Ultima Armonia

Ultima Armonia: Someone Killed the Swan -- Laments on South-Eastern Europe

by Glenn Astarita
January 10, 2015

Multi-woodwind specialist Boris Kovac and pianist Stevan Kovac Tickmayer have fostered a musical partnership spanning three decades and lead this European quartet though a progression of laments on South-Eastern Europe amid Balkan, classical, jazz and improvisational settings. This is not an easy to classify album, as the musicians gracefully merge avant-garde treatments with indigenous Euro folk-isms, and even during energized jaunts toward the red-zone, they use plush melodic overtures as the blueprint for compositional form. The program greatly ...