Many musicians are foodies who like to whip up creative recipes or write pieces about vittles such as Grand Concerto Gastronomique for Eater, Waiter, Food and Large Orchestra (Malcolm Arnold), Quatre Hors D’oeuvres-Four Appetizers for piano (Gioachino Rossini), Ice Cream Sextet (Kurt Weil) and Chocolate: Spanish Dance from the Nutcracker Suite (Tchaikovsky). Carlos Simon gives us some food thought and the soul in a recently released album The Best Cuisine in collaboration with baritone Carl DuPont and Capitol Hill-based Chiarina Chamber Players of Washington, DC – of which their website describes as “a hybrid of chamber music series and self-presenting performer collective.” (Azica Records, 2025).
Simon is Composer-in-Residence for the Kennedy Center and Associate Professor at Georgetown University. These high-profile venues offer additional opportunities for his works to be heard, as many of them represent a retrospective of the African American cultural experience in Requiem for the Enslaved, Here I Stand: Paul Robeson and Troubled Water-Trombone Concerto. His writing has a sense of conscience and a tinge of the unexpected in the way he melds gentle lyricism with probing rhythmic twists that often initiate intriguing sonic effects.
The Best Cuisine, which was written during and inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic is Simon’s musical journey about comfort food getting you through a rough patch or spicing up a get together or chatbot conversation in very piquant style. The miniature pieces are atmospheric and draw you into a soundworld of spirituality and playfulness as in The Best Cuisine bijous that dish up Salmon and Kale, Mac and Cheese and rhythmically exotic Healthy Ramen – all with fine collaboration from violinist Domenic Salerni (of the Attacca Quartet), cellist Carrie Bean Stute (Chiarina’s co-artistic director), pianist Efi Hackmey (Chiarina’s co-artistic director) and baritone Carl DuPont, an operatic artist who wrote text for some of the pieces.
The album’s other selections reflect a kind of symbiotic aesthetic that melds pandemic isolationism with a need to dine solo or al fresco. The improvisatory art song quality of Nightfall and dusk hued Prayer is projected in commanding fashion by DuPont and Hackmey. Simon’s arrangement of Caro mio ben with DuPont and Hackmey make you want to eat a steaming bowl of Penne all’arrabbiata while listening. The album ends with three pieces that highlight the finesse of the Chiarina Chamber Players trio as well as Simon’s alluring writing style in impressionist toned Sleep Well (beautifully nuanced by Hackmey) and Between Worlds in versions for violin and cello, of which Stute delivers some high-flying bowing to the sequential flourishes. Between Worlds for violin sounds like a new age Paganini caprice that Salerni plays with virtuosic brilliance. Simon’s quicksilver writing makes this a to-do piece for either concert performance or repertoire enhancement. It’s yet another example of why Carlos Simon’s music has the edge of relevance and communicates a compelling fusion of tradition and trend.