Jeff Adler / Hevreh Ensemble - Path of Light [CD]

The quartet of musicians who comprise Hevreh Ensemble - Judith Dansker, Laurie Friedman, Adam Morrison, and Jeff Adler - are making their Ansonica debut with A PATH OF LIGHT. Hevreh Ensemble is internationally acclaimed for it's live performances, which feature a wide array of instruments from Cherokee Native American flute, English horn, and shofar to world percussion including djembe, dumbek, balafon, rain stick, and tabla. The Ensemble is also joined on A PATH OF LIGHT by some extraordinary guests, including the genre-defying string quartet ETHEL, cross-cultural percussionist Shane Shanahan, George Rush on double bass, and Naren Budhkar on tabla. The essence of the music on the album, which includes ten compositions written by Adler, revolves around two tracks: A Path of Light and The Speed of Dark, each of which follows a distinctively diverse path. The title track, A Path of Light, features a quiet, meditative introduction which builds to a joyous and frenzied conclusion. That positive energy is balanced, according to Adler, by "the thickness and occasional dissonance of the writing in The Speed of Dark, which invokes feelings of fear and intolerance." The piece that follows The Speed of Dark and which closes the album is the somber-toned Epilogue, which musically represents the consequences of following that second path. A PATH OF LIGHT surrounds these anchoring compositions with seven pieces that together weave a rich tapestry of textures and tones. From the adventurous Sima de los Huesos, to the jazz-centric Sweetgrass Cedar and Sage, to the propulsive Amor Caritas, Hevreh's performances serve to emphasize both the exceptional contributions of each individual instrument as well as the melodic intricacy of their interplay.