Album Review For Ian Maksin “The Alchemist”
Composed and Performed by Ian Maksin
Review written by Kerry Barnes
Track 1. The Great Sphynx
This remarkable album dominated by the cello, is a musical journey through space and time and inspired by Paolo Coelho’s story. Drums of great power come to greet me, and a spark of cymbalesque crash suddenly pricks my ears……this sounds very tribal to me. A gritty, scratchy cello starts to play and a dust of rosin is in the air, what mastery!! A four-four tempo and minor tonality fits perfectly for this mood, dark and slightly troubling. Ian’s playing is now on ‘looping or recorded layering’ giving the sound a dizzying depth and double-stopping. It’s hard to fit all this into my head so early on!!
Now, the main thematics and melodies come in from Ian’s cello, embellishments fill the air and transports me to the Middle East the way it snags on a type of ‘mordent’. This is serious work here, and Ian ‘bends’ his notes to sound like an electric guitar. This cello is wailing, weeping like a dusky maiden in distress, totally beautiful. I can even hear a type of ‘Irish twiddle’ and the music momentarily takes me to the great ‘River Dance’ sensations. Now Ian is much higher up the stringed register on cello positively moaning, and bordering on hysteria!!! His intonation is perfect and the trilling is truly virtuosic. Am also loving the ‘descending portamente’ which then lead into a fading out. Wow, what a great first track!!
Track 2. Soul of the Water.
Low bowing, sustained for our delight. An attack of melancholy material with again, double-stopping. (I tried this once on the violin and it is very difficult to do!!) Here Ian shows great strength, and I can hear many instances of classical cello playing, with the odd notes here and there of the great concerto by Elgar. He dives down to the very bottom and shows off his ascending portamente playing, this I really love. Makes me feel very emotional and stirred up. Am loving the repeated motif that goes lower and lower each time, and his use of rubato is masterful. Ian possesses a sensational vibrato technique, ornamented beautifully too. This gorgeously scrolled instrument plays with time in ‘ad-libitum’, whenever he wants, he is playing with us!! I sense the Coda coming, which pulls us down to the murky depths, against our will, he is in complete control of my soul.
Track 3. The Two Stones.
I sense the clicking heels of a marvellous Michael Jackson, just coming in to view, pulsating. A deep murmuring cello is in continuum, grumbling and agitated. In this deep world there is an unbridled tension, stretching out like an elastic band ready to ping. Ian is a great lover of ‘being in a minor key’ and I get why, this music just needs it!! The clever harmonies of layering and looping is another loved musical device by Ian, this amazing cellist from Russia. (I feel we have a slight connection as my favourite composer of all time is Rachmaninov). ‘Repeated-Note’ playing is hard enough on the piano, but here on his beloved cello, Ian makes it sound like child’s play!!!! They are attacking and full of a staccato terrain, absolutely brilliant!! The gentle percussion starts to thicken as Ian flies up into the heavenly high notes register, right up into the atmosphere. Wow…….’tremolando ornaments’ in complete vibration, quite dizzying in their virtuosity!! Now the musical space dilutes and we listen carefully to what comes next. Well, double-stopping and long lingering bows of deep reverberation alternated with detached puckering. I sense a ‘rallentando’ and a ‘rattlesnake’ shimmers through my body as it comes out from it’s hiding place. Such descriptive playing at the highest level. Well done Ian!!
Track 4. The Caravan.
Ian’s ‘pizzicato’ is on fire, how he keeps it so steady is beyond me!! It’s a very long intro too, making it even harder to control, but he does it beautifully. This whole track has a ‘percussive lick’ throughout and is very catchy indeed, I love it!!! It proves to be a great rhythmical bedrock for the cello to play whatever it wants. There’s almost a Spanish hand-clap going on. The looping and layering is essential for this sound, very clever musical device, perfect for composition. Ok the icing on this cake, long and sweeping bows with a slight bend on the string, almost like he’s correcting a sharp or a flat. The ‘triplet’ playing is sensational. Ian’s high up the neck playing sounds like a gorgeous female vocal, as a dusky maiden dances with frenzy, her jewelled belly button hanging on for dear life!! This music courses through a strong breeze, just like Ian’s windswept hair, lovely locks born in an authentic Russian origin. The last moments of this monumental piece rest in a deep Perfect 5 th, bowed to perfection, fading and letting us down gently.
Track 5. The Oasis.
