The Good CD Guide is scheduled for release in the US in October 1996. The music that leaped out at listeners was Gould's Spirituals in Five Movements and Ellington's Three Black Kings . Gould's orchestral writing represents everything good and important in the American urban sensibility by hint of exceptional craftsmanship. Popular music is transformed. Ellington's piece reorganizes symphony orchestra sound.
Strings are busy but largely subservient to winds and percussion.
One was fascinated by the elegance of this music, the fastidious attention to every sonority, the love of delicacy even in emphatic moments. Citadel 88117 Legend is one of Andrew Imbrie's most lyrical creations. No one surpasses Imbrie in synthesizing transparency, lapidary detail, timbral sensitivity, rhythmic suppleness, density of idea, and perfection of form. Yet for all the intricacy and chromatic richness of his music, its emotional impact is warm, humane, imbued with a thoughtful nostalgia and autumnal serenity all his own. There is joy, sweetness, wisdom, nobility, mystery, and grandeur in this music, but never excess.