What Will Become of Us defies musical classification and in many respects is more of an opera in eight, instead of three acts. It merges musical themes of many kinds and styles it pays homage to (take a very deep long breath) four languages and is performed by 40 (yes 40) musicians. Enough people to establish a new small mid-west town east of Omaha. They include the Pinhas and Sons crew of nine, led by Ofer Pinhas (keyboards and vocals) as well as eight guests / fans who are musicians who were invited to join them amongst the 31 other collaborators. The long exhausting list features six vocalists performing in the aforementioned four languages (Ahmari, Hebrew, English and French), five guitarist, five saxophones, flutes and clarinets of three types, as well as a Nai (a type of a Romanian pan flute). But wait there’s more; keyboards, accordion, violin, viola, cello, cymbalom (a form of a horizontal harp played with hammers), three percussionists, a marimba, a kanun (Middle eastern horizontal harp played with hammers), and to add to the exotica, a santur (Persian dulcimer).
Ofer Pinhas counts the likes of the Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal who is best known for his orchestration and improvisation, jazz bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding, and Louis Cole who in many ways is similar in his love for assembling very big bands for his events and recordings, as musicians he follows and admires.
This album is not an easy one to digest, it will require a few takes to make sense of, it’s a latter day musical lesson you never thought you would need. Mercifully the ‘lesson’ is a short affair with eight tracks that last just a smidgen under 40 minutes. Musical styles, as mentioned, defy any classification. Merged in the various tracks are pop, rock, French Breton, Mid-Eastern 9/8s, and Balkan themes amongst others. The album’s style may be best and most accurately described as: unusual theme with just about any musical style one can imagine.
The canvas is vast due to the extraordinary number of contributors and in places the recording is not able to clearly and fluently present all the instruments and the voices that are contributing and playing at any given time. The 24/44.1 review sample will need to be experienced via a decent and possibly greater than decent audio system, this is not an album that the good citizens of any land should attempt to consume earbuds. The brave few that will decide to take on the challenge of listening are likely to veer initially to the Leonard Cohen’esque track Kama Shelo (However many times), they will discover gems and achingly beautiful themes elsewhere during the second and third listening. An unusual effort on a grand scale that is bound to separate the music ‘lovers’ from music ‘fans’.
Reuben Klein