Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were
writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be
the human condition that most resembles levitation.
I believe this album is the best example of an evolving new musical form of composition. After years of adherence to the written page, Classical music has begun to return to its improvisational roots. Kevin Kastning has embraced that return tenaciously for more than a decade with spontaneous duets and solo performances that transport me consistently to a deeper experience of music. This Levitation 1 pairing with master musician Laszlo Gardony on piano and Kevin Kastning on 36-string contra guitar has exceeded all expectations. If collaborative Classical composition needed a "proof of life," this album leaves no room for doubt. This revitalized form of Classical music is very much alive and well.
FANTASY REVIEW
The following writing was improvised while listening to Levitation 1 without a thought for publication. This is where the music took me. I shared it on Messenger, and it seemed to fit. So here it is. A good album of new music will let the listener explore the process of music in new ways. A great album of new music will transport the listener to heaven.
If listeners aren't carried away to Heaven, I'm failing.
Here is the "fantasy" review:
I am listening to Levitation 1. There is a sea of music. This sea is the source of music. There are streams in the water of pure colors and there are bubbles of many sizes. I have thought of this water as the source of music, but as I see it now the water seems to object. A voice in my head seems to feel slighted by that label. I hear the interjection, “Labels!” The voice says it as dirty word. This is music all by itself and it is beautiful. If this is the DNA of music, then what is music? What I see and feel here, and certainly all my ears can hear, is beautiful. I don’t want to speak at the banks of this sea. There is too much beauty here always and nothing that can be improved by commentary or category or any such simplification.
I watch two great musicians seeming to float over the waters with colorful lights and other sights swirling around them. I can see that all they hear inside themselves can be seen here and as they approach each other the clouds of lights and colored shapes reach out to each other. I am watching a temporary melding of musics into a greater whole. Their bodies dance above the water, and they dive below. When one of them separates, the sound of loneliness and isolation fills the air above the water, and when they come together the musics play together as puppies, or clouds, or children, or dancing lights and colorful clouds.
I do my best to find the category to fit this beauty, but I have no word for this. So soon I find the two voices become a multitude that I hear as just one. That snippy voice in my head whispers its wisdom: “Relax. It’s just music.” Somehow this statement makes me want to cry. It is as though I had never relaxed before. I am not making a sound, but somehow I become part of the music. The voice says, “Yes!” And I realize that I am part of all the music I have ever heard, and all the music in the world has only ever been inside me! All I hear, and all I feel, and the voice in my head, and the swirling lights and colorful streams glowing in the sea, and the glowing mist are all Music and they are mine.
For a moment, I am suspended between these master musicians. I can feel the sound all around me. It is ALL emotional, EVERY note, all silence harmony, cadence, cascade, and every sound surround me. I feel the music, and what I feel IS the music. In my thoughts, I ask the musicians how they know what to play, and they just smile. The answer comes to me that the music is written in the lights and water and mist and ice and streams in this sea of discovery. For a laugh, each musician points to the other one and they both laugh. That is a joke because it isn’t true. Neither of them is leading. Both are following. Both are “reading” the music in everything all at once.
And I feel so much love. I feel loved. I am the very center of this experience, and the musicians treat me with the greatest respect. I feel that I am somehow the most important part of this whole experience. I am so moved by this. I am not used to being treated this way. All my emotions are treated with respect. All I feel is respected and it somehow becomes part of the Music. No, that’s not quite right. Everything I feel IS the music.
A very wise cloud of sound winks at me at this point and I get wisdom somehow silently spoken inside me: “The Listener is all is where the music goes. The only music you hear is in the quality of your own listening.” Wow! I am loved! I realize that I don’t know how to feel this much of Music for long. I resolve to learn to listen more. The cloud says, “No learning. Just let go! Learn to forget all that. The Music is enough.” I see that my Master Musicians have become the notes and nothing more and they are alive in me and they have always been there.
