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Tonight is the final night of The Signal's (10 p.m.) east coast weekend. They'll be broadcasting a concert with the eclectic violinist (and east coaster) Mark Fewer and the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, performing Edgar Meyer’s Violin Concerto. Also, some skronk from the Benghazi Saxophone Quartet.
Are scratching your head and saying "skronk, say what?" Though a great word it is not in common parlance, I wouldn't say, so you are likely not the only one. As a way of describing music the term has been attributed (by some) to music critic Robert Christgau, to represent a sound that's kind of, well, skronky. (Of course it means other things as well, as Skronker will tell you.)
A really great line up of music this evening on Canada Live (8 p.m.) from the Ottawa Folk Festival, starting with a 60s icon, Odetta. One of my nearest and dearest was at that concert -- she said it brought new meaning to "this little light of mine" as hundreds of people were holding their cell phones in the air to take photos of the great singer...
On a more serious note though...Odetta as you no doubt know was and is a highly influential singer, one of the leaders of the movement towards American folk music in the 1960s, a strong voice both musically and politically. Speaking of the former, she started out with hopes of being an opera singer, but moved into blues and folk, for obvious reasons given the time she came up in. And at 78 she's still singing the blues.
Then there's a performance from two excellent guitarists, Don Ross and Andy McKee. The former is a longtime Canadian acoustic "star," (as much as guys in that realm of music can be stars), and the latter is a guitarist you will know if you are a devotee of percussive guitar -- he's a YouTube sensation -- over 15 million views.
If you're not a YouTuber, or are but haven't seen him play, you can become one of those over 15 mill. right here and now:
Beautiful to hear and watch -- like yoga on guitar or something...
And a quick note re: the other two concerts broadcast tonight on Canada Live (8 p.m.), because they are indeed noteworthy. There's music from the great Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure's son, Vieux Farka Toure, and some South American music Canadian style, from Colores Andinos.
Legendary rocker Patti Smith continues her series about Bob Dylan this Sunday on Inside The Music (Sunday Edition 12:00 p.m., 12:30 NT).
Part 3 is called Bob Dylan: Shelter From the Storm, and it looks at 1970's and 80's Dylan, (thinking of 70s Dylan instantly makes me hear Scarlet Rivera's violin, but that was just one phase), when he went in a bunch of new directions. The music ranged from very personal stories to Homeric epics and everything in between.
Famously Dylan became a born-again Christian by the late 70's, and did a fair bit of religious/spiritual material. By the late 80's, Dylan had supported Live Aid, Farm Aid, and joined the Traveling Wilburys. So what you'll hear today is highlights from across that period of time, described by the producer as a period of "dizzying artistic and personal growth."
The last time this episode of In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT) was broadcast, one listener/blog reader named Harriet wrote in to say : "I've had a radio crush on Gregory Charles for some time now and rarely miss a show. But now I have one on his Dad! Thanks for a musically magical show."
How sweet. Harriet was not alone, a lot of listeners really enjoyed this edition of the show -- so I'm pleased to say that it is being rebroadcast today.
As regular listeners know, Gregory's parents were extremely important in his early musical development. So when his father dropped by Gregory's place/radio studio to hang out by the piano, play music and tell stories from his life it definitely struck a chord, as it were.
A little b.g. on Mr. Charles Sr. He grew up in Trinidad and arrived in Canada in the 1960s to marry the love of his life, Gregory's mom, Pierrette. And then along came the musical kid, Gregory, and the rest is history, still being made.
What you'll hear is father and son playing some classic recordings by Johnny Mathis, Mahalia Jackson and Oscar Peterson, some impromptu family music-making at the piano, and a little steel pan music, too.
Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) concludes its summer cross-Canada classical festival tour this weekend. Host Bill Richardson is back in the chair (don't you always picture a giant chair when people say that?) and today, from that chair, he presents highlights from Festival Vancouver. This year their theme was Music Of The Americas and accordingly the music you'll hear is music of the Americas, beginning with composers Villa-Lobos and Piazzolla, performed by Trio Verlaine.
Speaking of the Vancouver Int'l Song Institute -- here's a lovely (and true) sentiment, from their homepage, that could apply more broadly to music as well as song:
"Song resounds among all human communities across the planet, chronicling our individual and universal experiences in a form that traverses millennia."
The Signal (10 p.m.) is featuring music from the east coast this weekend. And part two features Buck 65 (a.k.a. Rich Terfry, host of one of the shows being launched Tuesday Radio 2 Drive) performing live at the Atlantic Film Festival.
You may have read a post on the R2 blog earlier in the month slugged (that's news-speak for "titled") Fiddle Convention Comes To Canada. Well, it came, they fiddled, R2 recorded.
And some of the music from The North Atlantic Fiddle Convention will be heard on Canada Live (8 p.m.) Saturday night. I'm afraid I don't have specifics as to which fiddlers, but they include both Canadian and international performers.
Also on the show, more music from the right coast, with highlights from the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival. Again, not sure of the specific performers on the broadcast, but I do know that the focus is on music that was made at the "Oral Traditions Tent," and the full list of who performed is right here.
