I decided to review Tim Brady’s symphony for solo electric guitar without referring to the booklet notes, nor reading the titles for each of its 18 short movements, thereby letting the music speak for its unusual and quite arresting self. The work is like an autobiography of the electric guitar, whose component parts add up to a compendium of styles and techniques, as well as various electronic add-ons that one associates with innovative guitarists like Les Paul, Jimi Hendrix, John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck, Bill Frisell, Derek Bailey, and Eugene Chadbourne. And, of course, Tim Brady himself.
The first section comprises a solo guitar line full of fuzz and distortion that quickly changes into a cleaner sounding repeating rhythm that is apparently looped, over which Brady goes wild. No. 2, by contrast, features long sustained bending lines supported by gentle arpeggiated figurations. Fast moving parallel chords characterize No. 3, whose sonorities give the impression of analog tape played backwards. The beautifully undulating No. 4 might be described as harmonically upgraded Michael Hedges, while No. 5 is an introspective study in harmonics.
The seventh piece returns to fast solo lines doubled in octaves; its harmonic language evokes the Danse de la fureur from from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. No. 9 features a rhythmically irregular loop upon which Brady constructs solo lines that grow denser and more complex as they unfold. What kind of effects processor produces No. 12’s long sustained dissonant chords, if that’s indeed the case? I like No. 14’s rhythmic asymmetry and inventive manipulation of registers: Béla Bartók meets Frank Zappa, perhaps. No. 16 returns to unison lines that are faster and grungier than before. The concluding No. 18 has the impact of an organ chorale, but with recollections of the fast-moving distorted material from previous sections.
To be sure, this work doesn’t convey the breadth and cumulative power that informs Brady’s larger-movement creations in symphonic form. Yet the guitar symphony ultimately holds together by virtue of Brady’s sense of proportion, his intelligent juxtapositions of textural contrasts, and, most importantly, his inherent creativity. Well worth hearing.
