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Album Review

The Four Bags: Waltz

Read "Waltz" reviewed by Luca Casarotti


C'è il rischio di suonare passatisti, didascalici o monocordi, a voler dedicare un disco intero al tempo di walzer. Da questi esiti si tiene lontano il lavoro più recente di The Four Bags, inequivocabilmente intitolato Waltz, che riesce a esplorare con originalità un genere dalla tradizione tanto pregnante. Peculiare, del quartetto newyorkese, è prima di tutto l'impasto di trombone (Brian Drye), fisarmonica (Jacob Garchik), clarinetto (Michael MecGinnis) e chitarra elettrica (Sean Moran). Ne risulta un suono cameristico tutt'altro che ortodosso, ...

126
Album Review

The Four Bags: Forth

Read "Forth" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


The musicians who comprise this indubitably inventive New York City-based quartet have respectively performed with the likes of Anthony Braxton, Lee Konitz and Clark Terry, in addition to large-scale symphonies and orchestras. Ultimately, the artists' diverse resumes and many-sided viewpoints effectively transfer to this rather sprightly multi-format program, spanning countless applications, yet cohesively shaped into an alluring presentation. The bass-less and drummer-less quartet approach yields rewarding dividends, augmented by Michael McGinnis' use of bass clarinet, and guitarist Sean ...

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Album Review

The Four Bags: Offshore

Read "Offshore" reviewed by Stephen Latessa


It is difficult to determine whether an album cover affects how you feel about the music contained within, or if some cover art is just particularly representative of the musical content. Either way, Russian artist Erik Bulatov's painting Red Horizon perfectly fits the music created by the Four Bags on Offshore. Certainly the whirling whimsy of accordion and the gentle warble of clarinet recall the lazy innocence of beachfront excursions. Yet a melancholy urge towards a stilted mannerism pulls these ...

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Album Review

The Four Bags: The Four Bags

Read "The Four Bags" reviewed by Mike Neely


The Four Bags is delightfully demented group with a tongue in cheek humor that sometimes has a way of distracting the listener from how good these bags really are. The Four Bags include an accordionist, a trombonist, a guitarist, and a sax & clarinetist. Besides this odd instrumentation they also have an oddly eclectic sense of what means music. Their range moves from Parisian cafe schmaltz, to pseudo film noir tough guy stuff, to a brilliant instrumental arrangement of the ...


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