- Audio CD
- Number of Discs: 1
- Label: NETR
- ASIN: B00175G7DQ
- Other Editions: Audio CD | MP3 Download
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 100,938 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is an odd CD; I wanted to get an idea of Abigail Washburn's music ahead of a festival later in the summer where she will be performing. The instrumental arrangements are excellent, but the vocals are jarring and often irritating. The Chinese lyrics add an exotic element, but sound laboured and a little fake: Journey Home could be a beautiful song had she sung it in English. Nevertheless there are songs ('Oh Me, Oh My' and 'A Kazakh Melody', an instrumental) that almost make up for the album's shortcomings and make me want to give it another chance.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I saw Abigail at the Incredible String Band gig at the Barbican and knew immediately that she was a huge talent. When I heard this Album I was amazed at just how sofisticated and inventive she is. I love it better each time I hear it. And well done to the Sparrow Quartet. If you hear her other album, Song of the travelling daughter, you will be equally delighted.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
17 reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Fantastic
2 Jun 2008
Format:Audio CD
Every once in a while, a bluegrass album comes out that transcends the genre. Lots of people try, but it is hard to create truly fresh "newgrass". Coincidentally, Bela Fleck seems to be on most of these elusive albums! Maybe it's a sign. This CD follows in the footsteps of the Telluride Sessions, Appalachian Waltz and Appalachian Journey, and also Uncommon Ritual. But instead of a bluegrass and classical blend, this album takes a more traditional americana bluegrass feel and mixes it with a hint of MMW-like jazz song structures and even Chinese folk songs. This is fitting since this group played a lot in China, and Abigail has spent a long time studying Chinese folk tunes. The sound quality is awesome, with each instrument sparkling. Ben Sollee on cello and Casy Driessen on fiddle are also incredible; check out their solo albums. The true test of this formula is: Well all this sounds good but is this new mix of styles listenable and truly good music? The answer is a resounding YES.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Something Completely Different
26 July 2008
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Centuries ago in many a Silk Road caravansary, traveling musicians from various lands learned songs and instrument design from each other, and they also jammed. This album is the contemporary equivalent of those exchanges, for traditional bluegrass banjo and fiddle and European classical cello instruments, and Western avant-garde art music and old-time lyrics, are cast with Chinese language and East Asian tunes. Indeed, in one track, the tremolo of Abigail Washburn's double-stringed banjo mimics a Chinese pipa. The album varies on almost every song, taking us on a strange sonic journey from Kazakhstan to Appalachia, from a Central European salon to a New York experimental music club, yet not being anywhere because this is a peculiar fusion. It is entirely within the character of the wide-ranging Bela Fleck to produce, perform in, and help engineer this highly inventive exploration. The team was involved in the earlier, more coherent, and thereby better, album of Washburn, Song of the Traveling Daughter. In fact, that album was the seed for this elaboration. Yes, it is a pioneering blend of bluegrass sensitivity and timbre with occasional Asian melody, but it is also an echo of the past on the Silk Road. I like this album and hope that there will be even further developments.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet
17 July 2008
Format:Audio CD
I heard this group for the first time at the Vancouver Island Musicfest and was blown away. I've been listening to this CD over and over again since. Imagine an otherworldly blend of bluegrass, Chinese traditional, and 20th-century classical symphonic and imagine it done artfully, tastefully, beautifully. This kind of music experience lifts you out of the ordinary into another realm. Absolutely superb, surprising, refreshing, original. With this kind of talent out there doing this sort of thing, why would anyone buy the mass-produced pablum that seems to have gained dominance in the commercial music world? I am in love!
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