Stewart Copeland - Orchestralli

Stewart Copeland - Orchestralli
Ponderosa Music & Art
2004

Personnel:

Stewart Copeland - drums, composer, producer
Robert Zeigler - conductor
Amedeo Bianchi - sax midi
Judd Miller - ewi, strange horns midi
Ensemble Bash - percussion
Orchestra UECA (United European Culture Association) [14 piece string/brass/woodwind ensemble]

Recorded in Milan, Turin, Bologna and Rome in Italy, this marks the first Copeland live release by Copeland as well as his first non-group or film soundtrack release in well over a decade. Most famous for being the founder of the Police (although pretty-boy Sting got all the attention, and his fights with Copeland were stuff of legend), Copeland has probably been the most productive of the former 80s megahit-trio, having released a steady stream of solo albums, soundtracks to TV and film (i.e. The Equalizer, Wall Street, Highlander), written 2 operas and several ballet scores, co-founded Animal Logic with fusion bassist Stanley Clarke, Oysterhead with Les Claypool (Primus) and Trey Anastasio (Phish), and sessions with everyone from Peter Gabriel to Lloyd Cole.

Copeland in this case takes mostly older material and arranges it for this orchestral setting. His style in highly individual, utilizing a myriad of approaches and idioms to make a mix that is clearly modern but not overly avant-garde. The Orchestra UECA plays in a mostly chamber music style, leaving a lot of space for the Ensemble Bash (a percussion quartet in a similar vein to Kronos Quartet) to work with Stewarts own full trap-kit escapades. Copeland is known for a tasteful, but frenetic style and on this release there is little to say otherwise. His playing is exceptional, with him knowing when to drop out completely, when to establish a steady pulse, and when to crash forward with a flurry of tom/snare/cymbal chaos. The rhythmic contortions of jazz, reggae and North African beat science are all in play here in a well synthesized final form.

Unlike rock bands who use symphonies to eek out a record contract requirement, this is not rock music set to strings. It is a complete work from composition to performance that works on its own merits. The fact that it centers on instrumentation customary to jazz ro rock is merely something that sets it apart from the norm in terms of sonic palette, but not necessarily compositionally. Copeland uses some odd horn-like sounds to add a peculiar character to some of the melodic concepts, and the piano work of Alessandro Carla is exactly what a Copeland performance calls for - playful, suggestive, at times eerie, never overbearing.

If you do manage to even find this release (it is available from Ponderosa Music) I suggest finding his soundtrack work for The Leopard Son with the Los Angeles Symphony as well, or his world-beat cum art-rock solo gem The Rhythmatist.

You might like this if you like:

Peter Gabriel - Passion
Edgard varese - Integrales for 11 Winds and Percussionists (1924-25)
Michael Gordon featuring Ensemble resonanz - Weather
Kronos Quartet - Caravan