Another Musical Response to Coma

Those with a taste for particularly adventurous jazz musicians probably know about My Coma Dreams. This was a staged narrative conceived by Fred Hersch as a reflection on the medically induced coma he sustained in 2008 when he was hospitalized after losing the ability to get out of his own bathtub. A performance of that narrative was captured on video, and there is now a YouTube page where the entire 90-minute production can be viewed. The script for this production was written by Herschel Garfein, and was definitely not for the faint of heart.

Cover of the album being discussed (from the Amazon.com Web page)

When I first began to listen to Adam Palma’s Second Life, composed after sustaining a long coma, it was impossible to keep both Hersch’s experience and the transformation of that experience into music out of my head. However, there is nothing as clinical as Garfein’s script behind any of the thirteen tracks on Palma’s album. Instead, there are thirteen tracks of Palma playing acoustic guitar accompanied by the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio conducted by Agnieszka Duczmal.

Five of those tracks present original compositions by Palma orchestrated by Krzesimir Dębski. The overall rhetoric is one of self-indulgent schmalz, which, given Palma’s skillful finger-work, probably has more to do with his arrangements than with the music itself. Indeed, those arrangements not only jeopardize Palma’s expressiveness but they also make a gooey mess out of three tracks based on compositions by Frederick Chopin.

Mind you, it would be unfair to expect that Palma should reflect on his experience the same way that Hersch did. However, where Hersch has always found the “sweet spot” between musical rhetoric and an intense personal experience, Palma seems content to just evoke his skills as a guitarist for the sake of thematic material that never really excites what Hercule Poirot liked to call the “little grey cells.” Palma deserves a better platform for his guitar-playing.