National Music Museum music by Tom Wolfe and Gene Bertoncini

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• published: 27 Jan 2015
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Alabama Music Office.com goes to Vermillion, South Dakota to visit the National Music Museum on the campus of the University of South Dakota. The music is selections by Tom Wolfe and Gene Bertoncini from their album, Floating On The Silence. *** Floating on the Silence Tom Wolfe's debut recording under his own name is a reunion of with his old teacher, jazz guitar master Gene Bertoncini. Wolfe, who was a graduate student under Bertoncini, has long since become a music educator, but this delightful duo guitar session occurred during an off day while they touring together. The result is a recording that should be considered essential for guitar students and jazz fans alike. From the first track to the last, both men are listening to one another, fluidly moving between playing lead and comping, playing beautiful variations of each piece while never losing sight of the melody. The music draws mostly from standards, bossa novas and famous jazz compositions, though Bertoncini contributed the lovely, bittersweet ballad "For Chet" and Wolfe the pensive "A Moment Alone." All the tracks are enjoyable, but the festive setting of Dizzy Gillespie's "Con Alma" produces the most fireworks. The only oversight is the (most likely accidental) omission of credit to the recording engineer, who did a brilliant job in capturing the essence of the duo's playing. Rating: StarStarStarStar Jim Santella - All About Jazz.com *** The National Music Museum (NMM) was founded on the campus of The University of South Dakota on July 1, 1973. It is housed in a lovingly restored Carnegie library building, built in 1910. The NMM's renowned collections of more than 15,000 American, European, and non-Western instruments are the most inclusive in the world, making the NMM the premier institution of its kind. Included are many of the earliest, best preserved, and historically most important musical instruments known to survive. State-of-the-art, self-guided multi-media tours allow visitors not only to see and hear many of the instruments, but also to learn more about them through curatorial commentary and videos. The NMM is the only place in the world where one can find two 18th-century grand pianos with the type of action conceived by the piano's inventor, Bartolomeo Cristofori. One, built in 1767 by Manuel Antunes of Lisbon, is the earliest signed and dated piano by a Portuguese maker; the other, built by Louis Bas in Villeneuve lès Avignon in 1781, is the earliest extant French grand piano. Other extraordinary keyboards include both a Neapolitan virginal and harpsichord (ca. 1530-1535), three 17th-century Flemish harpsichords (two by Andreas Ruckers), 17th- and 18th-century English, German, Portuguese, and French harpsichords, and German and Swedish clavichords. The NMM's holdings of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch woodwind instruments by such makers as Richard Haka, Hendrik Richters, Philip Borkens, Abraham van Aardenberg, Jan Juriaensz van Heerde, and Jan Steenbergen, are unique outside of The Netherlands. The NMM's holdings by 17th- and 18th-century Nürnberg makers, including members of the Denner, Ehe, Haas, Oberlender, and Steinmetz families, as well as Ernst Busch, Paul Hainlein, Johann Benedikt Gahn, Johann Carl Kodisch, Leonhard Maussiel, Michael Nagel, and Paulus Schmidt, are unique outside of Germany. Much more at: http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/factsheet.html