Yikes, when Katherine asks a question on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT) she doesn't go the trivial route. Today she asks (among other questions) the probably unanswerable "what defines beauty in classical music?"
Why is Ms. Duncan asking this question today? Well, she was thinking about how the notion of playlists of course pre-dates iTunes and mixed tapes. Classical music labels have long been choosing the best, most popular, most enduring works from their catalogues, putting together albums with titles like "The Ultimate Classical Collection" or "The Only Choral Album You Will Ever Need" or the jaw droppingly named "The Best Classical Album of the Millenium... Ever!"
This led her to trying to figure out how these notions of the best, ultimate, most amazing etc. are arrived at...not to mention pondering why so many of these collections market classical music as "relaxing"...
Last week's opening to the third part of Driven To Music featured some very beautiful music by Marjan Mozetich -- just a hint of what was to come. Today you can hear the last installment on Inside The Music Saturday Edition(12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT), it's called Infinite Patterns.
The overall theme of the series is about the inspiration behind the work of contemporary Canadian composers, and today the focus is on the impact of matters sacred and spiritual. Composers include Christos Hatzis and Imant Raminsh, among others.
And looking ahead, briefly, to next weekend on Inside The Music, you can hear a new series called The Nerve, a six-part followup brought to you by the same excellent producers of award winning The Wire. (No, nothing to do with strife in Baltimore...) The new series, The Nerve, explores music and the human experience -- and something tells me it will be excellent.
There's Tom, hosting at the Ottawa Folk Fest a couple weeks back. (You may also wish to see him sidling by a beautiful mural, posted earlier this week.) Today on Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) Tom looks back at his festival experience and shares his pick for what he calls the "breakout band" of the festival, Winnipeg's D.Rangers doing Runaway.
It's part of a great theme on today's show -- how folk and roots artists approach cover tunes that you wouldn't expect them to cover, tunes by people like Neil Young, Phil Phillips, Chuck Berry and Del Shannon.
This puts me in mind of the totally charming folk-esque cover of Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back, by Canadian band Rock Plaza Central. Sadly the embedding has been disabled, (which translates to being unable to post this video), but here is a link to watch it -- love the music, turns the song into something entirely different.
And not to steal Tom's thunder...but you can also watch a performance of D. Rangers doing Runawayright here. Mind you, I trust the version Tom will play will have better audio!
The perennial question for those of the roving eye (to stray or not to stray) is at the heart of Mozart's opera Così Fan Tutte, which you can hear today on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera (Saturday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT). It's a production from the Vienna State Opera, conducted by Riccardo Muti. It stars Angelika Kirchschlager and Barbara Frittoli as the ladies whose fidelity is put to the test.
"So do they all" is the common translation of the opera's title, referring to the belief that women are just as likely to stray in a relationship as men. (No comment.) The plot, in a teeny weeny nutshell is this:
On a bet, two officers say goodbye to their girls and march off to war, but return in disguise to seduce each other's gal. But in Mozart's comedy of manners, even those who set traps deserve to get caught. Ultimately, the men may prove a point, but can you really call it a win?
This weekend The Signal (10 p.m.) pays tribute to the east coast and its musicians, with a concert from Halifax's Jill Barber (pictured here, and a lovely picture it is) with the Symphony Nova Scotia, and music from The Just Barelys, the Saint John String Quartet, Danny Oore and the Lost Wax Guild. (Didn't realize that Lost Wax had a guild, but I guess if there's a Lollipop Guild, why not.)
Pat will also feature the Peanuts-to-improv career of drummer Jerry Granelli. Yes, Halifax-based Granelli will forever be connected to Peanuts, as in the soundtracks to the TV specials, and there's nothing wrong with that. But he's been much, much more than Charlie Brown's drummer. As PopMatters said in reference to one of his most recent projects, Granelli's "kind of an underground legend in the jazz and psychedelic music world."
As a writer and a music critic it's always interesting to see what other writers/critics come up with when writing about live performance. I rather like this pithy comment about PJ Perry from Sheila Keenan, writing in the Daily News: "P.J Perry blew hot, he blew cool, and he blew the audience away..."
It's also always interesting to hear a musician talked about by another musician. For example, a musician with the handle "jsweenie13" posting to a live video of Perry playing in Washington D.C. (The video quality is just too terrible to put up for you, but here's where you can see it, sort of.)
"Having had a few chances to get on stage with PJ on a few random jam sessions," says jsweenie13, "I gotta say the guy is just a monster...the most lyrical player i think i've listened to."
To hear a live performance of Mr. Perry for yourself, tune into Tonic (6 p.m.) this evening, when Katie features a concert the sax player made with another sax player, Campbell Ryga, at The Cellar jazz club in Vancouver.
As we approach the weekend some of our thoughts turn to folk. Yes, it's true, with Tom Power's charming Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) programme on Saturdays, it's nice to look forward to that excellent window into the ever-changing world of music that loosely can be called "folk."
