Carman Moore New Music Festival
The MDI Islander newspaper review of The 2009 Carman Moore New Music Festival on Swan's Island:
"On the afternoon of August 22, 2009 the FIRST ANNUAL CARMAN MOORE NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL got underway before a small but highly-enthusiastic crowd on glorious Swan's Island, Maine. A day that threatened monster waves and thunderstorms and began under dense fog was instead transformed by concert time into one of sun and great joy by Mother Nature aided by a jazz combo of great musical warmth and bursts of sudden heat.
Made up of Chicago-based drummer Steve Hunt, New York pianist and composer Eric Johnson, Maine-man festival-founder/bassist Kyle Jones, and his flutist daughter , the group pulled very-personal wonders from such jazz classics as Coltrane's "Impressions" and "My Favorite Things" and Miles Davis' "Miles Ahead," with Mr. Johnson's flying fingers and Hunt's surgical strokes especially notable. Then followed Kyle Jones' very lovely and well-crafted composition "Meltdown" followed by Johnson's intricate and multi-paced tribute to a magical spot in Trinidad called "Las Cuevas." And when all seems said and done, one can still top it all off with a cherry called the blues. And that these excellent musicians did with imagination, funk, and aplomb. Rocking hard, they suddenly followed Mr. Johnson into a lovely soft and low penultimate section before bursting forth to close it to a great round of audience applause.
Before closing, Mr. Jones introduced world-renowned composer Carman Moore and called upon his flutist daughter to play two flute works by the New York master, one of which "Trio Cell" Mr. Moore had composed for her. Both "Trio Cell" and "Shadows (for flute and Echo device)" are classical solo-flute works evoking both mystery and warmth, qualities that danced beautifully with the sounds of the nearby waves under Ms. Somers- Jones light and personal renditions. Then closing all, as part afterthought and part natural response, Mr. Moore went to the keyboard and joined Ms. Somers-Jones in the improvisation of a short piece that seemed to rivet and delight the crowd. One has no doubt that Swan's Island will be calling for the 2nd Annual Festival and finding itself with a much larger, though hardly more enthusiastic audience than this one."Carman Moore New Music Festival Coming August 2012!
