Sudecka Philharmonic Orchestra - David Kechley: The Walbrzych Project (2018)

David Kechley's latest album of orchestra music is a lot easier to listen to than pronounce. It draws from far flung parts of the world, and historical origins, and brings them into a grand compelling vision. The album features two large scale orchestra works recorded with dazzling clarity by the Sudeten Filharmonie in a small Polish town, Walbrzych (most recently in the news for supposedly being the subterranean hiding place of the infamous Nazi gold train.) The first work, Karasuma: A Fast Funk for Orchestra, started life as a classroom exercise at the Donisha Women's College in Kyoto, Japan, here Kechley demonstrated how acoustic musical fragments could be combined in various ways by computer. The work was so successful it was expanded and premiered by the Boston Pops in 1993. The other major work on the album is a symphony exploring various aspects of dreams, Wakeful Visions/ Moonless Dreams. Each of the four movements is associated with literary references; from the Old Testament, a haiku by Buson, the Witches scene from Shakespeare's Macbeth, and musings on remembrance by Marcel Proust. David Kechley recently retired from teaching at Williams College, Massachussetts. Taken as a whole this is a record of an expansive imagination and an intercontinental achievement.