But while Tom tends to bring new and younger bands to the airwaves, this doesn't mean that the veterans of the folk scene are being ignored -- and proof, if you need it is that Joan Baez is featured in the Times Online -- alongside stories about Michael Jackson at 50, and one delightfully titled Skirl Power, about the renaissance of bagpipers.
"Bagpiping is on the up and now lessons are to start even in London!"proclaims the article. Even London, you say...pity...kidding, kidding.
But back to Joan Baez. She has a new recording (produced by Steve Earle!) Day After Tomorrow, thus the feature, which explores her thoughts on music and politics -- and their intersection. As she observes:
"At times of great uncertainty music and politics are fused. I would never have sung 'We Shall Overcome' to an American audience during the Eighties because it would have been a nostalgia trip. Now it’s appropriate again because it’s relevant. I’m happiest when that happens."
No, not a mean-spirited joke from a former Manitoban, but a reference to a festival held in the tiny village of Forget, named after Amédée E. Forget, the first Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan.
It's called the Forget Summer Arts Festival, run by a non-profit based in a 1904 former Catholic Rectory -- their message is "to support the arts in southeast Saskatchewan and to provide a place for artists to perform and purvey their art." Why? Because they believe that "rural Saskatchewan needs live music."
Indeed. As does all of Canada, and tonight you can hear the live music coming from this corner of the country on Canada Live (8 p.m.) with highlights including acoustic/folk/roots musician Ben Sures, country singer songwriter Codie Prevost, the duo smokekiller and jen lane, and finally Shady Groove. That's right, not grove, groove -- and the Shady Groovers are Juno award-winning Ken Hamm and his partner, Heather Peat, along with Vancouver Island folk singer Donna Konsorado, who collectively play a mix of blues and bluegrass and folk.
I wanted to note that today on Studio Sparks (12 p.m.) Eric will play some of his own favourite music, including Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1, and on DiscDrive (3 p.m.) Jurgen will play some special moments from the show's 23 years on the air, including their very 1st hour.
Tom on Music & Company (6 a.m.) and Catherine on Here's To You (9 a.m.) will similarly be celebrating the achievements of their shows, and their love of music -- as will the producers behind the scenes too. (Speaking as a sometime-radio producer myself!) The dedication required to "make radio," as people often put it, (as if it is a thing you can hold in your hands), is considerable.
So I thought I'd take a moment (or whatever passes as a moment on a blog!) to say a heartfelt thanks to the hosts and the producers -- as a colleague. This is just a small, personal note of thanks here folks, but if others want to join in via comments, I hope you will, by thanking all these these talented and dedicated broadcasters for their work, they do indeed deserve it.
Quiet Is Not Silent is the name of a concert commissioned by CBC R2 in conjunction with the CBC special Truth & Reconciliation: Stolen Children that took place a few months back. Tonight, The Signal (10 p.m.) broadcasts music from that concert.
The Blind Boys of Alabama have been together since 1939 -- incredible, eh? One of the band members, Jimmy Carter, (not that Jimmy Carter obviously), says: "We thought we'd do good, but we never had the notion that it would be this good for so long -- and thank God for that. I still love it, I haven't got tired of singing yet."
A life spent singing -- now that's a good way to live...and tonight on Canada Live (8 p.m.) you can hear that life sung through those great gospel harmonies.
Before that, some highlights from this year's Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival. It's a festival I've heard good things about, but never had the fortune to attend. But as my colleagues at Canada Live say, the setting is "picture perfect." (Having been to Lunenberg, I cannot but agree!) The festival as self-described is "Nova Scotia’s longest-running folk festival. We've showcased great Nova Scotian, Canadian, and international talent during our 23 years. We are proud to have introduced many of the Maritimes’ best-loved musicians to a wider audience on our stages."
The subject heading of Carrie Brownstein's Monitor Mix blog gives it away: "Was It Really That Bad?" she asks. Now, what decade of pop music (and fashion -- the hairstyles, thank you Cyndi for demonstrating) could she have been referring to? Why the 80's, of course. Although, as Ms. Brownstein points out, there was plenty of great punk/underground music being made too. But it's the mainstream pop (and the decade's fashion sensibilities) that are both ridiculed and most waxed nostalgic about...an odd contrast in extremes.
Eighties mainstream music immediately calls to mind things like Simply Red whinging on and on about Holding Back The Years, and Tiffany thinking they were alone now. But more fortunately other music surfaces too, some of it Canadian as well -- like Martha And The Muffins great Echo Beach, or Maestro Fresh Wes -- Let Your Backbone Slide. Obviously others have considered that as a plus as well, in fact a while back some of my colleagues over at Radio 3 even put together a little list, (rather to the point with the subject heading), Bitchin' 1980's Canadian Music Videos.
Quick and dirty conclusion? The eighties had tons of great music, both mainstream pop and not. Maybe it's just a case of "when the eighties were good, they were very very good, when they were bad...they were not better."
Note: Carrie B. also posts videos of some of what she thinks are the best bands of the 1980s, right here.
Story update: After yesterday's big headlines about Michael Jackson and Robbie Burns (a bizarre music news moment) it should come as no surprise that there has been reaction in scholarly Burns circles to the idea of MJ performing the poet's words, set to what its composer, David Gest, described as "show tunes."
