I’ll be upfront here – I found this new release from Guitar Trek rather frustrating. I adored their release Bluetongue from a few years ago, giving it 5 stars, but this release just doesn’t hit those heights.
For this release, Guitar Trek commissioned seven composers to write a six-to-eight minute work based on a piece of popular music. Strangely, the liner notes don’t actually mention what song inspired each composer, although at least they’re mostly fairly easy to work out.
I think the most successful of the commissioned works is Robert Davidson’s Spirit Dancing, a canon based on Nirvana’s Smells like teen spirit, but Richard Charlton’s Transforming Friday, inspired by The Easybeats’ Friday on my mind is great, too. Stephen Goss’ Joni is essentially a set of free-ish arrangements of four Joni Mitchell songs (among them favourites like Hejira and Both sides now, but they also take so literally from the...
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