When I have been at the Sea of Music long enough, it is time to step away, but I am not the same person anymore. I am the keeper of the Music. I have become “The Listener.” My soul expands. Music has become my words for all the indescribable things. For the first time, I know for certain that there are indescribable things in me that matter. I can’t say what they are, but I know they are a better part of me.
I always feel good after listening to Levitation 1. I feel closer to who I am. I am become a cloud of meaningful experience, wisdom and love that is the very source of me in this world. You only see a part of me. I had forgotten there was a part of me that is only mine to see, and hear, and know. My day goes better. I can choose differently. I have become a cloud in trousers.
EXTRA CREDIT
The following are all comments I made to Kevin Kastning about Levitation 1 in Messenger texts while I went through two bouts of Covid 19 in three months and other annoying distractions before launching this website. They were posted at his page with my permission, and looked for all the world as a pretty well formed review to me. Once again, these comments were made as a personal comment and not intended as a review. So I wasn't lying, or trying to sound smart. That's just what I felt at the time while texting on Messenger.
Here are the texts:
Levitation I has become my morning music. It starts my day off open to the unexpected magic and humanity in every breath. This collaboration is a forging together of two distinct languages with subtle tonal variations and tendencies combined into one new voice — and that voice is chock full of hope and humanity. This is not an oil and water combination. This metamorphosis of two into one reminds me of the title of Raymond Carver’s book of poems: “Where Water Comes Together with Other Water.” There is melody everywhere in this doubly improvised ascension. I am quite sure neither of these artists are creating these songs, but rather both composers are following the song as it is revealed to each. Same as it ever was. I hear a line of Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking: “Learn by going where I need to go.” I feel this album as a duet between precise, sparse and practical magic, as though the meticulous language of Raymond Carver and the hothouse flowers of Theodore Roethke’s deeply moving praise for life had been pranked into metamorphosis by impish Ovid into the story we all need to hear right now around a camp fire. If asked for a comparison of these artists, I would say they can be compared to sparse Raymond Carver and transcendent Theodore Roethke combined and reborn by mischievous Ovid into temporary song. Since those three have yet to put out an album of their own, I can recommend Levitation I as the next best thing.
I love this album. I think the combination is amazing. Gardony may hem Kastning in a bit, in that he may have a greater tendency to keep hold onto a key signature more than Kastning might unfettered, but that tension is glorious.
There is a little bit of a Lennon and McCartney type struggle. “It’s getting better all the time (It can't git no worse).” It’s just wonderful. Of course, I don’t give a damn what is intended, and as with Kastning's other work, there is little time for intention to raise its ugly little head. Something new is created in this collaboration and it isn’t under control at all. Damn fine album!
I fantasize that both artists were experiencing the album as it happened much as I am feeling when I listen to it. Kastning must have had an underlying joy in the discovery that this music had taken over and didn’t need any help along the way! A good collaboration commandeers intension into an uncontrollable metamorphosis. I love describing that. The power of Kevin Kastning’s music is that it can be moving, dazzling, and entertaining while calling into question everything I had known about the source of creativity and moment-to-moment experience of creation itself.
Here’s a revelation: The silence after Levitation I is poignant and electric with possibilities. That bird singing over there, the backfire of a truck on the highway, the subtle sound of wind through the trees, all sound and silence, at this moment support the soloist of that Magpie nearby. I dare say I would not have heard or understood this natural and man-made symphony unaided by the music that came before.
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That's all folks! If you made it this far, I consider you a friend. Thank you! Now, please head over to listen to the music on whatever platform you like best.
The companion "interview" is linked immediately below:
KEVIN KASTNING
LASZLO GARDONY
Sunnyside recording artistBerklee Professor of Piano
The Billy’s Music Without Borders Index of Reviews, Interviews & Discussions
Email: billymwb@gmail.com
Submissions accepted. Send a link, not a CD. Lyrics and artwork plus any information is appreciated. Access to artists for interviews encouraged.