For example, BBC News quotes Southern Scottish Counties Burns Association president David Baird as saying:
"I was quite incredulous at the thought that Michael Jackson on the eve of his 50th birthday was thinking of plagiarizing Burns and cashing in on the 250th anniversary next year...The idea of turning Burns's tunes and songs, which he carefully collected, into 'show tunes' just kind of grates a wee bit."
I can see how it would "grate a wee bit," but good to hear too that Mr. Baird is keeping an open mind, since, after all, no one outside of Jackson/Gest world has actually heard any of the music.
"I think it is great that anybody is trying to bring Burns and his philosophy and his poetry to the forefront of people's minds," he says.
The last time I wrote about Kenny Dorham I suggested that he was kind of like the John Mcdonald of trumpet players, and this season has only borne that out. The baseball season, that is. Yes, just as the brilliant but quiet Mcdonald is sometimes overshadowed by shortstops who might have more hitting power Dorham was sometimes overshadowed by trumpeters who had more flash, or bigger personalities -- people like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis.
But he was a great trumpet player, and Thursday night on Tonic (6 p.m.) Katie plays a live set Dorham recorded at the Cafe Bohemia in New York in 1956.
And here he is in action, fielding beautifully...
By the way, Dorham's daughter, Evette Dorham, (who is writing a book about her father) describes herself like this...quite touching: "I am a proud daughter of a jazz pioneer, trailblazer, composer, arranger, sometime vocalist, sometimes referred to as the 'uncrowned prince' of his genre and a man of musical passion, Kenny Dorham."
Synthesize My Soup, please. Impossible not to want to make some joke about the title -- possibly involving Scotch broth and minestrone. But Synthesize My Soup is actually the name of one of the most provocative and interesting concerts from the most recent WSO New Music Festival.
Tonight you can hear music from this concert on The Signal (10 p.m.). recorded live at the Manitoba Centennial Concert Hall. Musical guests along with the WSO include violinist Jesse Zubot (pictured here) and pianist Glenn Buhr, among others.
Also on the broadcast is the WSO's performance of composer Nicole Lizee'sArcadiac, which includes the gritty 8-bit sounds of early arcade games like Choplifter and Star Wars, and David Eagle's digitally manipulated work Soundplay 2.
Kenny Barron is, as NPR so aptly put it: "A living bridge between multiple generations of jazz." Proof tonight, should you be in New York City, at the Village Vanguard where Barron will be playing with a much younger group of musicians.
Alas, not in NYC? Another option is some slightly more vintage Barron as played by Katie on Tonic (6 p.m.) this evening, a live set from about a decade ago at another club in New York, Bradley's. Barron was with a trio for that performance.
And in case you can't make either -- here he is in a duet with another fine pianist (and yes, from one of those younger generations) -- Brad Mehldau, playing All Blues.
The folks at Arts Journal, a daily wrap of arts news, have a knack of selecting great videos for their video of the day slot. So credit goes to them for wading through the many Heifetz videos online to find this gem of a documentary about Heifetz...so of another era.
Wonderful as always to hear/see him play. And nice to know all about his tennis, ping pong and gardening habits too...only pity is that there was obviously more to the doc than the six and half minutes we get here. Still, well worth watching.
Michael Jackson does Robbie Burns. Or did. Apparently MJ and David Gest (think: Liza Minnelli-ex) once recorded an album of Burns' poetry, "a modern musical take on some of Burns' classic poems," according to the report in The Guardian (Michael Jackson Goes Into The Studio With Robert Burns).
In a more in depth piece in The Telegraph, (and the story does require some probing, lest one is to mistake it for a poorly timed April Fool's Day joke), Gest says:
"Michael and I were originally going to do a musical on his [Robbie Burns'] life with Gene Kelly directing and Anthony Perkins as executive producer - but they both died. So Michael and I put all the poems to contemporary music in his studio in Encino. We did Ae Fond Kiss, Tam O'Shanter and all that. We turned his work into show tunes. It is beautiful and I still have the recordings.
OK. Burns as show tunes not one's first thought, perhaps, but never say never.
For highlights from a whole bunch of festivals that took place in Canada's north this summer, tune in Wednesday night to Canada Live (8 p.m.). You can also hear some jazz from Winnipeg that begins the show, but wanted to make sure you knew about the northern festivals as well, given it's far less frequent to have music recorded in those parts.
First, from the Dawson City Music Festival: Brandon Isaak and the Whitehorse Blues All Stars. Isaak brought together some of Whitehorse's best bluesmen for a set which has been described by one of the producers as "rockin'."
Then from the Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik: Inuk singer/songwriter Lucie Idlout. In an interview I once did with Idlout she described herself as a “federal government baby,” moving between Iqaluit and Ottawa to accommodate her mother’s job with the National Inuit Office. But her love for the north runs deep. In that same interview she said "I hate to use the typical stereotype but I can equate the north to God’s country, it’s so serene and pristine…"
Her music isn't always so serene though! As the New Yorker once mag once said Idlout's a "fierce alternative rocker..." and the photo in this post backs that up.
