Michael Nix - "Aperçu" Album Review
Michael Nix - "Aperçu" Album Review
Overall, Aperçu is an interesting experiment in the world of classical banjo music, but does not live up to Nix's vision.
Michael Nix is a composer and performer on classical guitar, banjo, and banjo variants. Featured on his new album is an instrument of his own invention, the seven-string banjar. A combination of a classical guitar and a banjo, the banjar lends itself to Nix's background and style. Aperçu, released by Parma Recording's Big Round Records (where it is available for streaming and/or purchase), is an album dedicated to Nix's vision of the New Classic Banjo Project and features works by himself alongside four other contemporary composers. All works were written specifically for Nix and his hybrid banjar.
Nix's mission for the New Classic Banjo Project is to 'develop and record a modern classical banjo repertoire'. However, his own compositions do not align with this narrative. Aperçu has over twenty tracks on the album, a large majority being short works by Nix himself. These pieces do little to promote the banjar as a true contemporary classical instrument, and only continue to push mocking tropes of corny banjo music. Not to mention, compositionally, Nix's pieces are much closer to drafts and sketches than a completed work. Even with the adapted instrument, Nix treats the banjar as a traditional classical guitar with an added high G pedal banjo string, without fully utilizing the scope of possible sounds.
The banjo clichés do not end with Nix's own works. The longest track on the album, NixPix, by composer and arranger Clifton J. Noble Jr., is a ten minute long, insufferable hike through outdated stereotypes. After the first ten seconds of plucking, Noble has already disinterested the audience. NixPix would be better fitted being played in the background of a movie, while the camera pans across a swamp and focuses onto a well-known green frog.
Out of a lot of music on this album, only one piece is worth being considered part of Nix's new classical banjo canon. Thomas Schuttenhelm's Keningale's Mystery Serenade immediately catches the ear and allows the instrument to truly be expressive in timbre. Mixing clawhammer, picking, and harmonics, which resonant quite wonderfully on Nix's banjar, the serenade mixes the alluring and peculiar.
Overall, Aperçu is an interesting experiment in the world of classical banjo music, but does not live up to Nix's vision. Whether purposefully or accidently, most of the tracks come off as continuing to mock the banjo rather than advocate its place within contemporary classical music. While a few of Nix's short musical sketches and Schuttenhelm's Serenade are charming, the album as a whole is unfortunately disappointing.
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