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Alec Goldfarb — Shadows
(Bandcamp Long Echo 14, 2025, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-07-22

Shadows Cover art

Alec Goldfarb is a Brooklyn based guitarist and composer and a Hindustani classical musician known for blending elements of jazz, new music, and Indian classical traditions. Here, on Shadows, he does all of that and more with a ten-piece ensemble of instrumentalists and vocalists, both from North America and Asia. The album’s title, Shadows, refers to the tradition of shadow puppet theater, practiced throughout Java and Bali (and probably elsewhere as well) whereby a light is projected onto a cloth from behind, and various “shadow puppets” act out a story, with the audience viewing from in front, shadows of cut-out characters, with dialog and musical accompaniment (called wayang), a tradition that goes back centuries. What Goldfarb presents here, however, is anything but traditional — the instruments and sounds of those traditions mix freely with others from throughout Asia as well as western styles (primarily jazz) in a brilliant stew that is at once both mystical and majestic, shimmering with beauty. While Goldfarb composed all nine titles and plays guitar, his collaborators are credited with lyrics, some of the vocal melodies, and certain other parts for the wind instruments and rebab, the overall result is truly cosmic. Throughout 2022-23 Goldfarb spent time in Thailand, Indonesia (Jogjakarta in particular in central Java), Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore, listening and observing, immersing himself in the culture and music of that part of the world. The ensemble includes three vocalists, in addition to soprano sax, nay, cello, contrabass, gayageum (a Korean zither type instrument similar to a koto), rebab (two-string bowed instrument that is traditionally part of the gamelan ensemble), gender sandikala (the tuned metalophones used in the gamelan ensemble), vibraphone, keyboards, tabla, and conventional drumset. That’s a lot of sounds and voices, and to be fair they aren’t all playing at the same time on each of the nine cuts, but selectively chosen as needed to enrich the total fabric of ideas presented. The music can be challenging at times (many pieces are in unusual tunings and non-western scales) but never abrasive; the vocals may sound off-putting to those raised on western folk, blues and rock'n'roll, but there’s only one way to test the waters, and that’s to dive right in at the link below and immerse yourself.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Alec Goldfarb

More info
http://alecgoldfarb.bandcamp.com/album/shadows

 

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