Trevor Gordon Hall: Reviews/Press

• “Trevor is one of the few post-Michael Hedges guitarists who has managed to incorporate that vast repository of innovation while having an artistic voice strong enough to steadfastly avoid imitation. However technically proficient Trevor is, he is not one of the swarm of guitarists who revel in guitar gymnastics for their sake alone. His technique follows artistic expression as it should. Trevor is capable of a range of styles while having every note seem to express something sincere and meaningful to him. This is a fine debut from a guitarist we will need to pay attention to.”

– Will Ackerman, Grammy winning guitarist/composer and producer, founded the influential new age label Windham Hill Records.

• “Trevor is a virtuoso. I’ve never seen a guitarist/composer this good at his age (23). He may not sell a million records (the Christmas album might), but he’ll win a Grammy and do great numbers for his niche. I truly believe Trevor’s career will go on to prove him one of the greatest guitarist/composers of all time.”

– Joe Nicolo, President of Revel Music Group, Former President/Producer/Owner of Ruffhouse Records (Sold over 100 million albums and garnered 9 Grammys; found and signed Lauryn Hill, The Fugees, Cypress Hill, Kris Kross; produced James Taylor, Aerosmith, Billy Joel, Will Smith…)

• “I'm really impressed with the Trevor Gordon Hall music. Besides being beautifully recorded, the compositions and performances are stellar. Trevor's sense of melody is exceptional, and his ability to pull the melody out of a very complex acoustic guitar arrangement requires a powerful technique that few musicians can exhibit these days. This is performed music -not cut up and pasted together- and it is driving, tender and powerful all at once, and points to a great future for Trevor.”

"Mostly, while I know how difficult this all is to play...it comes off
as graceful and simply flowing....That's the mark of a true artist to me...."

– David Kahne, A&R Consultant to Revel Music Group, Former Senior A&R Executive at Columbia Records, Warner Brothers Records, and Reprise Record;. Grammy award winning producer; worked with Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Sublime, The Strokes, Bruce Springsteen, Kelly Clarkson…

• "Sharp, absorbing and beautiful meditations for guitar that will get your mind moving in new ways."

– Tom Moon, Music Critic; Contributor to NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’/Rolling Stone/GQ/Blender/Vibe/Spin, writer of ‘1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die’

• “…beautiful…a truly creative vision…”

– Michael Manring, Multi-award winning and Grammy nominated, the world’s leading solo bassist extraordinaire.

Acousticmusic.com FAME Review:

Well here's something Michael Hedges never thought of. Trevor Gordon Hall, in his Candyrat debut disc, Entelechy (the mysterious fundament driving sentient creatures from potentiality to full existential exaltation, or that embodied final stage itself), has mounted a kalimba on the soundboard of his acoustic guitar so that the sound issuing off the African instrument's tines travels through the guitar body in resonance with the axe's steel strings, lending a richness beyond the exotic finger-piano's norms. And yes, like all the sublimely meta-talented Candyrat artists, Hall plays both simultaneously. Sounds impossible, I know, especially once you've laid an ear to any of the songs here, but travel to his home page (http://www.trevorgordonhall.com/home.html) and you can watch him do it. Unreal.

Unless you've spent an ungodly amount of time honing your craft, arriving at an estate echoing ECM, Windham Hill, Oregon (the group, not the state), and the hallmark new chamber music icons, you can forget trying to get noticed by Candyrat, a label remarkably distinctive. Hall's work is fully formed and mature, entrancing for its melodic content and finger-wrenching acumen (catch some of the chords this guy grabs so fluidly!), but exceedingly naturalistic for all its complexities and shifting flows. Even when waxing a bit abstract, as in the title track, the effect is of wheeling kestrels, windchimes, soft breezes, and melodious happenstance.

This is not to say that Hall can't whip up skirling rondos and zephyrs, he's quite capable of that, but the tone and set of this disc are overarchingly of an antiquarian's pastorally Byzantine craftwork, a small museum of contemplative wonders rather than the blaring shout of the pedestrian ruck. Much delicacy abides, a good deal of interwoven quietude and harmonic richness, but the disc is not without its backbone and sinews as well. And you can see why such work baffles critics and even marketers; it can't be pigeonholed. 'NuInstrumental', 'contemporary instrumental', and so on, but what it really is, is neoclassical, exercises extending what Yepes, Tarrega, and others were doing.

The guitar has always been vilified, the red-headed stepchild of the ever-reactionary conservative realm of classical music. It still is. Go ahead, name me just four major modern classical pieces written with guitar, especially acoustic guitar, as the centerpiece. Ya can't, unless you're a college professor teaching what Eno termed 'dead music', and even then good luck. As far as I can determine, this small body of modern work started with Jansch, Renbourn, Kottke, those cats, and it's unbelievably determined individuals like Hall and fellow Candyratters who have continued the practice most noticeably. Rockers ain't doin' it, jazzbos ditto, even classicalists harsh the gig, but here we have yet another example of the well-tempered, novo-tempered, and supra-tempered guitar manifesting in ways even the six-string sympathizers of yore could only dream of.
Track List:

Kalimbatar
Entelechy
PIne Trees and Power Lines
Bach to the Future
That Old Familiar Pain
Outside the wlines
Signposts
A Severe Mercy
Whenever It Rains
Cerebral
November
Story
Missing You

All songs composed by Trevor Gordon Hall.

Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)
Copyright 2011, Peterborough Folk Music Society.
This review may be reprinted with prior permission and attribution.

Minor7th Review:

One of Candyrat Records stable has opened arms to Trevor Gordon Hall, who seems capable of Michael Hedges-like twist and turns of fret prowess and ingenuity. Time will be the proof, but in the meantime fingerstyle fans are in for a treat as Hall hones, refines, explores and shares his talent. Entelechy marks Hall's 4th official release, which includes a 2009 Christmas CD. Compositionally Hall creates rhythms and grooves that intertwine melodies that are on the order of acoustic soundscapes that often have a therapeutic and hypnotic quality. "Whenever it Rains" represents, perhaps, the best example of these qualities. It is hauntingly subtle and achingly seductive. Close your eyes and you will see the rain steak down your windowpane. Curiously, it is not the guitar that brings Hall all of his notoriety; rather it is the kalimba, a type of African thumb piano that creates vibrations that are incredibly harmonious with the vibrations made by a steel string guitar. Hall explained that the kalimba has been the evolution of an idea for him tracing back to his love of music boxes as a child. He bought a basic kalimba and started messing around with it. In an attempt to increase the volume he eventual mounted the kalimba on the soundboard of the guitar -- Voilà, a unique and resonate dimension suddenly and magically enhanced his ability to weave melody. Limitations of the first kalimba attached to his guitar led to the designing of a two octave chromatic kalimba with the help from a kalimba distributor and a few builders. Hall's kalimba does not dominate Entelechy, like some of the percussive techniques occasionally push fretwork aside. The word ergonomic (if that is possible) seems to sum it up nicely. The kalimba and guitar are simply a comfortable fit. "Kalimbatar", the first track opens the CD with a pulsating groove that allows the kalimba a bit of elbow room and slides the tempo in a different direction until they eventually walk hand into the sunset. One listen -- you'll get it!

The Phoenix:

He Will Be Famous

By HANNAH BERNSTEIN

Picture this: a single table lamp, incense burning, and against the backdrop of a mural depicting nature in instrumental and musical brushstrokes, guitarist Trevor Gordon Hall invites his audience to journey with him as he questions, "Where do I go from here?"

On November 7, Hall celebrated his first official debut performing at Rock and Roll After School with an array of musical selections released in his CD entitled Finding My Way. This on-the-rise musician is a recent college graduate who has written numerous pieces artistically expressing deep philosophical ideas as well as the reasoning of his own personal debate between doubt and faith. "My music grows with me," says Hall, "starting from when I was about ten, the different stages I went through in life began being reflected in my music with a punk rock phase and death metal phase. My own personal growth has been the force behind what I do with each different style of music."

Striving to simply be the best musician he can, Hall has dedicated much of his time honing his skills as a guitarist, and has effectively discovered how to utilize his instrument to serve as a voice and method of expressing himself. Revel Music recently signed him as a solo artist with nine-time Grammy Award winner Joe Nicollo. Hall adds, "This has been an amazing experience. As an introvert I find complete strength in solitude and as a soloist I can bring that to my music."

Although he is always aware of his limitations on the guitar, he nevertheless wants to be able to express his philosophical perspectives through music. He has beautifully recorded the journey this stage of his life is taking. "For me it's been very different trying to reconcile what happens after graduating college and dealing with the existential meaning of life. I hope that people will be able to find life in my music. The music that I write holds such a deep meaning for me and my hope is that my listeners experience the same thing." The innovative musician has discovered the limits of his instrument and seems amused in finding unlimited ways to stretch it.

This Rock and Roll After School instructor plays his non-lyrical art with such precision that the complex finger work seems almost effortless. "It's hard to explain what genre it is, so I often call it experiential or experimental. Sometimes I ask other people to just listen to it and decide for themselves what it is and I like that it can't be strictly classified as one specific thing." He has written several songs that crescendo into a melodic chaos symbolic of the tumultuous processing of the brain, yet each creative melody is distinct as he builds on top of the other. After harmoniously blending them together, he fades into a quiet reverie kept pace with a steady "heartbeat." He is communicative while piercing the minds and souls of his audience. "Just because you don't have words to work with doesn't mean you can't say something," he explains.

In lieu of the holiday season, Hall will be releasing a Christmas album December 1 and both his CDs are available for purchase online wherever music is sold. Hall shares, "I feel like my gift for writing comes to me through my one instrument, but I would like to extend it to more than one someday and write for an orchestra. I love doing everything and anything related to music though, so I'm open to whatever the future has for me!"