“Bruce Hornsby could have kept making albums that sounded a bit like The Way It Is, the lambent, piano-driven song that was a worldwide hit in 1986,” writes Michael Hann in Monday’s (4/15) Guardian (U.K.). “Instead, he’s spent the last 30 or so years pursuing a singular musical path. [In] Hornsby’s new album, Absolute Zero … ‘There are some minimalist composers that influenced me … Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams,’ … says Hornsby. ‘But the influences I’ve been into for many years are the great American avant-garde composer Elliott Carter, Schoenberg, Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Ligeti.’ … Hornsby was the songwriter and producer on the three Bruce Hornsby and the Range albums… He made the money that has enabled him to pursue his own idiosyncratic path since…. There is a place in the middle where Hornsby wants to be, but not the middle of the road…. ‘It’s not difficult to be very obtuse and obscure and out there in your music and do something completely inscrutable. For me, the really difficult area in which to work is the middle ground, where you try to do something that has some depth and some gravitas that also connects.”
Posted April 19, 2019
