Ingram Marshall on Verdery Guitar Album

from the Amazon.com Web page for the Soepa album

Readers may recall that the San Francisco Performances tribute concert for Ingram Marshall this past Saturday included the solo guitar composition performed by Benjamin Verdery entitled “Soe-pa.” Verdery had set up a table to give away copies of his Soepa album, which concluded with Marshall’s work. The album also included four Prince songs, one of Verdery’s own compositions, and a few works by other composers, all of whom were unfamiliar to me.

I listened to the entire album this morning. I was glad to have my memory refreshed. I also enjoyed Verdery’s imaginative approach to the Prince tracks, which struck me as more innovative than the original recordings. On the other hand, after an initial listening, I have to say that Marshall’s work rises above all the other tracks. That may have something to do with the composer’s prankish approach to weaving a motif by Johann Sebastian Bach into his own music; but I also found his overall development technique to make a deeper impression.

As can be seen above, the hyperlink leads to an Amazon.com Web page; and I came away feeling that Marshall’s music made the album “worth the price of admission!”