Park of Idols

for Leonid Gorokhov and Richard Hand

1. Jump Start
2. Cold Dark Matter
3. Fractured Loop
4. Malabar Hill
5. The Raw
6. Sharjah

When I was putting Park of Idols together, I asked Leonid and Richard for the names of musicians, composers, albums and pieces that they particularly admired or enjoyed. The wide-ranging list that came back helped to shape this diverse collection of six musical tributes.

The opening movement, Jump Start, is a quirky homage to Frank Zappa. Cold Dark Matter borrows its name from Cornelia Parker’s 1991 artwork that comprises the ragged fragments of the remains of a garden shed destroyed in a controlled explosion – familiar objects are seen from an unfamiliar perspective. In my piece, splinters of Shostakovich’s 14^th symphony are scattered, filtered, stretched and reassembled so that the original is only faintly suggested. Fractured Loop is built out of re-ordered cuttings from a Pat Metheney guitar solo superimposed over a cello pizzicato bass line and Malabar Hill is a reworking of a Mahavishnu Orchestra track by John McLaughlin. The fifth movement The Raw is for solo guitar and draws on the harmonic idiom of Allan Holdsworth. Sharjah is a tribute to the prog rock band King Crimson where the cellist imitates the guitar style of Robert Fripp.

Stephen Goss 2006

Patterson/Sutton Duo (Patrick Sutton, guitar and IGmberly Patterson, cello). Cold Matter. 

Works by Bogdanovic, Goss, Gnattali, and Zenamon. MSR Classics, MS 1430,2013. 

Stephen Goss' Park of Idols draws on this spirited composer's wide variery of stylistic experience playing the guitar. Sutton's playing in "Fractured Loop," with constant prestissimo rifling, is a highlight of the recording. The concluding "Sharjah" showcases the guitar with a range of sryles from pop strumming to wild arpeggios, and the duo's performance here 

brings Goss' work to an electrifying climax. Jim McCutcheon 

60 Soundboard Vol. 41 No. 1