The Strad Issue: January 2010
Musicians: Christine Hoock, Glen Moore (double bass) Dietmar Lowka (double bass/percussion) Barbara Nussbaum (piano) Andreas Hinterseher (accordion)
Composer: Piazzolla, Tugcular, Hirai, Abou-Khalil, Towner, Lowka, Egilsson & Trad.
Ten tracks take us on a highly enjoyable musical journey around the world, Christine Hoock and her friends crossing stylistic and ethnic barriers as she displays the double bass skipping around lightly and singing with the sweetness of a cello. As a player who primarily works in the classics, she leaves her well-trodden paths here, opening the disc with smoochy slides that help create the hot and steamy world of Piazzolla’s Libertango.
The disc’s information is curiously unhelpful and leaves us to second guess who is involved in each track, but one of the most extended pieces, Piazzolla’s Flora’s Game, proves to be an excellently played piano solo from Barbara Nussbaum. I presume Dietmar Lowka’s seductive Giovanni Tranquillo comes from Hoock, with Hinterseher’s accordion adding a South American feel to this likeable piece of dance music.
Those primarily interested in bass virtuosity will enthuse at Hoock’s dexterity in Erdal Tugcular’s Colours of Anatolia, representing Turkey, and in the highly demanding Middle-Eastern sounds in Rabih Abou-Khalil’s You take my slippers, I’ll take your socks.
This is a typical studio product with everything cleanly detailed, and Hoock is provided with the right ambience for the silky smoothness of Ralph Tower’s Distant Hills.
DAVID DENTON
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