Avalon Sutra

After nearly three decades of recording, pianist and composer Harold Budd is calling it quits, explaining he has said all he wants to and does not mind disappearing. If this indeed turns out to be the case, Avalon Sutra proves that Budd has saved the very best for last. Budd has walked the no man's land ground between minimalism and ambient music and forged his own territory. And while the former is his pedigree, he sounds like none of his peers. His pieces are composed and open-ended; they have never been based on a "system," and they are usually delicate, impressionistic, and, more often than not, mysterious and melodic. His sense of dynamic is restrained and his economical use of silence has always been masterful, whether on early works such as The Pavilion of Dreams, his middle-period albums such as The Plateaux of Mirror and The Pearl with Brian Eno, or his more structured works like The White Arcades with Robin Guthrie, By the Dawn's Early Light, and The Room. Always, his elliptical piano sets the course, following various muses through a gauzy labyrinth and conveying great poetry, emotion, and spirituality — without ever becoming excessive or overly sentimental. The 14 tracks on Avalon Sutra are elegant, contemplative (not speculative), and poignant; the grace and tenderness that they impart so readily are tempered with emotional depth and dimension by notions of memory, loss, and even grief.