Bruce Wolosoff - Blue Mantra

AVIE Records, 2025

New York City pianist and composer Bruce Wolosoff follows two releases of solo piano music, Rising Sun Variations (Avie Records, 2024) and Momento (Avie Records, 2023) with three pieces scored for different formats including clarinet (Narek Arutyunian), violins (Deborah Buck and Michelle Ross), cello (Clarice Jensen) and piano (the composer) entitled Blue Mantra. A charcoal treatment by the named French Impressionist inspired the three-movement “Matisse Fantasies.” The Smithsonian Institute commissioned “Blues for the New Millennium” to note the change to a new century and millennium. Wolosoff’s wife, Margaret Garrett’s painting “Blue Mantra” gave rise to both the composition and album cover. That is a lot of inspiration coming from multiple directions. Wolosoff assimilates these disparate muses into multiple narratives that lie along the stylistic seams of classical, jazz, blues, and new age music.

The opening “Matisse Fantasies” is scored for piano trio and clarinet. It is light and airy, possessing more of a New World character that early 20th century France. Arutyunian’s clarinet is woody and lyrical, becoming more angular on “Blues for the New Millennium” in the closer format of clarinet trio. Deborah Buck’s violin plays foil to Arutyunian’s flights of fancy. Wolosoff hides a great deal of George Gershwin in the piece. Not an overt amount, but just enough to season the idea of Gershwin’s contributions. Scored for the same clarinet trio, the title piece is the most classical of the trio of compositions, being decidedly modern in sound and approach.

Blue Mantra fills a void lying between the neoclassical ruminations of Max Richter and the more regimented music of Ludovico Einaudi. It is an enjoyable listen that does not require a Wagnerian attention span to enjoy.