Beyond The Sky is piano music at the highest level of creativity and joy. That Rob Schwimmer is ready, willing and able to meaningfully negotiate the composer's formalism of classical music and the improviser's freedom of jazz, blurring distinctions between both disciplines, is the mark of an original and intrepid artist, and part of what makes listening to this piano virtuoso's music such a serendipitous experience--even if representing his essential artistry, the variegated stylistic and harmonic splendors of these wide-ranging performances has proven something of a challenge. However, in perusing my listening notes it occurs to me that Schwimmer's music eludes easy categorization and turns of phrase such as "against all flags" seem to pop up again and again. Indeed, Schwimmer seems to relish the idea of punching a musical ticket to destinations unknown, somewhere beyond the sky.
That's because Rob Schwimmer's is a music of inclusion, both wry and ruminative, romantic and avant garde, minimalist yet expansive. The depth and breadth of Schwimmer's musical and imagistic vocabulary are such that I was quite startled to learn that Rob's wide-ranging stylistic lexicon and imposing technical gifts are neither begged nor borrowed, as this artist is primarily self-taught. Quite an achievement, after you've reveled in his sublime touch and vast palette of articulations, or taken the full measure of harmonic devices and voice leading that reveal a profound understanding of the entire keyboard tradition--resonating with classical references from Chopin through late Scriabin, Bach through Ravel and beyond, while his sense of space and pace, of tune and tempo, is just as deeply rooted in the work of George Gershwin and Bill Evans, Art Tatum and Paul Bley...yet beholden to none.
Schwimmer states, "Music should reflect not only the connections of one's life but also their contradictions." You can hear the implications of that approach in the lyricism and dissonance of his epic cinematic interpretation on "Stormy Weather," as remarkable a vision of the Harold Arlen classic as I've ever heard, what with its progressions from gong-like percussive thunder through dreamy harmonic transitions, as Schwimmer fashions a sonic canvas which suggests an equatorial clash of converging storm fronts and half-forgotten lovers.
You can hear a lot of creative give and take between father and son in the fanciful, nostalgic, harmonic variations Rob evokes on "I Would Talk With My Dad," one of his two settings for "Songs Without Words."
Such is the scope of the storytelling canvas Schwimmer chooses to paint upon, that his subtext is the entire history of the piano. That it sounds like a personal vision and not a cross-cultural collision is testament to the pianist's probing rhythmic instincts and harmonic curiosity, his touch and articulation, the manner in which he is able to summon up in the course of a single passage, let alone an entire piece, a vision of the piano's wide-ranging stylistic and structural expanse.
Rob achieves a phantasmagorical sense of coloration and contrast, of flotation and swing on two remarkable sets of "Hallucinations On Popular Songs." On "All The Things You Are" he alternates elements of stride with darkly impressionistic passages (leading me to envision a tête-à-tête between Willie "The Lion" Smith and Claude Debussy on the tail end of a three day bender in Harlem of the late 1920s), while "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" abounds with psychological and [auto]biographical allusions, contrasting passages of darkness and light--from the spectral, impressionistic intro to atmospheric chordal passages with their bluesy overtones and Ravel-like abstractions of thematic material over some dreamy left hand pulsations--before shuffling offstage in a tintinnabulous reverie of old black and white movies and gospel blues.
Rob follows that hallucination with "Never Never Land" from the Broadway musical Peter Pan, in which childlike memories are only very dimly recalled, superimposing some slightly astringent voices upon the changes, just to let the listener know that this land of make believe is even farther away than we originally suspected, perchance beyond the sky, though perhaps it was never real at all--an exceptionally touching performance
Schwimmer is supremely gifted at making himself disappear as his musical decisions take on a transparency and painterly sense of inevitability, all the better to illuminate the text in a song or an arrangement, which is why he has become a first call player for demanding singer-songwriters and arrangers the likes of Simon and Garfunkel and Arif Mardin.
Here, on selection after selection one can feel him emotionally ascending, towards freer and freer levels of expression, but that which is allusive never succumbs to the kind of self-referential cleverness that inevitably leaves most listeners behind. Rather, his structures always evince a playful, edgy, inquisitive quality--so much the better to counterbalance his romanticism. Thus the jagged symmetrical inversions of "Ostinato" offset the brooding lyricism of "Orpheus" or Rob's elegiac tribute to Clara Rockmore, "Empress of the Theremin", (the seminal electronic instrument introduced in 1919, upon which he is among the instrument's most gifted practitioners) on "Waltz For Clara" (from his Suite.) And when Rob reprises "Waltz For Clara" towards the end of this recital, his virtuoso turns on the theremin lend a decidedly operatic air to this lovely remembranza.
Elsewhere, Schwimmer never alights on one mood for too long. He chooses instead to take the listener on a more cosmic journey through his musical menagerie, hoping that we might all get lost, if only for a while, as it represents such an interesting challenge to then find one's way home. That spirit informs the heartfelt confessions of his love song "Holding You In My Arms," the mysterious little dances and prismatic distortions of his Four Miniatures, and the austere, yet extravagant explorations of 20th century tonality, contrapuntal freedom, and conversational interplay of Three Tone Poems, where he invokes extraordinary bell-like tones from the piano's upper register.
Rob Schwimmer still remembers what it was like to approach music with the innocence and wide-eyed enthusiasm of a child...a very wise child. A child in awe of this fulsome musical gift from an ineluctable universe, who now full-grown, offers thanks with every note, in every lovely gesture, in every explosive pairing of consonance and dissonance, as he reaches out beyond the sky, where all the prettiest notes and lost chords reside, posing a whole new series of questions for which there are no ready answers--only the promise of new adventures.