Product Description Kevin Kastning (USA) & Sándor Szabó (Hungary) are contemporary guitar explorers, and trailblazers in modern composition. Sándor Szabó is an internationally recognized guitar virtuoso. Kevin Kastning is known in guitar circles worldwide, and is also known as the inventor of the 14-string Contraguitar, 12-string Bass-baritone guitar, and the 12-string Alto guitar. Kevin performs on all these instruments on this new recording, as well as piano, and has been called the most modern guitarist in the United States. Sándor performs on various guitar family instruments, as well as Guzheng, a 21-string harp from Korea. Both players have been internationally acclaimed for their unique musical vision and innovative approaches to their instruments. The Book of Crossings is their sixth Greydisc album release, and features 21 new Kastning- Szabó compositions. The album was recorded on location in a concert hall in Hungary, adhering to the high recording standards of Greydisc Records; a recording of depth and detailed resolution. The recording brings forth new acoustic landscapes of imagination and deep introspection using a palette of newly invented guitar-family instruments, Guzheng, and piano to evoke a stunning beauty and depth of expression. Review Review for Kevin Kastning-Sandor Szabo album Triptych. I always regard the release of a new Kevin Kastning CD as more an event that a mere issuance, as one never quite knows what they guy is going to be up to next. Music such as his is rare indeed, which is why he's been attracting so much attention from so many quarters (having recently, for instance, finished a disc with the formidable Michael Manring, to be issued later in 2012). For Triptych, Kastning rejoins long-time partner Sándor Szabó; but also brings in Balàzs Major, who has partnered with the latter guitarist in the Szabó-Major Duo, a gent who changes several sonic characteristics while remaining syncopatic to the moody Kastning sound. The first cut, Triptych I, starts straightaway in a landscape both stripped down and lush in its barren beauty, understated but gleaming with foggy light and glimpsed vistas, much like Ken Browne's evocative paintings gracing the release in a, you guessed it, triptych (the ECM design of the CD is completely apropos). One of my favorite unknown masterpieces of modern music is Morphogenesis' first release (still available, so far as I know, only in the original cassette form) because it's so Stockhausenly incidentalist, and Kastning has frequently, either in entire songs or passages, woven that mode further into musicality while retaining the overpoweringly alien pictorial aspects. The addition of Major does much to sketch out new terrain, to architect the environment more subtly. Lower the lights, sit back, turn off the thought processes, and just listen. There's nothing more required, but, oh my, what occurs when you do so in the presence of such art. --FAME Magazine, January 2012Review for Kevin Kastning-Sandor Szabo album Triptych. Returned with another milestone with the release of the fantastic album Triptych created by three musical geniuses: Kevin Kastning, Sándor Szabó and Balázs Major. A new release on CD by the label GREYDISC RECORDS in late 2011, and where the expertise and talent of these three tireless seekers of the perfect sound led them to write these twelve songs full of emotional evocation and for mental stimulation to be enjoyed peacefully by lovers of classical guitar sound. Compared with other wonderful previous albums, Triptych is presented much more vibrant, more intense, more vital, and as they come each one of these great musical themes like waves on the shore of our imagination, music lovers will inevitably readers Athena Lux Webzine entering the sensitive state, half awake half dreaming, where the senses expand and sensitivity achieved balance in perfect harmony with these magical compositions. And that musical magic by which we achieve a high level of sensitivity to sounds, melodies and instrumental textures, becomes essential language with which Kevin Kastning, Sándor Balázs Szabó and manage to attract and encourage Major our spirit through these stunning compositions for guitar. Normally accustomed to comment one by one all the items on an album, but in the case of Triptych, these wonderful compositions I have felt more like a whole than as separate and very different from each other. This is not to say or imply that these compositions give continuity to the same melodic line throughout this amazing and passionate work, because in the case of Triptych, the change in sound structures in the evolution of Kastning, and in the instrumental role, innovative character are constantly changing. For this reason, the sound that is so special and virtuous Kevin Kastning, Sándor Szabó, and Balázs Major use in each of these tracks plunge us into a dimension where expansive and luminous musical beauty manages to attract attention with mild sensory subtlety. A radiant artistic achievement and dimension, in this magnificent album, today expands its presence to the field of view with the paintings created by Ken Browne which has graced this album. A great success, a musical work more sublime and majestic in both its interpretation and in its recording. Triptych, the delicate and insinuating sound of classical guitar in the hands of musical genius can only bring forth fruite which is a formidable album like this. Enjoy it! --Lux Atenea Magazine, Spain, February 2012