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Time Stops to Visit Jim Connolly and The Gove County Philharmonic
"But where, after all, would be
the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves?" The Gove County Philharmonic is:
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"The music of the Gove County Philharmonic, a seven piece chamber ensemble, reminds me of a scene from the film Fight Club. In it, Brad Pitt works as a movie projectionist in children’s theatre. He splices split-second violent and pornographic images into the movie so they only appear in the subconscious mind of the viewer. While the sweet fairy tale movie plays out, the children cry and scream out for seemingly no apparent reason. Composer, arranger, and bassist Jim Connolly chose also to dabble in a bit of culture jamming. His music, a throwback to a folksy Charles Ives and the Americana of Aaron Copeland, is cloaked in a faux-naivete by design. It’s the difference between Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons of the mid-1940s. Disney made cartoons for children, while Bugs and Elmer Fudd were adult insider jokes masquerading as kiddy animation. Connolly makes not so much cartoon music, as puppet soundtracks. The disc opens with “Satan’s Square-Dancing Monkey,” a rollicking theme that is repeated throughout. Ron McCarley’s clarinet and Jeff Kaiser’s trumpet mix it up with the accordion/violin/viola arrangements, making for user friendly music. The fidgeting starts when the band expands this concept by playing with the themes. Sweetness is tempered with the oddball sounds these instruments are apt to make. Like their previous disc, “The Circus Doesn’t Stop At Gove” Connolly employs Kaiser to play a Raymond Scott-inspired trumpet. The music climbs the stairs, then the chase come back down. Interspersed in between the frolic are
sweet interludes by the band and also chamber duets of violin and cello
by guests Laura Hackstein and Misha Bodnar. Their “Act I,”
“Act II,” and “Act III” are the interlude music
between the punch and jazzy show. --Mark Corroto, 1 November 2002, http://www.allaboutjazz.com/
"Kicking off with 'Satan's Square-Dancing Monkey,' the Gove County Philharmonic starts hectically, with a sound that's kissing-cousin to Charles Ives's 'Country Band March.' Hokey, enthusiastic, rising and swaying like a storm-tossed ship, the performance is faux-naãve, lacking the 'bad notes' and drifting tempo of Ives's 'County Band March' but possessing the feel of inspired amateurs playing just beyond their technical abilities. Actually, the Gove County Philharmonic plays Jim Connolly's music with professional panache. The quick tempos, slapstick squeaks, turn-of-the-century-feel (19th going into 20th), and quirky instrumentation that make the tunes immediately identifiable as American, all make me think the band's name should be 'County Fair Philharmonic.' Featuring Sally Barr on violin (and some nice singing on 'Hi Lili, Hi Lo'), Kirsten Monke on viola, Ron McCarley on clarinet, Jeff Kaiser on trumpet, Jim Bement on accordion, Bruce Bigenho on piano, and Jim Connolly on bass, the band plays music with enough eccentricity to qualify it as alternative old-timey-something you wouldn't be surprised to hear on A Prairie Home Companion or on the soundtrack to a film by Tim Burton. But it's not all silly music. 'Patience Makes the Ocean Blue' is a beautiful, slow, meditative piece with a singable melody that, as with the other songs on this CD, evoke a feeling of something past and familiar, without ever coming close to sentimentality or any other cloying emotion. 'Patience,' in fact, makes the Philharmonic sound like a philharmonic rather than a band, given the occasional rise to grandiosity the song sometimes reaches for, as does the group of six related songs (which lack an overriding title), 'Act I,' 'Noodling for Flatheads,' 'Act II,' 'The Watts Towers,' 'Act III,' and 'Time Stops to Visit.' Acts I-III also feature fine guest performances by Laura Hackstein on violin and Misha Bodnar on cello. The surreal is never far away, an attitude toward playing that keeps the band from ever getting too serious. See, e.g., 'Time Rides the Ferris Wheel,' 'My Watch Is a Rust Sandwich,' and the above-mentioned 'Noodling.'" A beautiful, highly recommended album. -Tom Bowden is the Managing Editor of Tech Directions and serves as Contributing Review Editor to The Education Digest. November 2002 Issue, http://www.eddigest.com/ Avant-Philharmonica "The curious want to know: what is Gove County actually like? We know that the kindly and hirsute bassist-composer-provocateur Jim Connolly has put the humble Kansas on the local map by swiping its evocative name for his Americana-cum-new music group, the Gove County Philharmonic. Perhaps it's time we adopted it as a sister county. A few facts about Gove County, Kansas, a rectangular patch in the checkerboard of Kansas' topography: "Monument Rocks" and "Castle Rock" are the county's answers to Stonehenge, as ancient rock formations of mysterious origin; the median house price in Quinter is $59,300; established in 1868, the county was named for a Union soldier, Grenville L. Gove, son of Moses Gove, once mayor of Manhattan (Kansas).
On the new album, there's a certain affective sonic humility of the recording, done live to DAT, like the band's 2000 debut, "The Circus Doesn't Stop at Gove." With its naturalistic ambience and no fussy close-mic'ing, it sounds something like a field recording from a beer hall or a church meetin' room in the Balkans or Bakersfield or Quinter, which contributes to its odd charm. In fact, of course, this enlightened mayhem was captured--sans studio polish or post-production-in a living room on the Westside of Santa Barbara. Go figure. The parties involved are violinist Sally Barr, violist Kirsten Monke, clarinetist Ron McCarley, trumpeter Jeff Kaiser, accordionist Jim Bement, pianist Bruce Bigheno, and cameos from cellist Misha Bodnar and violinist Laura Hackstein (of Bela Lugosi infamy).
- Josef Woodard, The Independent, Fringe Beat, 10-3 Jim Connolly and the Gove County String
Quartet (CD, pfMENTUM, Jazz), Time Stops to Visit: Jim Connolly and the
Gove County Philharmonic (CD, pfMENTUM, Jazz) babysue.com
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