Hello everyone,

On July 4, the album is finally available to the public, and the website http://www.starshipaurora.com/concertoofdeliverance.html is fully open to visitors. I'm also sending announcements to other lists and places, inviting people to visit the website for more information: album contents, music samples, profiles, composer's notes, reviews, etc. This is only a start but, incrementally it will be reach out in wider circles.

The announcement below is what I'm sending out to most places. With gratitude for Carolyn's and Eric's permissions, I've posted their reviews from last Fall on the website and also included excerpts in the announcements.

Thanks again to everyone here for your participation and support.

Best,

Monart

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Concerto of Deliverance is here!

Some of you may remember two years ago when I announced the project to create a Concerto of Deliverance by John Mills-Cockell. Now, on July 4, 2004, the album of the music is finally here! What does it sound like? What might it sound it? What should it sound like? Will it make a difference? Who decides? Now you can find out for yourself.

Information about the album -- its contents, music samples, profiles, composer's notes, reviews, etc. -- are available at http://www.starshipaurora.com/concertoofdeliverance.html

Reviewers of the work have included musicians and philosophers, with expectedly diverse responses. For readers on this list, I've appended excerpts from two of those reviews (go to the website for the authorships).


-Monart

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CONCERTO of DELIVERANCE, by John Mills-Cockell


...satisfying resolution...an integrated work...

...the music moves freely through American spiritual, American Indian, American western, Asian, Spanish, jazz, rock, symphonic, march, Gregorian chant, modern Persian, traditional Chinese, etc....

I also enjoy the blurring of the line between what is typically thought of as orchestral/classical/grownup music, and group/rock/kid music. My guess is that your most enthusiastic customers among objectivists will be the under 30 neo objectivist crowd, who are used to and eager for new sounds, different sounds, pretty themes that aren't pretty the way their parents like them...

The rhythm changes constantly. Even during the segments where it remains constant, Mills-Cockell varies the way the rhythm is played, or changes the synthesizer registration used to play it. The key changes constantly...

My own musical taste inclines toward the extremely complex, which is, I think, what explains my ability to enjoy this brand new piece despite my usual preferences for ancient music...

The piece is extremely linear, which is another feature I find endearing. Chords are arpeggiated throughout, so the structure and logic is perhaps less obvious to some people if their preference is for music that is chiefly made up a vertical chords. As might be expected given what I've said so far, I have a strong personal preference for perpetual motion and steady rhythms without percussion. I'm pleasantly surprised by this piece's ability to seduce me despite the fact that it is more like modern music and less like German baroque in this regard. The effect of constant movement is maintained partly by the tensions created by the elements I mentioned earlier, as well as the linear structure. I think it speaks to the universality of the music that Mills-Cockell is able to capture the attention of someone so happily entrenched in the early music tradition...

Sometimes Mills-Cockell weaves back and forth between acknowledgment/experience of pain and joy; sometimes the pain hovers in the background, unrecognized or forgotten but still a part of history, while fun and happiness take over. Evil lurks, that's just a fact: But it never wins. Nicely done...

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Monart has somehow mustered enough resources to be messing around at philanthropy, and has coughed up a sum big enough to commission a piece of music that runs an hour and nineteen minutes, by John Mills-Cockell, a composer whose work he has long loved.  He has furthermore involved himself in the production of a CD to bring this collection of pieces to market.  Pon's purpose here is to fulfill a truly wonderful goal: the commissioning of a work of music that would attempt to fill that august space created by Ayn Rand's evocative literary suggestion of a great work of music by her fictional greatest of modern composers, Richard Halley...

...what an immense suggestion this is for a piece of music!  Who among us admirers of Ayn Rand, those of us who are trained in the full range of classical Western harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration, would attempt to satisfy such an exalted specification without some trepidation?...

...John Mills-Cockell...is certainly a unique and interesting voice on the musical scene today.  I have enjoyed Mills- Cockell's earlier works, and I enjoyed this latest effort too...

There is something here to love.  Having underscored these points, I must say that I do not believe the work rises up to the standard demanded by Rand's Challenge...

This collection displays no more unity of theme, style, or any other aspect of construction, than I would expect to find in an album of songs collected on one CD by a pop singer... A bigger issue for me is that it doesn't rise to a high enough level of development.  There is great energy in some of its parts, but the ideas lack thematic development, unity, and richness of harmonic palette...

...I find absolutely beautiful the haunting solo figure for violin that is shortly joined by a clarinet in lovely counterpoint.  It aroused my expectation that this music might rise up to the level of its literary mandate.  But by the end of two minutes, with the introduction of the electronic sounds that repel me, a sort of flat-footed percussive shuffle reminiscent of much popular music, and the fact that the harmony has not budged a millimeter away from the tonic and dominant of C minor, well, sigh, I didn't have much hope for the remainder of the cycle...

Mills-Cockell operates intuitively, drawing from his natural inventiveness and gift for melody... he displays a lively talent for mustering interesting combinations of sound, and a lively ear for subtle rhythmic accompaniments of interesting percussion sounds.  There are interesting orchestral colors...

I predict that Monart's effort here may actually spawn something of a cottage industry in musical composition.  Thanks to Monart, maybe the wheels are set in motion to inspire composers for decades to come in the creation of many essays at a Concerto of Deliverance...

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