Cosmopoly

Cosmopoly

Swiss harpist Andreas Vollenweider has always fallen just shy of brilliance. An underrated harpist, he rarely lets his flights of string fancy loose on his albums. And as a conceptualist, he usually paints himself into exotic, Gaudi-esque towers, without an exit. <I>Cosmopoly</I> provides that exit, but Vollenweider rarely takes it. On this album of collaborations, a jam with jazz piano legend Abdullah Ibrahim is as tentative as a first date, and Vollenweider is swamped in the mournful bath of Armenian doudouk master Djivan Gasparyan. The harpist follows Bobby McFerrin's lead in a dance of vocal pyrotechnics and his jams with trombonist Ray Anderson result in the most superficial hipster clichés. Carly Simon's rendering of a section of James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" is strictly an arty star-turn for the singer, a longtime fan of Vollenweider's. <p>Vollenweider fares better with his own band on the riveting melody of "Stella." Here, as well as in his writing for the Solis String Quartet and on a languidly dolorous duet with Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento, Vollenweider reveals the tuneful melodicism that flows out of his fingers like water from a spring. <I>--John Diliberto</I>