ROB MOSHER: 31 Chorales – Rob Mosher, composer & sop. sax/ Micah Killion, trumpet/ Peter Hess, bass clarinet/ Nathan Turner, tuba – Rob Mosher

ROB MOSHER: 31 Chorales – Rob Mosher, composer & soprano sax/ Micah Killion, trumpet/ Peter Hess, bass clarinet/ Nathan Turner, tuba – Rob Mosher, 69:54 ****:
Before his 31st birthday, ASCAP Award-winning composer and soprano saxophonist Rob Mosher challenged himself to compose 31 “Bach-style Chorales” in 31 days. The results have been recorded here, including five works for the small ensemble assembled for the project; all concerned trip the light fantastic boundary between mid-18th century lachrymose and 21st-century hip with a fun sense of the classical music absurd thrown in for good measure. It could have been crossover or “jazz,” but it is done with just enough instrumental class and compositional innocence that it sounds like a German town brought ahead in time; it may fans remind of the claim made by the great William Malloch, that the ideal instrumental combination to realize Bach’s Art of the Fugue was a saxophone quartet.
Inspired by J.S. Bach, the 31 instrumental chorales and 5 chamber works on the new recording run an intellectual’s subdued gamut from timeless harmonic striations to circus music to Kurt Weill. Meanwhile, Mosher’s brilliantly sequencing insures that the CD’s 37 micro tracks come together in an organic and convincing whole, although only two are more than than three minutes long.
“Classical methodology has always been at the center of how I write music,” says Mosher, and he rarely strays far from the formality and narrative issues that are the core of classical music. The appropriately honest sound was recorded at the Episcopal Church of Saint Mary-in-the-Highlands in Cold Spring, New York.
—Laurence Vittes