Composer and drummer Bobby Previte has worked in myriad musical environments, from jazz and classical music to pop, rock, R&B, and various global traditions. Not only is he a first-call player, but a celebrated one: he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. Terminals is his masterwork. It is a series of five concertos that looks back at a time in the classical tradition when soloists actually improvised. Previte wrote the piece for SO Percussion, the eminent Brooklyn-based ensemble and they play the part of an orchestra in these works. They employ classical rhythm instruments, but also those associated with various folk traditions, drum machines and even a bullwhip. There is a different soloist for each of Terminals' concertos: harpist Zeena Parkins, saxophonist Greg Osby, guitarist Nels Cline, keyboardist John Medeski, and the composer's drum kit. These aspects -- concerto group and improvising soloist -- place two seemingly opposing forces in dialogue, and these conversations are not always easy, at least initially. That said, they all amount to luminous, extraordinarily engaging dialects on musical language in particular and cultural speech in general. His participants argue and move from and toward one another in explorations of dynamic, color, timbre, texture, space, and sonority. They simultaneously sum up and extend the tradition of percussion in modern classical music from Varese to Cage and Winant and open the boundary to include dialects from rock, free improv, world music, marching band, and even pop. This classic balance of order (what is composed) and chaos (what is improvised) is taken to a new level of investigation for over 80 minutes, with often-blurred lines. Terminals is breathtaking, quizzical, provocative, humorous, and at times even tender. Previte ranges over the history of Western percussion as a way of relocating tradition, making the section prominent 21st century music while simultaneously restoring the place of the improvising soloist inside the concerto form. [The double-LP version omits Previte's section.] ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi

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