Charles Ives: Concordance: 150 Years of Charles Ives

As the archiving team at the Owsley Stanley Foundation (including the namesake's offspring) has overseen its wealth of 1500-some recordings, they have done yeoman's work to insure that the reputation of the man nicknamed 'Bear' is inextricably linked to his passion for the best possible sound he could facilitate.

In that regard, the range of content that the non-profit has issued is broad enough to dispel any knee-jerk preconceptions about the vocation of the man otherwise known as mentor to the Grateful Dead and manufacturer of a most potent strain of LSD. Johnny Cash, Ali Akbar Khan, The New Riders of The Purple Sage and the Allman Brothers Band are just some subjects of the eclectic projects released through the initiative of the OSF.

In 2026, the curators have seen fit to accede to the wishes of the late Phil Lesh, packaging two recordings of Charles Ives' Piano Sonata No. 2, one of which was actually captured on tape by the Grateful Dead bassist together with Owsley Stanley himself. Alternately jarring and soothing, supremely bright and densely shadowy, John Kirkpatrick's 1974 performance mirrors the composition he is playing. As such, the unpredictable nature of the music commands attention so fully that it cannot become mere background music. 

But that is also due in part to the optimum sound quality of the source recording itself.  Mastered by Jeffrey Norman, the man who also contributes his technical expertise to the archive work of Grateful Dead—see the quarterly "Dave's Picks" series plus the annual exhumations from the vault—the notes ring with a bell-like clarity that reminds what a magnificent musical instrument the piano is. 

Those commanding sonics that compel close listening also reveal how more than a few passages in Piano Sonata No. 2 sound familiar. It is no small revelation to hear how Ives employs hymn tunes and traditional songs so often to act as seamless transitions to the more original motifs in, for instance, "Hawthorne." 

Solo piano music is, of course, intense by its very nature and this occasion, like Donald Berman's February 2025 performance, is a reminder of how deeply visceral that sensation can be. Perhaps this latter rendition's placement in the New England locale adds resonance: Berman interweaves passages of quiet rumination with brisk up-tempo intervals so that these alternately lush and desolate intervals sound like the cycle of the seasons.

Like most packages of "Bear's Sonic Journals," Concordance comes complete with sufficient text to provide both historical and technical background on the musical content. Accordingly, within the 112 pages between five-inch-square hardbound covers, prose and imagery (photos and replications of sheet music) are (almost) as engrossing as the music, making for a profoundly immersive experience. 

Magnifying that sensation further is the inclusion of the world premiere recording of Concord Legacy: Other Transcendentalists (2025). A group of new compositions commissioned by Berman to celebrate four female transcendentalists in the spirit of Ives, each of the four takes is like nothing so much as a prismatic refraction conjured by the prior interpretations of the century-and-a- half-old composition.

Not merely an expedient addendum, these selections round out a communal effort ultimately not altogether different from the inclusive collective epiphanies that Lesh and his bandmates sought to inspire with their concerts.