Two other northern concert highlights to mention -- from Folk On The Rocks Music Festival in Yellowknife, Yellowknife singer songwriter Shea Alain, and from the Alianait Festival in Iqaluit, button accordionist Simeonie Keenainak and the Agiraqtuq Ensemble.
And as previously mentioned, the show opens with jazz from Winnipeg.
A couple of of weeks ago, flipping through the pages of one of the local weeklies, NOW magazine, I came across a piece by Robert Priest (called Remaking An Impression) that featured one of my fellow students from music school days, (Mark Sepic) playing musical instruments made from trash. The reason? To "liberate our landfills and heal with new sounds." But I know it's also because, well, it's fun.
Fun with found instruments has definitely been a trend of late, (of late being the past few years), and it's also the theme on The Signal (10 p.m.) tonight, when you can hear Physics Of A Unicycle by Clouddead, New And Used Furniture Music by Gordon Monahan, Junctures for Stone Drill Cores by Jesse Stewart, and Gearbox Therapy by Recyclone and Soso.
Meantime, there's Mark with "bathtubs, bedpans, an auto roof rack, frying pans, discarded aluminum cookers, cutlery, cast-off Weed Wacker wire, fishing line, plumbing pipes and tubing and even some drill core samples from a diamond mining expedition."
A nice line up of music tonight on Tonic (6 p.m.). Proof: music from Betty Carter and Nancy Wilson, saxophonist Richard Underhill and Vancouver latin jazz band Zapata Negro.
Also from one of my all time favourite under-recognized-in-North-America Italian singers, Gianmaria Testa. (He gets a link to do battle with the under-recognition factor.)
As per usual there is also a live concert segment, tonight from cornetist Warren Vaché and his brother, clarinetist Allan Vaché, recorded live in Hamburg in 1994.
And here is Warren Vaché a couple of decades earlier, with Scott Hamilton. Vaché's solo starts at around 4:00 -- smooth as butter. Salted butter, that is.
At last year's Ottawa Folk Festival a local artist named Arthur II set up a huge blank canvas in Britannia Park, and under his guidance anyone who wanted to could paint on it -- by the end of the festival there was a vividly coloured mural.
This year they continued that tradition with a tribute to the late Willie P. Bennett via a mural dedicated to the folk/roots musician.
They called it Music in Your Eyes after one of his best-loved songs (yet another for "the eyes have it" -- see last post), and when it was completed they sent it along to the Peterborough Folk Festival to be displayed in the city where Bennett had lived for years. A lovely tribute -- and from one report posted to a folk list I subscribe to, the presence of the mural at the festival made a workshop tribute to Bennett "doubly poignant."
Now, in one of those pure coincidences that make writing the Radio 2 Blog so satisfying, Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) host Tom Power was at the Ottawa festival this year, and his lovely producer Francesca Swann happened to send me some pictures from the event the other day. Lo and behold, one of Tom in front of one of those murals.
p.s. Here's a (wild n' wooly) hand-held camera version of Willie P. Bennett's Music In Your Eyes, performed by Blackie & The Rodeo Kings with Willie P. on harmonica and backing vocals, shot last summer.
Which body part do you think is sung about the most? Hands, nape of neck, toes? Bingo, the toes. Kidding, the eyes have it, Diana Krall aside. This is not based on casually thinking about 'these eyes'. No, two visual artists, Fernanda Viégas (also a scientist) and Martin Wattenberg analyzed around 10,000 songs to see which body parts were written about the most.
It wasn't just a random urge to catalogue body parts as they are mentioned in song, it was part of an interactive work called the Fleshmap project. The musical segment, Listen, visually shows how the body is linked to various genres of music. (No accompanying sound, a real shame.) If you go to the site you can move your mouse over the images of body parts and see the percentage of songs containing lyrics about that part, in that particular genre. (This makes more sense if you click on the last link and try for yourself.)
It's kind of fun, and neat to look at. Still I hear at least one person saying, "Oh come on, what's the point?" Here's what the artists say:
"Listen investigates the relationship between language and the body. Verbal manifestations of human physicality in music, poetry, and religion are distilled to their basic elements. In a play with language, the "body rebus" emerges as a visual representation of cultural expressions of the physical in us. "
You know the jokes about the squeezebox. The definition of a gentleman, for example. (Someone who can play the accordion but chooses not to.) And so on. But these jokes are, I like to think, offered in the same kind of spirit that the glorious accordion can create musically -- it's no wallflower of an instrument. And of course, once past the kidding around (and really am just kidding, I love accordion) you get to the seriously deep virtuosity that the instrument frequently inspires.
Le Printemps Des Bretelles is a festival that explores some of that virtuosic playing, as well as many other aspects of accordion playing. It's an annual event where accordionists from many traditions and styles perform, and this year it celebrated its 10th anniversary. CBC Radio 2 was on hand to record, and Tuesday night on Canada Live (8 p.m.) you can hear the results -- accordionists performing in a wide array of styles.
