COMPOSERS: Sevara Nazarkhan
LABELS: Real World
WORKS: Yol Bolsin
PERFORMER: Sevara Nazarkhan
CATALOGUE NO: 5 43206 2
Time-honoured Uzbek material gets a contemporary take in SEVARA NAZARKHAN’s CD. The tunes, the style and the instruments are traditional, and Nazarkhan – the daughter of professional folk-music teachers – sings them with a warmth of feeling all the more intense for its serene delivery.
Arrangements and production are lightly 21st-century and increasingly intrusive, from the Satie-like pairs of chords in the second song to the layers of studio sounds that show up later. Again, somebody has gone over the top with extraneous material and, coupled with a preponderance of moderate pace, the outcome is needlessly frustrating.