RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JAN AKKERMAN: Tabernakel. Jan Akkerman (guitar); orchestra. House of the King;
Javeh; Lammy; A Pavan by Thomas Morley;
and six others. ATCO SD 7032 $5.98, 0 TP
7032 $6.98. © CS 7032 $6.98.
Performance: Lovely
Recording: Excellent
Jan Akkerman. the guitarist with Focus, has brought out one of the most interesting albums of the year. On a variety of guitars, (acoustic, bass, electrical), his playing suggests that the pop Julian Bream has arrived. If it were only on the basis of his work in the traditionally inspired material, such as John Dowland's Britannia or Morley's Pavan then I might be tempted to judge him as a gifted technician with a peculiarly Seventies approach to the classics. But when he shifts gears into one of his own compositions, such as House of the King, with its rock beat and his vital performance on electric guitar, and proceeds to produce some of the most elegant sounds that I've ever heard in rock, then I know that I'm listening to a real artist. Akkerman is still developing, but all of the preliminary sketches for what will come are clearly there: the technique, of course, the compositional ability, the beauty of the sound he draws from his instrument, and the sheer order of his musical conceptions I don't mean order in the Teutonic sense of one must and one will; instead he seems to sense the truth of the French dictum that it is impossible to achieve true elegance without order. (Imagine the park of Versailles planted in blue spruce, or finishing off a dinner at Caravelle with a Hostess Twinkie. or Catharine Deneuve accenting her Givenchy with patent-leather high heels and turned-over athletic socks, and I think you'll get an idea of what I mean. Akkerman already knows all the components that go into a pleasing musical experience, and he displays them with the assured grace of a great gourmet ordering a dinner for you. If all this strikes you as a mite too civilized, too unspontaneous to be representative of true rock, then let me remind you that rock is well into its third decade, stagnating faster and faster, and could use the dynamism of an obviously trained musical mind. In fact, if rock is to be saved at all, it is people like Akkerman who will do it, not a soon-to-be-old Mick Jagger going through his over-rehearsed paces some time in the I980's with all the aplomb of a Ruby Keeler. "Tabernakel" is the kind of straw-in-the-wind album that makes reviewing fun.
Peter Reilly