I get that not everyone needs to go hacking through impregnable jazz jungles or crawling across atonal minimalist deserts or getting lost in endless Nordic a cappella virgin forests. But believe me, Luciana Souza’s “An Answer to Your Silence” is vocal jazz of singular, innovative genius – groundbreaking, underappreciated, and regretfully unknown. It is THE most interesting CD I’ve heard in the last decade.
Continue reading...Jazz
081: Maria Schneider, ‘The Pretty Road’
Maria Schneider’s music has been called “evocative, majestic, magical, heart-stoppingly gorgeous.” It defies genre-categorization. In format, it’s standard Big Band, but the music exhibits a symphonic palette, broad and complex and rich and intriguing. Her compositions are often compared to those of Mahler and Copland. They’re ephemeral, transcendental and melodic, often simultaneously. Not impressionistic, but carefully thought out and planned and considered. Incorporating the vast, open, airy Minnesota landscape where she was raised. Thoroughly modern, thoroughly American, thoroughly personal. She’s even been called Nabokovian! A brainy romantic, passionate, an aural aviatrix.
Continue reading...094: Brad Mehldau, ‘Martha, My Dear’ (“Live in Marciac”)
Brad Mehldau is young (big tattoo on his forearm), eclectic, handsome and shy and spiritual and articulate and spooky intelligent. Oh, yeah, and he plays with two different hands. I mean, they’re independent of each other, connected by chance to one torso. His left hand alone can play what most fine jazz pianists can do with both. Leaving his right hand to explore another alternative tonal world. So all you ‘I really don’t like too much jazz’ folks out there, do yourselves a favor – give Brad Mehldau a listen, anything at all – standards, Beatles, Radiohead, originals.
Continue reading...223: Ibrahim Maalouf, ‘Conspiracy Generation’
Flowers and pastels and hazy blonde girls tralalaing through a meadow of daisies. Pearl Moskowitz smiling at me in algebra.
I’m in love.
019: Johnny Dyani, ‘Track #1′ (Shvarim Tru’ah)
An obscure South African free-jazz bassist recreating Ye Olde Ram’s Trumpet on that hard-bop classic, ‘Shvarim Tru’ah’.
It must prove something. But I’m not quite sure what.
G’mar chatima tova.
010: Charles Mingus, ‘Remember Rockefeller at Attica’
Opening cuts–those songs that look the room’s silence right in the eye and say, ‘Stand back man, watch this!’ Beethoven’s Fifth. George’s ‘Hard Day’s Night’. This Mingus gem.
Continue reading...020: Esperanza Spalding, ‘I Know You Know’
I had the very good fortune to see Esperanza Spalding perform last week. Even though her hair was bandana’d, she was a knockout. Here’s a piece I wrote a while back about her, her music, sexuality in female performers, and a quirky taxonomy of people who make music with their voices.
Continue reading...187: Trombone Shorty, ‘Hurricane Season’
In which we talk about “The Making of SoTW”; tripping over fire hydrants; a 1931 Madagascarian torch singer; John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’; kissing with your eyes closed; and Trombone Shorty, a young New Orleans practitioner of ‘supafunkrock’ – an amalgam of rock, hip-hop, neo-soul, jazz and funk.
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