Ooh, lovely, here we have a pizzicato intro from heaven in a Bach Baroque mode, a much more classical structure from Ian. A tune that makes perfect sense with predictable phrasing and incredible polyphonic work, and I wonder whether this is steeped in Ian’s incredible talent of being able to sing in 20 different languages!! Sounding happier here. Ian continues the strand-building work until eventually telescoping down to more pizzicato but with beautiful breathing and spacing. This is a beautifully recorded album indeed. To close, an episode of cadenza like introduction in reverse, ending with a flat-finger harmonic pointing to the sky. Wonderful stuff.
Track 6. Child of the Desert.
A lovely walking pace with sand under feet, maybe the Compound time signatures of six-eight or twelve eight. The score is peppered with a ‘popular’ drum riff that continues throughout, and there is a ‘melodic-motif’ with wonderfully shaped phrases. Insistent pausing gives space and time, allowing us to think but also to expect. There is tender and sensitive playing here from Ian, really worldly and deeply known. I love it when there is a singable tune! Ian seems to excel in the upper register of his instrument, an instrument that has spanned over 5 albums that I know of, and one that can play in almost every genre. To close again, the solo cello has the last word and the beautiful hourglass stringed wonder keeps the volume for us.
Track 7. Sacred Fire.
A sacred and ritualistic ceremony is at play here with spike pizzicato and complimented with the long smooth playing of Ian’s main tune. Harmonic 3rds descend beautifully and gradually this forest thickens. The quadruple measure mourns a cello split into 2 or 3 layers, relying on repetition (just like Mozart!!) Intensity grows like Contrapuntal Stretto in Fugue, and you can feel Ian’s muscularity dominating his fretboard. A far away echo leaves us for a moment. A 3 note broken chord is plucked to perfection, sacred and ordered. There is clever use of rubato, masterfully stretched like an elastic band, bending this melody to death. Dying embers fizzle out and breathe into an oblivion. Wow!!
Track 8. The Great Treasure.
The opening rhythmical plucking is certainly a treasure, decorated by tambourine shakes, just like that old snake again! Great for musical punctuation. An exotic downward ‘glissando’ from a scale I do not know, repeats for good measure, and I can just about pick out some on purpose dissonance. Am loving Ian’s use of mordent like embellishments as he slides around the long neck, reaching for the squeals of eroticism!! Here and there I spy little extraneous recording noises, but they enhance this sound world and really fit nicely. How Ian plucks in octaves is beyond me, I have never heard such cello virtuosity before, this is mind blowing!!! He toys with us, dancing, teasing everyone in the room, we are all hypnotised. Another master stroke here…..the percussion is steady and sticks to a metronomic pace, while Ian has a shed load of his own mental time signatures, he is in battle here! Such musical genius must be borne in him alone since the age of 3 years old when music came into his young life. I imagine by now there are bow hairs hanging off and waiting to be trimmed from all this passion!! Ian fades out in echoed ornaments. Very impressive indeed!!!
Track 9. Broken Wings.
Another plucked to perfection introduction with a beautifully constructed episode, gorgeous phrasing, wonderful vibrato and a sense of the Baroque, rather like the Bach G major suite. Ian makes this cello cry with emotion, patterning the harmonic in triple time. Played with goose-bump feeling of the highest order. The first square of subject is punctuated fleetingly by a single beat ‘tierce de picardie’, I grab it while I can!! The double layering of polyphonic melody is to die for, and I think this form has played a big part in Ian’s developmental studies growing up, he seems to favour it. This music is so sad and melancholy and shares arco and pizz in great proportions and tantalizes us with 3 against 2 rhythm making, and with such ease. Ian is also very confident playing as high up the neck as you can reach, like a soprano singing ‘Summertime’ from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, up there with the clouds. A gentle rallentando and raised 7th beautifully resolved is our closing, resting peacefully on the final root-note. I exhale.
Track 10. The Alchemist.
Title track. Hypnotic drums on the 3rd beat of opening bars gently accented for our logical minds, we have a thread. Do I hear a ‘major key’??? how lovely!!! Am loving the gritty scraping of rosin dust on a pure mathematic. Ooh, do I hear a violin in folk mode playing flatly with no vibrato, what a contrast. (or it may be high neck cello??) Suddenly, a curved spike of sound ski’s downwards on a slope of electricity, followed by repeated notes so fast you can hardly hear them!! Some little snapshots remind me of ‘Sting’s music, but not copied, it has it’s own voice. The tapestry builds and builds, thicker and thicker, chaotic and frenzied, I love it!!! The rattlesnake is back!!
Track 11. White Sun.
