ROB MOSHER - POLEBRIDGE

The town of Polebridge, curiously like the piano itself, has a population of 88. Life hearkens back to the rough-hewn charm of pioneering days in the early 1900s. Locals live off the land, make their own culture and keep things simple. On a deeply quiet night in this frontier town, you just might find yourself hearing things; and if you happen to be gifted young composer Rob Mosher, that could sound like the music Schumann and Prokofiev might play were you to find them, drunk as can be, side-by-side on the bench of a saloon piano in the wild west.

Mosher was born in Greenwood, Nova Scotia, a small village on the east coast of Canada. "My earliest memories are of music," he recollects and his "parents both sang, though they never talked about music overtly." After years of piano lessons, he started adding woodwinds one-by-one, eventually playing oboe, English horn, clarinet and soprano saxophone. With his trickster spirit and adventurous sense of harmony, he gravitated towards the big city jazz and creative music scene in Toronto. While getting lettered at the University of Toronto, he made a life-changing discovery: his true calling was to compose music. Mosher's work inhabits the space between jazz and classical music with projects ranging from his 10-piece ensemble Storytime to Soprano/Soprano, a duet of saxophone and operatic voice. Jazz Review declared that "Mosher does for music what Renoir has done for art."

Enter Micah Killion, trumpeter, music educator and arts administrator living and working in New York City. Ever the versatile musician, he has performed with New Jersey Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, the Juilliard Orchestra, Maria Schneider, John Medeski, Shakira and Diana Ross, to name a famous few. After the sudden passing of his mother in 2012, Killion felt moved to celebrate her life by commissioning his longtime friend and collaborator Mosher to compose a suite to record with a stellar set of like-minded musicians.

Stephanie Nilles, who Rolling Stone described as "Ella Fitzgerald beating the shit out of Regina Spektor" adds a wildcard quality to the ensemble playing piano, Hammond B3 and occasional ranting. John Marcus is no stranger to chamber music, playing violin with the Grammy-nominated Enso String Quartet. Andrew Small is a virtuosic young contrabassist who, while completing his master's degree in Classical Bass Performance at Yale University, managed to find time to travel around the country learning old-time fiddle and touring alongside Mosher with Juno-winning banjoist Jayme Stone's Room of Wonders. The ensemble is rounded out with guest appearances by Peter Lutek (bassoon, contra alto clarinet) and Petr Cancura (mandolin). All joined by Mosher on soprano saxophone, English horn and clarinet.

The album Polebridge, much like the town, is full of characters. There you'll meet "Cowboy Ben", a mild-mannered wrangler who plays the musical saw with a bow; a cowpuncher who Nilles describes as "not very manly" in her unexpected spoken word diatribe on the recording. Then there's "Rango's Tango", a piece that recounts the awkward attempts of an Argentinian man trying to court a young woman with his ridiculous dance moves. He fails. "Parade of Two" imagines an impromptu marching band jaunting across town. As Mosher notes, "it takes less a minute to tour downtown Polebridge." The natural beauty of Glacier National Park is captured in "North By Northwest", a tone poem inspired by the glory of the northern lights, a sight familiar to the Canadian-born composer who now makes his home in Brooklyn, New York.

The emotional peak of the album can be found in "Didn't Ask", which came to Mosher in a series of dreams he had in a remote cabin not far from Polebridge. The piece ends with a chorale that Mosher later recognized as Killion's mother's metaphoric ascension up to heaven. "The final trumpet call is like a modern day Amen," muses Mosher. The chorale form, a four-part hymnal perfected by J.S. Bach in the 18th century, has long inspired Mosher, who in 2011 brazenly challenged himself to write a chorale a day for a month; a project that was generously funded through Kickstarter and eventually made into an album simply titled, "31 Chorales".

Though Polebridge is clearly chamber music, there are occasional forays including an Appalachian-style fiddle tune, an otherworldly Klezmer number, a healthy dose of country swagger and plenty of improvisation throughout. Stellar musicianship and first-rate compositions make this charming release a surprising and satisfying listen. So come visit Polebridge; stay a while.

www.robmosher.com