Daniel Coloprisco issues a formidable soundtrack to the changing of seasons in his new extended play Winter’s Song, which despite running a collective eight minutes in total playing time dispenses one of the more charismatic listening experiences that audiences can expect to encounter this October. Both “Winter’s Song” itself and its tracklist counterpart “A Touch of a Feeling” are songs defined by their textural expressions, and in a year that has offered us little – if any – genuinely authentic melodies free of one agenda or another, it comes to us as a truly unique find in a sea of generic sameness.
Singer Jes Hudak teams up with Coloprisco for the title track here, and I must say that her vocal contribution to the otherwise purely instrumental spectacle is as rich, warm and complementary of the piano parts as any of us could have asked for. She’s got a dynamic palate that’s being employed in a minimalist fashion, and yet her performance never translates as being conservative or limited in depth. Contrarily, the lack of fancifulness in her singing adds to the tonality of the background melodies and, if anything, makes the harmony that they conjure up even more impactful than it would have been.
“A Touch of a Feeling” features no lyrical content, but it doesn’t need any vocalized poetry to convey a heartfelt narrative unto us. The mood of the melody, which fluctuates throughout the track, leads us into the soul of Daniel Coloprisco’s music in a way that some would believe only possible in a live setting (perhaps a credit to this EP’s sterling production quality), and by the time that the song is over, the transcendent nature of the color and tone in the track has affected us as much as any other work of fine art would.
Winter’s Song EP by Daniel Coloprisco
Winter’s Song EP
Instrumentally speaking, neither one of these compositions are particularly complicated – in fact, quite the opposite – but they’ve got a complex feel to their one of a kind construction just the same. Coloprisco is clearly an artist who thinks about every aspect of his medium when he enters the studio to create something new, and provided he’s able to maintain that attitude as the years go by, I can see him finding a lot of success both as a solo artist as well as in collaboration with vocalists in a wide variety of genres. He’s got the chops, and he’s showing us just how dedicated to his style he is in this disc.
Stunning and yet wholly simple in structure, Winter’s Song is a definite winner for instrumental pop fans everywhere this October, and as far as I’m concerned, a worthwhile listen for anyone who is interested in something a bit more provocative than the average Top 40 tune. You don’t have to have a super-discriminating ear to appreciate the majesty of this track’s supreme melodies, but for those of us with a more refined taste than the status quo would call for, it’s a record that gives us a sneak preview into what could be a very interesting catalogue of music in the future.
Clay Burton