Percussionist Calum Huggan’s debut solo album, alongside displaying his technical chops and sensitivity, shows how open the marimba is for different listeners. Although all the work here is notated and demands the utmost in performance, the musical results might well appeal to listeners with no classical knowledge. Emmanuel Séjourné’s Nancy, for instance, betrays its composer’s interest in rock and jazz; with cantabile phrasing and sentimentality, it is pleasant to the ear. Ivan Trevino’s Strive to be Happy, as per its title, is unabashedly middle-of-the-road; its rapid repeated broken chords and scales whirl over a chord progression that wouldn’t be out of place in a Coldplay song.

Trevino’s Immigrant Song is a lyrical, minor-key work whose title gives a suggestive air of anomie and mixed emotions; rubato, sensitive dynamic changes and a warm tone yield hidden textural depths. The same composer’s Anthem, almost in the manner of a passacaglia, insistently repeats a harmonic sequence with varied surface figurations and ornaments; and Trevino’s waltz-time Memento is a beautiful moment musical. Huggan’s performances show a mature mixture of precise technique and pathos. The music here is neo-tonal and at times neo-Romantic, meaning there is a risk at times of slipping into over-safeness. But it also means the album succeeds in having large-scale cohesiveness; the dynamics throughout tend to be subdued, quiet, relaxed.

The presiding openness of spirit leads to over-casualness in elements of presentation. Despite the album’s title, Emmanuel Séjourné isn’t American but French, and Trevino’s booklet notes are personal rather than expository, meaning that the listener doesn’t get much in the way of programmatic information on the works. More stylistic contrast might arguably have been welcome, too, in the featured music. The album closes with Eric Ewazen’s Northern Lights, a staple of the contemporary marimba repertoire. As the piece proceeds, a tremolo motif alternates with a sweeping arpeggio motif, and the two develop the neo-tonal architecture. A work of such scope demands a lot of Huggan, and while we aren’t able to appreciate that visually, the pure sonorous pleasure is a handsome substitute.