Performers include Sabin Jacques with pianist Rachel Aucoin, who come to Quebecois music from different musical worlds, but together perform music from the traditional French Canadian repertoire. Also Russian born Vladimir Sidorov, who plays in classical and contemporary accordion music. And Albertan Jason Kodie of the band Le Fuzz, whose music incorporates waltz, tango and Eastern-European influences.
You know that a genre of music -- however vast a genre it is, and however contested the name (see What Is World Music) -- has come of age when archives of musical "elders" are created. This is exactly what the WOMAD foundation is doing, according to a story at World Music Central.
Annie Menter, one of the foundation's employees, is quoted as saying "We intend to create an archive of 'musical elders' who have shaped our musical landscape and who's music may well be lost once they have gone."
By archive they mean documentation in film, and via interviews -- sounds like a massive but worthwhile undertaking. For more details, go to WOMAD Foundation And The Music Elders Archive.
For some, just those names "Getz Gilberto" conjures a whole era in music, when bossa and jazz first met and fell in love. Well, tonight you can travel back to that time, as Tonic (6 p.m.) takes you to the Cafe au Go Go in New York City, for a 1964 concert set by saxophonist Stan Getz and vocalist Astrud Gilberto.
The eponymous album that they released in 1965 is the only jazz recording to get a Grammy "album of the year," until last year's win by Herbie Hancock for his Joni album. And yet, legend has it that Astrud Gilberto wasn't even in the original plans, that it was Mrs. Stan Getz who thought Astrud would be a hit, so Stan complied. Other legend has it that Getz himself saw her potential. Either way, it became one of the best selling jazz recordings of all time.
Some days it just seems the bad news won't stop. On the micro level -- you get nothing but error messages, you are the embodiment of Murphy's Law, people find you annoying and you them. On the macro level: tainted food, cutbacks, plant closures. So it's nice to come across a good news story, even when it just pertains to one company. Like the story I just read that begins like this:
"Rickenbacker International has a problem that General Motors would love to have. The company that made the first electric guitar and whose instruments were popularized by the Beatles in the 1960s can't make them fast enough.."
Indeed, Rickenbacker is not only back-ordered for two years, they're also a "music industry anomaly: a debt free, family-owned brand that makes everything at one small factory..."
Happy National Bowling Week. What, you didn't know that it was National Bowling Week? True confession: Nor did I, not until perusing the always (or at least "usually," claiming "always" is probably dangerous) entertaining Beware Of The Blog.
Yes, they're right on top of things, they know that National Bowling Week is in full swing (rolling until August 30th) so they took the opportunity to post some Bowling Mp3's, like World Famous Blue Jays doing 10 Pin Boogie. (Nothing to do with our World Famous Blue Jays, going 11 innings yesterday, then losing, sigh.) Fun stuff. But no Take The Skinheads Bowling, a shocking omission! Still brilliant, after all these years, as you will see if you click on that last link.
Of course as with seemingly all things, there is music that is designed specifically as accompaniment. (See the Bowling Music Network.) And then there is music written about bowling.
I do hope proud supporters of National Bowling Week will take this Bowling Music Video in the spirit I'm sure the song was intended. It's a hoot.
Happy Monday, to quote Jian Ghomeshi. Actually, that would be pre-quoting, since he won't say that until his show, "Q," goes to air this afternoon on the other part of the radio-waves network, 1. (Said so as not to slight the non-radio waves but also significant part of the network, 3.)
But let us get to the musical point of this post. Many hours from time of posting, in the sunset hours of Monday evening on Canada Live (8 p.m.), you can hear what has become an institution in Canadian world music circles, a benefit show called Global Divas.
Every year it brings together women musicians from various traditions in one concert, a kind of revue of hyphenated Canadian music. I've gone to many of the Divas concerts over the years, but was not able to attend this year's -- nice to see it will be broadcast this evening.
The line-up includes Kiran Ahluwalia, Turkish music from Brenna MacCrimmon, Brazilian jazz and bossa from Maria Farinha, and songs from Zimbabwe with vocalist and Soul Influence member Uitsile Ndlovu. The back-up band is led by sax and flute player Jane Bunnett with her band The Spirits of Havana.
P.S. Also on the program, American saxophonist Dave Liebman (probably best known from the mid-70s playing he did with Miles, though he's gone on to many, many projects of note), performing during the late lamented IAJE with Canadian sax-man Mike Murley .
Now don't rear (so to speak) back in horror, there is rhyme and reason to the subject heading. And here it is: tonight, on Canada Live (8 p.m.), you can hear the 10th birthday concert of the country/punk band, The Buttless Chaps. Yes, the men without butts are a decade old, and they celebrated -- to find out how they felt about this achievement, you may wish to read this feature in the the Georgia Straight, Chaps Celebrate 10 Buttless Years. To hear how, you can tune into Canada Live.
Also on the show this evening, as an opening act for "The Chaps," (so much more genteel than the alternative nickname, don't you think?), Vancouver indie band Parlour Steps. One Parlour Steps claim to fame is that their single, Thieves of Memory, beat out 15,000 other songs to win second place in the Rock category of the International Songwriting Competition in 2005. And that's quite a claim.
