JOHN STETCH
Ukranianism
Justin Time
· The follow-up to the critically acclaimed Heavens of A Hundred Days sees John Stetch leave his band behind.
With the release of his first solo album, Edmonton-born jazz pianist John Stetch continues to invite comparisons to such renowned musicologists as Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and Modest Mussogorsky. Like them, Stetch weaves his incredibly complex compositions around elements of traditional Ukrainian folk songs. Also like them, Stetch has woven an entire album around the theme of peasant life and the history of a nation.
Ukrainianism opens with "Rye, Not Wheat," a traditional up-tempo flirting song that Stetch says was one of the first tunes he ever learned. The direct influence of Ukrainian tunes and instruments is felt to a lesser extent on most of the other songs on the CD, but it always lurks just below the surface. "Famine," a dark, improvisational atonal number about the Stalin-imposed famine and genocide of 1933, contains musical allusions to two folk songs within it, while even totally original compositions like "Carpathian Blues" draw upon scales and instruments of the region.
The end result is an album that is at once innovative and intriguing.
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