RATING: 9 / 13 – “Shucks, buster, sign me up!”
Sit back, relax, and dim the lights. The symphony’s in town.
Like Sburb, this is less a collection of tracks and more a single hour-long concerto. But this album has a much greater scope. It’s ambitious, and the sound is superb. No danger of falling into that ‘uncanny valley’ of sampled instrumentation here – you may as well be sitting in the back of a hushed auditorium. It’s an absolutely professional production.
And I can’t help but like some of the specific choices Mr. Rosetti made in his compositions. He really tends to lay on the woodwinds. As a lapsed saxophone player, I can appreciate that.
With a strong main overture, the album is downright operatic in construction. Between the music, the cover art (which is fantastic and really coherent with the album), and the liner notes, the roots of a story are told. All of these details serve well to reinforce the idea of a stage production.
I don’t consider myself a really deep fan of classical music (though I do listen from time to time, especially 19th century era romantic composers like Rossini and Tchaikovsky). Over the course of a few months, I listened to this album many times, and I found myself liking it better and better with each play.