Last week the man sometimes called "Quebec's father of world music," Eval Manigat, passed away in Haiti, his country of origin. Many musicians (and CBC folks who worked with him) were shocked and saddened. As Robert Rowat, producer of the weekday edition of Tonic (6 p.m.) said: "His music was an ingenious blend of jazz and diverse Caribbean sounds, always interesting and above all sensual. He was a highly regarded figure on Montreal's music scene. We're grateful for the recordings that he left behind."
This evening on the weekend edition of Tonic (6 p.m.), host Tim Tamashiro will celebrate Manigat's life through some of those recordings.
And in case you missed this when it was posted following the news of his death, here's a performance that features Eval Manigat on vibes -- in fine funky form -- at the "Katrinaid Concert" held at the Montreal Spectrum in December of 2005, with the late Georges Thurston and Olivier René de Cotret.
Legendary "rock poet" Patti Smith hosts part two of the Bob Dylan doc Bob Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone this afternoon on R2.
Today's episode, heard on Inside The Music (Sunday Edition 12:00 p.m., 12:30 NT) starts with the post-folk Bob, his flurry of fresh creativity circa mid-60's when his sound moved from folk singer with acoustic guitar to include rock, blues, and gospel influences. In this hour of the show, Ms. Smith outlines how Dylan's unique voice developed, and began to change the face of rock and roll.
Speaking of Dylan, in yesterday's Globe Liam Lacey had an entertaining review of Dylan's Hamilton stop -- here' s the opening:
"'How old is Dylan?' asked the young woman in her twenties, travelling on the westbound GO train to Hamilton for the Bob Dylan concert on Wednesday.
'In his seventies,' her boyfriend said with a hand wave as if to say, you know, timeless (actually, he's a mere sapling of 67). At the bus terminal, the grandfatherly ticket attendant said, "Enjoy the show. Bob Dylan's my inspiration.'
Although In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT) has been presenting "Encore Performances" of the show during the summer, today's programme was only heard on its R1 broadcast when it first aired. So Radio 2 listeners, this is a fresh one. And it's all about one of the two things people are said to argue most about. No, the other one, money.
Yup, today Gregory digs through the loose change for some unique musical coins, with music about money from The Four Aces, Radiohead, Susie Arioli, Zero Mostel, Macy Gray, Offenbach, Karen Young, Shirley Bassey, Emilie-Claire Barlow, Pink Floyd and others.
Every now and the some travel magazine will thrill the hearts of a select crew of small business owners by declaring they are among the world's Top 10 purveyors of Rare Alpine Goat's Cheese, or some such.
But here's a claim that's been made about St. Mary's Church in P.E.I. of a different order, that it is "“one of the ten best acoustic spaces on planet earth.” Quite a claim, and this afternoon on Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) you can hear some proof, with music recorded in its acoustically wonderful confines.
Guest host, broadcaster Heidi Petracek, will present music from across Atlantic Canada today. You can hear latest from Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich from the Scotia Festival of Music in Halifax, a newly commissioned string quartet performed by the Super Nova String Quartet.
Also, latest from R. Murray Schafer, a brand new work for violin and piano with Duo Concertante - performed in St. John’s, Newfoundland. You’ll also hear the music of Edvard Grieg, Mozart and Schubert, performed by string quartets, singers, solo and duo pianists, and more.
Photo of St. Mary's Church courtesy of Ann MacNeill -- "Sees The Moment Photography" (www.annmacneill.com) -- Ms. MacNeill tells me it is of the Welsh Mens Choir from Pendyrus Wales. And btw, there are some marvelous photos of horses at Ann MacNeill's website, among other subject matter!
Choral Concert Bulletin: Today on Choral Concert (Sunday 8:00 a.m.), a pair of performances. First, from Berlin, Hans-Christoph Rademann conducts the RIAS Chamber Chorus in Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus. Then it’s Brahms’ German Requiem, performed in Lucerne by the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Mariss Jansons.
Part two tonight of The Signal (10 p.m.) special on Albertan music, featuring Kara Keith, pictured here. She performs what she calls "melodramatic popular song/2-step/show tunes," maybe intended to be a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's actually a pretty apt description. Also featured is a man The Signal Team calls an electronic "wizard," Mark Templeton.
Pat will also present a concert this evening from cellist Shauna Rolston and pianist Heather Schmidt. If you'd like to read a little about that partnership (an ongoing creative venture since the early part of this century) here you are .
Quebec group Genticorum have been called a “power trio,” although this doesn't mean that the trad music group uses a drum kit. But it should give you some idea of the energy of the band, who are rightly credited with helping to keep traditional Québécois music alive and kicking. This they do with wooden flute, fiddle, acoustic guitar, jews harp, bass and feet and strong vocal harmonies -- and plenty of dance and fiddle tunes.
Tonight you can hear them in performance from La Grande Rencontre, on Canada Live (8 p.m.)
Also on the show, a tribute to "father of Québécois chanson," Félix Leclerc, from the Francofolies de Montréal. The concert has a superstar lineup performing Félix Leclerc's music, including Michel Rivard, Richard Séguin, Marie-Claire Séguin, Jean Lapointe, Catherine Major, and Daniel Boucher among others.