I don’t think there’s a track on earth that could beat this one!!!! Truly amazing!!! Over 7 minutes in duration and with surprises round every corner and twist and turn. Ian plays with time and connects irregular time signatures neatly together. I was trying to count with him but the goal posts kept moving!! The opening pizzicato sounds arresting and we wonder what comes next, trying to control all the ‘off-beat’ patterns. This track very much reminds me of the music of the Zoe Rhaman Trio who I have seen live in the UK, she too uses that lovely effect of playing the main theme in unison with the rest of the band. The technical difficulties of Ian’s playing is off the chart here, pyrotechnics all the way!! It’s absolutely gripping and shows just how much of a ‘puppet-master’ he is. At 4.16 a Cadenza begins, a cadenza of unbelievable calibre, it’s hard to keep up!! He knows the anatomy of the cello, his cello, extremely well and has total self belief. His bow acts as a ‘baton’ directing the sounds wherever it wants to go. It’s fluid and mind blowing, with purity of intention. That’s all I can say……just WOW!!!!!
Track 12. Becoming the Wind.
Yes, Ian certainly has the wind beneath his wings here, floating on cello thermals and singing his heart out. Fairly mournful in melody. But before that are the intense repeated notes again, which Ian is so good at, keeping in time with all the looping and layering. He literally attacks his instrument, while his tuning pegs hang on for dear life!! The drumming of clans people and accented on the 1st and 3rd beats of the bar tell their story and somehow remind me of Henry the 8th ’s tudor court proceedings, fixated upon their art. The melody rises a little bit at a time, increasing the tension and the ladies at Henry’s court are breathing their heavy busts!! There’s good intonation high up the neck again and there’s a certain freedom in this tension, while the wind flows through his gorgeous dark locks of hair. Ian steps back a little, briefly on the back burner and grumbles out in the deep. A gentle whip of the cymbals in light conversation as everything starts to die down. Oooh, a stately string-quartet plays for us as we sit in the chamber room, full of people with perfect posture, I absolutely adore string quartets. We all look at each other, knowing that this recital from heaven on earth is coming to an end, we welcome the last rattle and witness the bow leaving the string in great style. Ian must be totally spent now, he’s given us every atom of energy in his possession and richly deserves a standing ovation!!! Bravo!!! E N D
Composed and Performed by Ian Maksin
Review written by Kerry Barnes
Track 1. The Great Sphynx
This remarkable album dominated by the cello, is a musical journey through space and time and inspired by Paolo Coelho’s story. Drums of great power come to greet me, and a spark of cymbalesque crash suddenly pricks my ears……this sounds very tribal to me. A gritty, scratchy cello starts to play and a dust of rosin is in the air, what mastery!! A four-four tempo and minor tonality fits perfectly for this mood, dark and slightly troubling. Ian’s playing is now on ‘looping or recorded layering’ giving the sound a dizzying depth and double-stopping. It’s hard to fit all this into my head so early on!!
Now, the main thematics and melodies come in from Ian’s cello, embellishments fill the air and transports me to the Middle East the way it snags on a type of ‘mordent’. This is serious work here, and Ian ‘bends’ his notes to sound like an electric guitar. This cello is wailing, weeping like a dusky maiden in distress, totally beautiful. I can even hear a type of ‘Irish twiddle’ and the music momentarily takes me to the great ‘River Dance’ sensations. Now Ian is much higher up the stringed register on cello positively moaning, and bordering on hysteria!!! His intonation is perfect and the trilling is truly virtuosic. Am also loving the ‘descending portamente’ which then lead into a fading out. Wow, what a great first track!!
Track 2. Soul of the Water.
Low bowing, sustained for our delight. An attack of melancholy material with again, double-stopping. (I tried this once on the violin and it is very difficult to do!!) Here Ian shows great strength, and I can hear many instances of classical cello playing, with the odd notes here and there of the great concerto by Elgar. He dives down to the very bottom and shows off his ascending portamente playing, this I really love. Makes me feel very emotional and stirred up. Am loving the repeated motif that goes lower and lower each time, and his use of rubato is masterful. Ian possesses a sensational vibrato technique, ornamented beautifully too. This gorgeously scrolled instrument plays with time in ‘ad-libitum’, whenever he wants, he is playing with us!! I sense the Coda coming, which pulls us down to the murky depths, against our will, he is in complete control of my soul.
Track 3. The Two Stones.
