Aaron Siegel, The Cabinet (CD)

I met Aaron when he was a session percussionist on an album I was engineering. His playing was superb and he was fun to work with. His solo CD The Cabinet (2006), of 21 2-minute pieces, also turns out to be interesting. I can't tell whether the music here is improvised or composed. On a continuum of percussion music from perhaps Varèse to Andrew Cyrille (the first jazz solo percussion record that I know of), The Cabinet seems to fall slightly more in the improv tradition (derived from jazz) than the "classical" one. The closest analog that I can think of is some of Sven-Åke Johansson's solo work, but Aaron definitely brings a voice of his own, especially with the occasional appearances of both drones and pointillism that give the album a slightly more "modern" context.