Hank Roberts: 22 Years From Now

This recording is a sonic delight, a feast for the ears. The components are Roberts, his cello, his voice, and two lovely acoustic spaces in a monastery in upstate New York. Such spaces add something to music that the finest digital effects will never match: perhaps it is their effect on the musicians that we perceive in the richness of sound they hold. Roberts reveals himself as a musician of great technique and eclectic tastes. His timbral control of his instrument, and the precision with which it is recorded, are superb. His compositions run the gamut from blue-tinged pentatonic musings to highly charged explorations of the cello’s upper ranges, when the cool, dark voice becomes something quite different. His vocalizations tend to blend with the sounds of his instrument in strange and subtle ways. Roberts creatively employs overdubs in a few spots, adding hypnotic pedal tones or a composed contrapuntal line.

Originally Published April 1, 1999