all manner of directions. Sometimes he is very focused as with Turbulence and Skyline (rock and new age respectively) on other occasions almost bewilderingly versatile Beginnings/Remedy. For Time he decided to sweep up the pieces and orchestrate them for small forces. Steve has shown in these later years with Asia and Yes a very high degree of discernment in his compositional offerings. The same approach informs Time, not 12 pieces of self-penned tunes of varying quality, instead he has dug into his love of classical composition and sought collaborators. So what do we have, the Bachainas Brasieiras is a beautiful elegant composition by Heiter Villa lobos and is given a treatment not unlike the Vivaldi on his second CD. A sublime steel guitar takes the tune with a wonderful serious accompaniment of percussion and strings reminding us how the harmonic values of music contribute so much to the fulfilment of an i