Stephen Page Delivers An Alluring Set of Performances

A quite astounding release from Stephen Page delivers a beautiful set of pieces that revolve around jazz and classical approaches and deliver such lush tonality as it all comes together.

The Earthly Round album is it ensemble of orchestrated instrumentation, and Steven himself is a writer and saxophonist for the project. 

This showcases amazingly performed suites, and all of them bring a liveliness to the room.

Steven is joined by Alexandre Maynegre-Torra, who performs the piano, and all of it has this almost fantastical atmosphere, but with each track comes a certain set of moods and waves of intensities that come and go.

One of the things that grabs you most about this record is its ability to just feel alive and breathing.

The energy fluctuation is also pretty outstanding, and it feels almost like these players recorded everything live on the floor, right in the moment.

It seems as though they were feeding off each other's energies the whole time, just as a jazz ensemble or even classical orchestra might.

Of course, I wasn't there, so I'm not sure if it was recorded that way, but listening to the record, you end up feeding into that energy, and it has a way of sticking with you.

The saxophone performances across this record are outstanding, and certain pieces really stand tall in terms of showcasing these amazing techniques. The second track in called "Klockology" is a perfect example of this.

It shines as a whirlwind of intricate performance, but still with a soul that you latch onto.

As the album unfolds, you get pulled in more and more. This record becomes cinematic, invasive, flowing, and develops these characteristics that you can't really turn away from.

This is the kind of album that you listen to from beginning to end. Listening to one or two tracks won't give you the spectrum of what the full record has to offer.

This is the type of record that you listen to with headphones on so you can soak everything in because those fluctuations and energy, intensities, and all those characteristics that start developing throughout the record are something you don't want to miss.

Listening with headphones is one of the best ways to take all of those layers in.

But it's not really the layers and textures that grab you.  it's the liveliness of it all. The songs are indeed alive and breathing in their own right, and even in just one single track, you have a lot going on.

Instruments can bounce off of each other or flow together at any given moment. 

There are many changes in mood within one of these pieces.

The title track is a perfect example of this. "The Earthy Round (Redux)" is its gorgeous piece of music and expands a good 10 minutes in length. Throughout those 10 minutes you're taking for a journey, and if you close your eyes and listen to it, it will bring you to different places.

This is a great introduction to the record as well, simply because it does showcase those progressive changes, characteristics, and performances that you do hear throughout the record, although the album itself is almost ever-changing.

These pieces stand out on their own, but as a whole record, it's a brilliant escape that has this again, theatrical or cinematic undertone, and it really pulls you away from whatever you're doing and whatever you are and puts you in whole other worlds for glimpses of time.

What works so well about this kind of stuff is the heart and the performances. This is done because these guys have a real love for their craft and their instruments.

Stephen himself displays such passion for performing on the saxophone that it becomes a little engulfing in a good way.

I absolutely loved this record and suggest once again that you listen to it in full, from start to finish because it's one of the best ways to really do it.

What's great about this is that I am a guitar player and was just blown away by the technique and performances from the players on this record.

There were no guitars on the record, of course. However, as a player myself, listening to this just floored me. So much went into the performances and technique on this release that I was wrapped up in it all.

This was absolutely gorgeous, and you should definitely take a deep dive into it as soon as you possibly can.

This will affect you.

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