Real Songs
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Fourteen guitar interpretations of songs from jazz, pop, ragtime, and folk sources:
Fools Rush In, Nuages, Sunshine of Your Love, Quiero Saber, Blackbird, 'Round Midnight, Solace, Pineapple Rag, Star Dust, The Ash Grove, Medley: Manha de Carnival, Samba de Orpheus, Windows, Here, There, and Everywhere, Minuano, My Cup Runneth Over
Chasman is one of (Portland's)...treasures. His adventurous harmonic and melodic extrapolations rival those of many jazz artists, his technique would be a marvel for many classical players.
"It's not the quickness or the technical complexity of
Chasman's fingerpicking style that'll hit you as much as the beauty
of his musical inventions. Dazzling."
Stunning new solo style...Paul Chasman is one of acoustic guitar's
most deft harmonics manipulators. His harmonics technique is simply
astounding, as is his ability to execute two or three parts simultaneously. An
essential solo disk.
Paul Chasman is a tasteful and accomplished acoustic guitar player. He has put out a number of CDs over the years, mainly with a jazz, bluegrass, and blues bent. Of late he has moved in the direction of classical music, starting with a complete guitar transcription of Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Concerto in 1996 and culminating with his latest CD (spring of 2000) which contains original compositions in duet form recorded with fellow guitarist Doug Smith and cellist Hamilton Cheifetz. So this disc is from the "middle" of his career so far: strictly solo, accent on the lovely and delicate side (save for a terrifically blistering rendition of Cream's Sunshine of Your Love). Several cuts feature the results of Chasman's extensive study of harmonics: McCartney's Blackbird is played almost entirely that way, while the more successful cover of Here, There, and Everywhere mixes harmonics with regular string picking about 50-50.
But this is not a pop album; other covers consist of Monk's Round Midnight, Django Reinhardt's Nuages,Chick Corea's Windows, several Spanish and samba tunes, and two great Scott Joplin pieces, Pineapple Rag"and Solace.
This is a beautiful album, for people who like accomplished, sensitive, and expressive acoustic guitar work.
—David Loftus, Amazon.com
