Innovators.(Review)

Innovators. Live Concert with Sam Cardon and Kurt Bestor. Treble V Music DVD.

With all the confusion about CDs, Super CDs, DVDs, DVD-Videos, and the like, most music companies are either ignoring everything but conventional CDs or producing the occasional regular DVD music disc. This one is of the latter variety, a multimedia musical event recorded in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, which, nevertheless, also plays back just fine in regular two-channel stereo. I played it and watched in DD 5.1 and found the experience at times aurally stimulating if somewhat vapid in actual musical content.

The idea behind the concert by composers Sam Cardon and Kurt Bestor is to illuminate the lives of famous innovators of history with appropriate musical themes. The concert presents a dozen such selections, about 70 minutes of music. What's more, each selection is introduced by a host, Alfre Woodard, who explains the importance of the person being celebrated. The music is mostly a fusion of New Age and quiet jazz played on flutes, guitars, percussion, and piano, but a couple of the works branch out into more daring territory utilizing African choirs, Indian tablas and sitars, and a large orchestra and choir.

The first couple of pieces, ones on Albert Schweitzer and rainmaker C.M. Hatfield, didn't impress me much in terms of their creativity. The next, a tribute to Brazilian freedom fighter "Black Pete" was more robust and dramatic. Then there is a bit about those masters of architecture, the Masons, that lulled me into a stupor; but the section on British explorer Sir Richard Burton, done with an abundance of exotic Indian sounds, was fascinating. A ...