“Solo Flights” is a fitting title for this free-flowing, transparent, airy mix of piano pieces by modern American composers.

Though the CD is issued by CRI, the guys behind really are the members of CCi – ComposersCollaborative Inc; a grouping of people who got together in 1987 to form this organization for those passionate about new music, and to spread the knowledge about new music, making it an integral part of the music community. Since 1994 the Solo Flights festival has been a forum for solo pianists, which is why this CD sports solely piano pieces. The works on this CD were recorded live on different occasions in the late 1990s.

Jed Distler names a few people that formed his own passion for the piano and for new music, eventually leading up to the forming of the ComposersCollaborative Inc. and the Solo Flights concerts: Paul Jacobs, Robert Helps, Frederic Rzewski, Yvar Mikhashoff.

The CD starts off in a very much traditional way, echoing past centuries’ virtuoso games, in a dramatizing, both foreboding and reflecting way, in brilliance of tonal color and forceful progressions. It’s Andrew Violette who gets to inaugurate this compilation with his “Two Sonatines” (1995). The second one is also very classical, but paying homage to composers like Scriabin. Violette hardly surprises, but I don’t think he aimed at that either. These are good compositions, well played, in some kind of mainstream pianism, leaning heavily on earlier masters, but Violette is a good enough pianist to do this without compromising himself of the masters he hints at.

Roberts Helps is next with “”In Retrospect – 5 Pieces form Piano” (1977), which begins calmly and with a certain introspection, in a rare clarity, which he succeeds in containing even through the faster and more intricate second of the five pieces. If it wasn’t for the melodious and sometimes a little sentimental events inside his piece, the clarity and spaciousness of his miniatures could make you think of Morton Feldman or early Giacinto Scelsi. The last of the five pieces induces in the listener inner visions of fairy tale environments, in little Pinocchio jerks and twists.

Laura Kaminsky’s piece is called “Triftmusik” (1991), and it has a special background. It has to do with mountain hiking in Switzerland, to a place called Trift, high above Zermatt. Kaminsky has hiked to this spot every year since 1987. Beginning in sparse, clear and careful touches, the piece moves towards a higher definition and denser tonal progressions, but always allowing for the reflective view that gazes both outward and inward; the result of physical exertion in the fresh air of higher altitudes, making you feel at one with what’s around you, and always there is that high snowy peak up there, with a white plume stretching out downwind, at unreachable heights. In those environments space gets measured like nowhere else, and you can really feel the expanses, touch them with your mind and soul. I think Kaminsky’s piece conveys some of this experience that she surely keeps having on her treks. Sara Laimon plays her piece here.

One of Jed Distler’s pieces here is “The Woman Who Danced” (1991). It’s a jazzy, slow, gravitational piece with an almost erotic feel, moving with ease and urgency, fulfilling a categorical imperative. These convincing tonal patterns of the keyboard are icy cold in their aspects of blue, as well as burning hot in their glowing lava aspects. Distler merges the opposites and forges a calmness to rest in.

There are many more pieces on this CD, left uncommented, and they all together make up a good piano CD, with nice and clever examples of current American pianism, as well as one of Leopold Godowsky's Studies on Chopin's Etudes!