STEWART GOODYEAR’s CALLALOO BEST 2019

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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One hesitates as to what to call Stewart Goodyear’s brilliantly inventive Callaloo. I would venture Tone Poem. Goodyear calls it a Suite in his insightful and candid liner notes.

But if a label is not needed, let us just celebrate Goodyear’s new musical facet: that of composer, and enjoy his constant enterprising vitality and his proud celebration of his Caribbean roots.

The spicy 26-plus minute composition is a five-movement musical fantasy in which snippets of Trinidad’s Calypso melodic and rhythmic strains vie for the listener’s attention with a heady mix of Jamaican Mento, afro-Cuban Guaguancó, Son, Conga and Guaracha, and the inter-island Soca.

The music ebbs and flows from moments of happily frantic activity to stretches of the indolently laid-back dolce far niente that we Caribbean people lapse into after hours of hip swaying  in 90 degrees in the shade.

The superbly hip Chineke Orchestra is beautifully conducted by Wayne Marshall, and while all of its rank and file is to be saluted for their playing, a solo bow must be given to the terrific percussion section for its temperature-raising Latin drumming-on-steroids.

Callaloo is, in addition to being a lot of fun, an important composition from an immensely gifted young Canadian musician we have long associated with the long-hair repertoire he chooses for his piano concerts.

The ORCHID CLASSICS CD (ORC 100 100) includes an earlier composition by Goodyear: a youthful piano sonata into which by his own admission the 18-year young artist threw everything he could with surprisingly enticing results.

The CD’s hour long running time is partially occupied by the original band version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Goodyear and his friends give it an energetic reading at a good clip. But for me, the main event here remains what I assume may be Stewart Goodyear’s record debut as a composer to be reckoned with.

Cause for celebration!

Rafael de Acha    http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”