Glenn Dickson’s “Wider Than the Sky”

Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical phrases that conjure images of open spaces and eternal time. Like an Emily Dickinson poem, the mood is slightly melancholic, yearning, hypnotic. A clever film director might use “Wider Than the Sky” as her soundtrack — or simply as inspiration to make something ineffably beautiful.