Quotes
What Others Are Saying
Musically,
Gravity Dance
is a melange of rock, folk, and minimalism, all held together by Judy Hyman's haunting violin and a glove tight rhythm section. This is music that challenges the brain without sacrificing the groove.
[Natalie] Merchant's current outing has been dubbed
The Folk Tour
and she indeed mixed a variety of traditional and contemporary folk pieces into her repertoire. In addition, she augmented her usual band with fiddler Judy Hyman and banjo player Rich Stearns, both of another quirky New York state group, the marvelous contemporary string band the Horseflies. Hyman provided the evening's most stirring instrumental moments, notably when she set the traditional Penny's Farm
off at a ferocious pace.
...The Flies are very good players, too, dedicated to a punchy, coherent band groove. Hyman, on violin, teams with keyboardist Peter Dodge to create woozy roller-coaster effects...
On
Human Fly
they mixed the rattling repetition of Claus' frantic strummed rhythm work with Judy Hyman's rousing fiddle work, blending folk styles with the repetition of modern systems music.
Gravity Dance
finds The Horse Flies moving in increasingly strange directions, though their traditional sound is still evident on songs like Sally Ann,
which has a powerful and beautiful violin part by Judy Hyman who excels throughout the record.
Judy Hyman,
a fellow fiddler said recently, is a force.
And that pretty much cuts to the heart of it. For thirty years, Judy has been playing a powerful groove, exploring the edges of tradition...
The vocal arrangements are exceptional, and I was overwhelmed by the scope of fiddler Judy Hyman's work; she covers a lot of ground that is too often considered uncharted territory for fiddlers today.
In the middle was fiddler Judy Hyman, who sounded in one minute like she'd never been out of West Virginia, then like a Hungarian gypsy the next and then an Indian Indian (as distinguished from a Native American Indian) after that. What made her multicultur`al fluidity so unusual -- and such a pleasure to hear -- was that it not only all fit together without sounding forced or grafted, it had its own vicious kind of swing.
Their sound is distinguished by propulsive rhythms launched by Stearns and Claus, embellished by Hyman and stirred by the rhythm section... Part of the appeal of this oddly Gothic band is its communal nature. They dedicate themselves to sonic weave...
The technical prowess of fiddle player Judy Hyman is particularly impressive and definitely worth noting.
...fluidity and impeccable intonation...
...and thanks, Judy Hyman, for the breakthrough fiddle...