This album’s often gorgeous, often kaleidoscopically bright and bustling pieces by quintessential California composer Lentz freely explore and skew two centuries of classical piano music. All the piano parts on this recording—from solo to seven pianos (via overdubbing)—are performed by Grammy-nominated new-music pianist Aron Kallay. (Cold Blue has released three previous CDs devoted to Lentz's music, and shorter works of his have appeared on four of the label’s anthology releases.) Reviewing this CD, Josef Woodard wrote in the Santa Barbara News-Press, “Speaking broadly, composer Daniel Lentz is deemed a kind of maverick ‘Minimalist,’ West Coast division. But as is often the case, subtleties of an artist’s voice can get glossed over in the simplifying process of ‘general deeming.’ Let’s just say he broaches sonic beauty and Minimalist-colored/rhythmicized ideas, but on his own terms…. He has plenty to say, with four pieces penned within the last seven years, and a sensitive, sturdy ally in pianist Mr. Kallay…on a brand-new album, In the Sea of Ionia…. With a vocabulary borrowing from influences as varied as Ravel, Brian Wilson and Bill Evans, Mr. Lentz’s music is not as pretty as it might sound—or is not ‘only’ pretty. Ulterior strategies are afoot. Sentimentality grazes past and is hustled into new shapes, in a place where lyricism is served on the rocks.” And American Record Guide wrote of it, “There’s something very American about Daniel Lentz’s music. I’m not always sure exactly where it is in the music. Sometimes it’s in the occasional motive…sometimes it’s in the harmonies that sound slightly ‘jazzy,’ as much as I dislike using that word…. Wherever this American sound resides in the music, it shouts at us from titles like Pacific Coast Highway—my favorite piece on the record. The title work is nearly 20 minutes and, in its slower sections, sounds more like what a composer-pianist might play to himself when alone…. This is a credit to Aron Kallay, whose performances are masterly and lend brilliance to music that was already rich.”
