Guy Klucevsek/Volker Goetze – ‘Little Big Top’

The track “Meet Me on the Midway” from “Little Big Top” (Motéma) feels like such a good place to be starting the year. Accordionist/composer Guy Klucevsek describes the track as “A tribute to the Slovenian-American polka tradition I grew up with in Western Pennsylvania. This music is in my blood.” The ease of melodic expression in it is just joyous. And there’s a little surprise, the briefest of accordion countermelody episodes at [1:28] which brings an instant smile to me every time I hear it.

I need to make an admission. Before this new CD landed in my doormat, I had never heard of Klucevsek. And the press section of his website is almost comically brief: we find just one post, an overnight review of the first of two solo accordion evenings at an Irish pub in Northern Milwaukee from 2013….with an exhortation to go and hear the second night…now only for the use of that most beyond-reach of audiences…time-travellers.

Look further, though, and things start to get very interesting. Klucevsek may even have something of the Zelig about him; he’s been almost everywhere. Pittsburgh-raised, with a Slovenian heritage from both his parents, now in his mid-seventies, he is to be heard playing accordion on the John Williams-composed soundtracks of no fewer than four Steven Spielberg movies. When Renee Fleming sings “Danny Boy” at Senator John McCain’s funeral (it’s on YouTube), there he is in the backing group. And he has also been an intrinsic part of myriad projects led by Laurie Anderson and John Zorn.

“Little Big Top” is like a window on his many-faceted compositional world. Trumpeter/producer Volker Goetze explains in the sleeve note that this project has been “a profound lesson in depth, humanity, sincerity and honesty” for him. Klucevsek does have astonishing facility and a melodic gift. He leans into Balkan rhythms and scales, the best example being “Euroslavian Wedding Dance”, an invitation to get on the dance-floor and find a natural way of moving in “composite 9/8 + 7/8 followed by sections of 11/8 and 7/8”. The joy of Klucevsek’s composition is that he will find a sudden trapdoor into something much simpler and heartfelt, as in the opening/title track. There are so many of these tunes where, once they get going, there is a sense of being in a good place where nothing gets in the way of natural musical expression. And the other members of the quartet, in addition to Klucevsek and trumpeter/ producer are top flight New York reedsmen Doug Wieselman (stunningly good bass clarinet playing) and Jeff Hudgins. Recommended.