Composer: RZA
Orchestra: Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Christopher Dragon
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: 36 Chambers – Platoon
Release: 2024
Size: 516 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
A Ballet Through Mud
01. Aeolian Beauty
02. Clear Sky After Storm
03. A Ballet Through Mud
04. Winds From the West
05. Divine Intervention
06. Freedom of Movement
07. Soft Footsteps
08. Good Night 1st Movement
09. The Night Dances When You Least Expect It
10. Moving Meditation
11. The Lotus Arrives
Given what a freewheeling polymath Robert Diggs has been over his thirty-plus-year artistic career, the idea of him working on a classical score for a ballet performance seems less like a bizarre detour than just RZA being RZA. And considering that his independent-scholar interest in musical experimentation led him through a “digital orchestra” phase in the late ’90s—one that was borne out in part through his striking score to Jim Jarmusch’s 1999 film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai—it’s not too surprising to hear him work on instrumental pieces for a more traditional performance. A Ballet Through Mud, originally staged and performed with the Colorado Symphony and conductor Christopher Dragon in 2023, was adapted from a concept assembled from passages of his teenage notebook when the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic stoked his creative restlessness. Its basis is a formative-years concept adapted with a mature perspective—the coming-of-age epiphanies of six youths, all of whom represent the seven modes in the diatonic scale (and one of whom represents two of them, both minor and major)—and infused with a Buddhist drive towards enlightenment. Without the benefit of its stage accompaniment, A Ballet Through Mud sounds resoundingly familiar even to the classically untrained listener at first, with the East-meets-West melodic range and resonance of Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky the most identifiable influences. But RZA has also noted the inspiration of Alvin Ailey’s dance performances as integral to the work, and considering the importance of ’70s and ’80s martial arts films to the Wu-Tang aesthetic, there’s probably some heroic wuxia film scores in the mix, too—it draws from a wide-spanning, cross-cultural engagement with the musical connection between emotional and physical expression, whether it evokes a dance or a swordfight. And it succeeds on the breadth of it all: the contemplative awakening of overture “Aeolian Beauty,” the Swan Lake-feinting melancholy of the titular piece, the liberatory graceful sprightliness of “Freedom of Movement,” and especially the majestic tension-and-release build of “The Night Dances When You Least Expect It.”