Ekta Eclectic

Ekta means "unity" in several South Asian languages, or, as more spiritually defined in composer Brent Heisinger's album by that name, "oneness." "Eclecta," however, might have been a better title for the wide mixture of styles and influences reflected in Heisinger's music on this CD. It ventures all over the map, excluding severe modernist territory, and is very pleasant to listen to, despite the lack of an individual voice behind it.

Heisinger (who was born in 1937 in Stockton) is a graduate and faculty emeritus of San Jose State University, and quite up front about not being a stylistic John Hancock in the CD's booklet: "My works bounce from one palette to another. I have no desire to own a style." So warned, listeners may want to program track sequences, depending on their mood, for mood is a chief feature of Heisinger's music, rather than sing-along melodies or motivic development. There are five works on the CD:

Ekta is a New Agey, four-movement piano concertante. The first movement is much like Keith Jarrett's Celestial Hawk, and none the worse for the comparison. The second movement is for tabla and drum set alone. The third, "Love Song," begins like it would be a good soundtrack for a film titled Sunrise on the Ganges, but three minutes in, executes a gradual, but nonetheless wrenching, segue into a Hilton Hotel cocktail bar. The finale, "Fugue and Cadenza," attempts no formal counterpoint, but instead provides uplifting dance rhythms.

Minim is a pure minimalist exercise indebted to Reich. I must admit I am not a fan of this style, and believe most efforts in this area should be 70 percent shorter. However, I'll give Heisinger's intriguing entry in the field the equivalent of a B+: It should be only 10 percent shorter than its listed nine minutes. The piano piece uses only six notes in each hand, creating five parallel fifths and a seventh, and repeats them throughout in the same time values, varying only the accents and pedals. Unlike David Ward-Steinman, the less-than-Jarrett-skilled pianist in Ekta, Heisinger does a terrific job technically, maintaining interest in this digital tour de force.

Three Episodes for Bassoon Quartet is an engaging 1930s-style piece of neoclassicism with a middle movement that veers into an English pastorale. A Walk Within Winter, with pianist Donna Stoering, begins as if the listener, in New Agey mood, is looking out from a warm room at winter's first quiet snowfall. Later, however, lured into the outdoors, the listener is pelted with hail as the storm changes character, forcing her back inside to the sounds of Minim's techniques and a bit of impressionistic pentatonicism.

The disk concludes with an attractive choral work, Nubes Aztecas (Aztec Clouds), in an entirely different time and hemisphere. This music should be enjoyed separately from the others, when you're in the mood for adoration of Aztec royalty, without blood sacrifice.