Review: music by Rob Clearfield

I value very much Louis R. Carlozo's reviews of music for The Christian Century. I've culled his lists before to make my own to-listen-to list. So based on a review of several releases by a single musician, I brought three recordings by Rob Clearfield. (To read the whole review you'll have to register and log on online, or subscribe to CC, find it at a library, or borrow my copy; sorry.)

Paisajes de Sudamerica ( + + + ) is music for guitar quartet hearkening from South America. (Clearfield is one of the players, a student of Alfonso Chaco'n.) I was reminded somewhat of Grete Dollitz' guitar program on the Public Broadcasting station in Richmond; for folks already into guitar music, this will no doubt be a great recording to have. For the rest of us, eh, a little goes a long way. Each of the 10 tracks seems to be a medley of sorts of music from a particular South American country. It's fine as far as it goes, but I could have used a little more help from the liner notes.

This is not the ending ( + + + ) is a recording by Information Superhighway, a "jazz-inflected" group Clearfield leads. Jazz really isn't my realm, so I won't say too much. I didn't find anything impossible to listen to for my taste, but by the same token nothing called out to me to want to hear more.

I was intrigued by an album of worship songs by Clearfield, The beauty that we live in ( + + + ), with vocalist Bethany Hamilton. The lyrics are fine in all the songs (perhaps the best thing going for this album is the poetry), but I got rather weary of a similar melodic contour in several of the songs. Tracks 1, 2 and 4 all use a scale-like pattern as the core of the melody. Track 4, All that you have made, does take an adventuresome harmonic journey in its coda. I found myself wishing for something more substantial musically from these songs though. Track 3, This water, could prove quite useful for baptism services in either a traditional/formal or contemporary/informal setting. I haven't searched for the chart, but hope it's available. The last track, Hands and feet, is very much a jazz sounding song; my teen aged son noticed it right-away. It could find a place in a traditional service in which the jazz idiom is welcomed and has already found a niche, but probably not in a more contemporary service, that being the implication of my son's raised eyebrow and smirk.