FACES OF THE SUN

Pianist Peter Kater was among the first to bring Native American flutes into contemporary music, and his recordings with R. Carlos Nakai remain pioneering examples of Native American chamber music. Faces of the Sun finds Kater in familiar terrain, matched with a clutch of Native players, mostly flutists, on every track. Kater takes these often simple, emotionally direct performances and maps them onto cinematic grandeur and smooth rhythms. You can hear the voice of every player on these songs as the basis for Kater's inspiration. Flutist Joseph Fire Crow and violinist Arvel Bird charge Kater toward an anthemic march on "Rite of Passage," and Bill Miller's multitracked vocal choir interspersed with his powwow cries reaches a certain hymnal spirit on the title track. But Kater undermines many of these moments with uncharacteristically rhapsodic piano accompaniment, rote rhythm loops, and swaddling strings. Artists like Native fusionist Mary Youngblood and Kevin Locke, the most traditional player on the album, get a smooth-jazz shellacking with snappy grooves and strings that swamp them in their backwash. Kater took a similar approach on his Red Moon album a few years back, but the slightly moodier, darker sound of that disc was just enough to keep it from the easy-listening, smooth-jazz sensibilities that threaten to eclipse Faces in the Sun at every turn. --John Diliberto