Trevor Gordon Hall: This Beautiful Chaos
Trevor Gordon Hall
Among Trevor Gordon Hall's accomplishments is the invention of the kalimbatar, a combination of guitar and kalimba. Yet while it doesn't make an appearance on This Beautiful Chaos, there's no shortage of guitar sonorities from which to choose. On its ten pieces, six different ones are played—standard acoustic, baritone acoustic, nylon string, high strung guitar, electric guitar, and the Portuguese instrument viola amarantina—so guitar aficionados shouldn't come away from the forty-six-minute release wanting.
Hall has played with or received accolades from figures such as John Mayer, Steve Miller, and Graham Nash; while fellow guitarist Phil Keaggy hears the “precision and beauty” in Hall's playing, Windham Hill Records' founder Will Ackerman notes his ability to “beguile and reach you emotionally in a way which is supremely rare."As Hall's touring calendar has taken this itinerant traveler through seventeen countries, it makes sense that his music would reflect the sights he's seen, people he's met, and cultures he's absorbed. Such horizons-widening experiences naturally translate into creative expression and provide an ongoing bounty of inspiration from which to draw.
Recorded in 2019 at Maple Hill Farm in the small town of Redding, Connecticut, the album is strong from start to finish. Hall invests his playing with exquisite touch, and the clarity of execution is brought into sharp relief by the open-air quality of the production. There is a heightened sense of personal expression, with the guitarist using his advanced technical command to craft refined statements rich in atmosphere and detail.
The affection Hall feels for the world, whatever its madness, comes through clearly in the title track. Fingerpicking and strums are masterfully deployed to create a resonant folk realm that's both welcoming and comforting. Peaceful and energized passages alternate to suggest the full measure of life in times as marked by introspection as chaos. There's contemplation but momentum too, and evidence of Hall's sensitivity to dynamics and pacing is everywhere. Stylistically, much of the recording falls within a meditative acoustic category (New Age, if you prefer), with classical seeping in now and then (“Resolution in Tension,” for example) and even blues at its swampiest (“Ontic Blues”).
Evoking the Socratic maxim, “Know Thyself” features Hall accompanying himself with a strummed acoustic in the background and another at the forefront in the role of soloing lead, the sparkling result one of the album's more appealing pieces. While a similar approach is adopted for “Saudade,” “Ontic Blues,” and “At Peace with the Struggle,” other pieces feature Hall wielding a single instrument. While melancholy naturally permeates “The Presence of Absence,” an affecting meditation on loss, “At Peace with the Struggle” soothes the listener with slide playing that adds a vocal-like quality to the tranquil ballad. One track is titled “Chase the Chills,” an apt choice considering that the listener may well experience a goosebump or two as Hall's recording plays out.November 2021