I sense the clicking heels of a marvellous Michael Jackson, just coming in to view, pulsating. A deep murmuring cello is in continuum, grumbling and agitated. In this deep world there is an unbridled tension, stretching out like an elastic band ready to ping. Ian is a great lover of ‘being in a minor key’ and I get why, this music just needs it!! The clever harmonies of layering and looping is another loved musical device by Ian, this amazing cellist from Russia. (I feel we have a slight connection as my favourite composer of all time is Rachmaninov). ‘Repeated-Note’ playing is hard enough on the piano, but here on his beloved cello, Ian makes it sound like child’s play!!!! They are attacking and full of a staccato terrain, absolutely brilliant!! The gentle percussion starts to thicken as Ian flies up into the heavenly high notes register, right up into the atmosphere. Wow…….’tremolando ornaments’ in complete vibration, quite dizzying in their virtuosity!! Now the musical space dilutes and we listen carefully to what comes next. Well, double-stopping and long lingering bows of deep reverberation alternated with detached puckering. I sense a ‘rallentando’ and a ‘rattlesnake’ shimmers through my body as it comes out from it’s hiding place. Such descriptive playing at the highest level. Well done Ian!!
Track 4. The Caravan.
Ian’s ‘pizzicato’ is on fire, how he keeps it so steady is beyond me!! It’s a very long intro too, making it even harder to control, but he does it beautifully. This whole track has a ‘percussive lick’ throughout and is very catchy indeed, I love it!!! It proves to be a great rhythmical bedrock for the cello to play whatever it wants. There’s almost a Spanish hand-clap going on. The looping and layering is essential for this sound, very clever musical device, perfect for composition. Ok the icing on this cake, long and sweeping bows with a slight bend on the string, almost like he’s correcting a sharp or a flat. The ‘triplet’ playing is sensational. Ian’s high up the neck playing sounds like a gorgeous female vocal, as a dusky maiden dances with frenzy, her jewelled belly button hanging on for dear life!! This music courses through a strong breeze, just like Ian’s windswept hair, lovely locks born in an authentic Russian origin. The last moments of this monumental piece rest in a deep Perfect 5 th, bowed to perfection, fading and letting us down gently.
Track 5. The Oasis.
Ooh, lovely, here we have a pizzicato intro from heaven in a Bach Baroque mode, a much more classical structure from Ian. A tune that makes perfect sense with predictable phrasing and incredible polyphonic work, and I wonder whether this is steeped in Ian’s incredible talent of being able to sing in 20 different languages!! Sounding happier here. Ian continues the strand-building work until eventually telescoping down to more pizzicato but with beautiful breathing and spacing. This is a beautifully recorded album indeed. To close, an episode of cadenza like introduction in reverse, ending with a flat-finger harmonic pointing to the sky. Wonderful stuff.
Track 6. Child of the Desert.
A lovely walking pace with sand under feet, maybe the Compound time signatures of six-eight or twelve eight. The score is peppered with a ‘popular’ drum riff that continues throughout, and there is a ‘melodic-motif’ with wonderfully shaped phrases. Insistent pausing gives space and time, allowing us to think but also to expect. There is tender and sensitive playing here from Ian, really worldly and deeply known. I love it when there is a singable tune! Ian seems to excel in the upper register of his instrument, an instrument that has spanned over 5 albums that I know of, and one that can play in almost every genre. To close again, the solo cello has the last word and the beautiful hourglass stringed wonder keeps the volume for us.
Track 7. Sacred Fire.
A sacred and ritualistic ceremony is at play here with spike pizzicato and complimented with the long smooth playing of Ian’s main tune. Harmonic 3rds descend beautifully and gradually this forest thickens. The quadruple measure mourns a cello split into 2 or 3 layers, relying on repetition (just like Mozart!!) Intensity grows like Contrapuntal Stretto in Fugue, and you can feel Ian’s muscularity dominating his fretboard. A far away echo leaves us for a moment. A 3 note broken chord is plucked to perfection, sacred and ordered. There is clever use of rubato, masterfully stretched like an elastic band, bending this melody to death. Dying embers fizzle out and breathe into an oblivion. Wow!!
Track 8. The Great Treasure.
