Audiophile Audition - May 14th 2011 *****

Diversity is the touchstone of much music today; even the sitar itself evolved from the Persian tambur and the South Indian veena. Though steeped in tradition going back centuries, the sitar itself is only about 100 years old. The Bollywood music influence has opened new areas of the mix of Western and Indian music. Jonathan Mayer is the son of the late John Mayer, who created the Indo-Jazz Fusion albums, so you can see he doesn’t come by the Westernized sitar thing by accident. True, there have been some Western musicians who really didn’t get it with the sitar (especially in the 1960s), just as there are still some who don’t really get it with Brazilian music. But Mayer clearly knows what he is doing with the difficult instrument, and includes in his innovative work a vast variety of sources in addition to his own compositions.

There are three Bach selections on Out of Genre, which reminded me of Bela Fleck’s banjo explorations of that composer. And the list of instruments on the CD for Mayer is just as diverse as the music: in addition to plain sitar, there is pygmy sitar (uses the body of a bouzouki), electric sitar, tanpura, guitar-zither, piano, Fender Rhodes and other keyboards. There’s plenty of exotic work here with various non-Western scales and rhythmic structures, but it all works quite well with a strong jazz esthetic and doesn’t seem a gimmick. And how many CD can boast liner notes by Dr. Kuljit Bhamra?
Reviewed by: John Sunier


Songlines - June 2011 ***

JS Bach goes Indian jazz Bach on the sitar? Not quite what you might be expecting from this album from Jonathan Mayer. But I was won over by the three pieces here, especially 'Sonata no 1 in G Minor', although I suspect there were ferocious technical difficulties to overcome. Also well judged were the experimentations with different scale forms, such as the Persian octatonic 'String of Pearls' and the wholetone scale on track seven, 'whole', which although they move away from the traditional modal conceptions of Indian music still seem ideally suited to the instrument in Mayer's hands. The pieces in which he collaborates with other musicians are less exciting, especially 'When It Rains' [sic] featuring the jazz trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. The latter seems very much out of his element, lacking the fluent technique necessary to keep up with Mayer's clear facility on his instrument. This was less obvious with 'String of Pearls' [sic], which features the French flautist Bernard Wystraete, and his bass flute has a timbre that is akin to the North India bansuri (bamboo flute), making the paring less jarring. All in all, however, this is an unusual and intriguing album that pushes at the limits of what we expect from the sitar.
Reviewed by: Maria Lord