The opening rhythmical plucking is certainly a treasure, decorated by tambourine shakes, just like that old snake again! Great for musical punctuation. An exotic downward ‘glissando’ from a scale I do not know, repeats for good measure, and I can just about pick out some on purpose dissonance. Am loving Ian’s use of mordent like embellishments as he slides around the long neck, reaching for the squeals of eroticism!! Here and there I spy little extraneous recording noises, but they enhance this sound world and really fit nicely. How Ian plucks in octaves is beyond me, I have never heard such cello virtuosity before, this is mind blowing!!! He toys with us, dancing, teasing everyone in the room, we are all hypnotised. Another master stroke here…..the percussion is steady and sticks to a metronomic pace, while Ian has a shed load of his own mental time signatures, he is in battle here! Such musical genius must be borne in him alone since the age of 3 years old when music came into his young life. I imagine by now there are bow hairs hanging off and waiting to be trimmed from all this passion!! Ian fades out in echoed ornaments. Very impressive indeed!!!
Track 9. Broken Wings.
Another plucked to perfection introduction with a beautifully constructed episode, gorgeous phrasing, wonderful vibrato and a sense of the Baroque, rather like the Bach G major suite. Ian makes this cello cry with emotion, patterning the harmonic in triple time. Played with goose-bump feeling of the highest order. The first square of subject is punctuated fleetingly by a single beat ‘tierce de picardie’, I grab it while I can!! The double layering of polyphonic melody is to die for, and I think this form has played a big part in Ian’s developmental studies growing up, he seems to favour it. This music is so sad and melancholy and shares arco and pizz in great proportions and tantalizes us with 3 against 2 rhythm making, and with such ease. Ian is also very confident playing as high up the neck as you can reach, like a soprano singing ‘Summertime’ from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, up there with the clouds. A gentle rallentando and raised 7th beautifully resolved is our closing, resting peacefully on the final root-note. I exhale.
Track 10. The Alchemist.
Title track. Hypnotic drums on the 3rd beat of opening bars gently accented for our logical minds, we have a thread. Do I hear a ‘major key’??? how lovely!!! Am loving the gritty scraping of rosin dust on a pure mathematic. Ooh, do I hear a violin in folk mode playing flatly with no vibrato, what a contrast. (or it may be high neck cello??) Suddenly, a curved spike of sound ski’s downwards on a slope of electricity, followed by repeated notes so fast you can hardly hear them!! Some little snapshots remind me of ‘Sting’s music, but not copied, it has it’s own voice. The tapestry builds and builds, thicker and thicker, chaotic and frenzied, I love it!!! The rattlesnake is back!!
Track 11. White Sun.
I don’t think there’s a track on earth that could beat this one!!!! Truly amazing!!! Over 7 minutes in duration and with surprises round every corner and twist and turn. Ian plays with time and connects irregular time signatures neatly together. I was trying to count with him but the goal posts kept moving!! The opening pizzicato sounds arresting and we wonder what comes next, trying to control all the ‘off-beat’ patterns. This track very much reminds me of the music of the Zoe Rhaman Trio who I have seen live in the UK, she too uses that lovely effect of playing the main theme in unison with the rest of the band. The technical difficulties of Ian’s playing is off the chart here, pyrotechnics all the way!! It’s absolutely gripping and shows just how much of a ‘puppet-master’ he is. At 4.16 a Cadenza begins, a cadenza of unbelievable calibre, it’s hard to keep up!! He knows the anatomy of the cello, his cello, extremely well and has total self belief. His bow acts as a ‘baton’ directing the sounds wherever it wants to go. It’s fluid and mind blowing, with purity of intention. That’s all I can say……just WOW!!!!!
Track 12. Becoming the Wind.
Yes, Ian certainly has the wind beneath his wings here, floating on cello thermals and singing his heart out. Fairly mournful in melody. But before that are the intense repeated notes again, which Ian is so good at, keeping in time with all the looping and layering. He literally attacks his instrument, while his tuning pegs hang on for dear life!! The drumming of clans people and accented on the 1st and 3rd beats of the bar tell their story and somehow remind me of Henry the 8th ’s tudor court proceedings, fixated upon their art. The melody rises a little bit at a time, increasing the tension and the ladies at Henry’s court are breathing their heavy busts!! There’s good intonation high up the neck again and there’s a certain freedom in this tension, while the wind flows through his gorgeous dark locks of hair. Ian steps back a little, briefly on the back burner and grumbles out in the deep. A gentle whip of the cymbals in light conversation as everything starts to die down. Oooh, a stately string-quartet plays for us as we sit in the chamber room, full of people with perfect posture, I absolutely adore string quartets. We all look at each other, knowing that this recital from heaven on earth is coming to an end, we welcome the last rattle and witness the bow leaving the string in great style. Ian must be totally spent now, he’s given us every atom of energy in his possession and richly deserves a standing ovation!!! Bravo!!! E N D