This week In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT) starts a few minutes later than those advertised times because of the length of the opera broadcast. But when it does start, it will be back to back best moments featuring some of the best stories they've done so far on the show.
So you can hear about Katherine's oh-so-brave musical wine-tasting experiment, her story about the day music critics and sports writers traded places, and about the condition known as "musical hallucinosis," which I can barely spell, let alone pronounce or explain.
And then there's the true life story (not that the others are fictional, but it adds a little more punch when you say "true life") of the moment an opera star knew she was a capital C Celebrity. Here's a hint: "La Voce by Renee Fleming. Just dab a little on your wrists, and scale operatic heights!" Coming soon to the Met, and high-end retailers near you.
If you missed the earlier SATO post and are wondering what is on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera ( Saturday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) this week -- this post's for you, bud. It's Wagner's Die Walküre, a new production that comes to you from the Vienna State Opera.
The incoming music director, Franz Welser-Möst (he officially takes over in 2010) leads an all-star cast including South African tenor Johan Botha, (click on his webpage and listen to him sing, it will stop you in your tracks, at least for the few seconds of sound you get) and Swedish soprano Nina Stemme. (Her homepage will stop you in your tracks for another reason, I daresay. What a dress!)
And for more details on the opera, please continue reading.
"From Pegasus To Piano-woman" is the name of the third part of the series, Driven To Music, currently running on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT). The series explores how composers create, using what the producer calls "reflections and confession" from an array of outstanding Canadian composers. (Love that, "confession." You can almost hear it..."I must confess I turned to the 12 tone row...despite myself.")
On From Pegasus To Piano-woman, composers look at what lights the spark that becomes the musical fire, and how words and images translate into music. The composers who are on the programme include Gilles Tremblay, Christos Hatzis, Marjan Mozetich, Hildegard Westerkamp and Andrew P. Macdonald.
Some of my best friends are Fredheads. But it wasn't until listening to his latest, Tinderbox, that I really became a Fred Eaglesmith convert.
Not sure how long Tom Power has been a fan, but today on Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) he'll be playing music from the man he calls "Canada's DIY legend."
Tom will also be featuring a bluesman who's been a Vietnam war vet (well, presumably he still is one) who has also worked as a machinist, firewood salesman, truck driver, watermelon harvester and small-time criminal. (Do you suppose he has this on his resume? eg. "As a small time criminal I created unique approaches to shoplifting chocolate bars and stealing valuable garden gnomes...")
Finally, you will also hear what happens when four banjo players are stranded in a cabin during a harsh Ontario snowstorm. Actually, Tom, I'm not totally sure I want to know what happens. Oh, you mean the music they played, that's OK then.
Last week, the Peg, this week, the Calg. (OK, Cowgary, how's that.) Actually, it's a celebration of the music of Alberta all weekend long on The Signal (10 p.m.), not just Calgary.
But the city's Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir are featured. (Well liked over in Belfast, apparently. A recent review in the Belfast Telegraph said of their last recording that it's an album that: "sounds as old as the hills and as deep and dark as the muddy Mississippi."
Also featured, Edmonton's Cadence Weapon, and the work of Albertan composer Allan Bell. And that's just tonight, Saturday and Sunday Pat will delve into other music from across the province.
Some music this evening from the 25th annual Hillside Festival, which happened at the end of July. The fest has a venerable history, starting with a group of local musicians in Guelph getting together, growing into a major festival with over 50 musical performances on five stages over three days.
Tonight on Canada Live (8 p.m.) you can hear three concerts. First the alt country band Elliott Brood, whose latest, Mountain Meadows, touches on the chilling "Mountain Meadows massacre" which took place in 1857, when Mormon militia slaughtered 120 emigrants. (If you'd like to know more, Exclaim has a good piece on how the history shapes the work.)
In the middle of the tri-concert sandwich, country music of a different kind, from Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame inductees, The Good Brothers. And then the harmony singing brothers of The Sadies wrap up the evening. All in all, a very nice triple bill.
A couple of blog readers wrote in earlier this week in response to a post about Los Lobos, to say how how great the Los Lobos version of I Wan'na Be Like You is. (a.k.a. "The Monkey Song," from the Disney production of The Jungle Book.)
Los Lobos are coming out with an album entirely of Disney songs; I didn't recall hearing that earlier cover and so was slightly flummoxed. (I've since gone and listened to it, and yes, it is good.)
I really, really hoped that a performance of Los Lobos doing The Monkey Song would be online, alas it is not. But it led me to the Louis Prima original, which is funny and charming, and a perfect way to spend a bit of time on a Friday afternoon, rather than clearing your inbox or trying to get a jump on Monday or whatever it is you "should" be doing. This is just plain fun.
Lots of press lately about the upcoming David Byrne Brian Eno recording, their first since the seminal My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts a couple of decades ago, called Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. (So true.) You can read all about it, read all about it, almost anywhere, but here's a link that will take you to John Pareles article from the NYTimes, Together Again In Different Time Zones.
But Byrne is in the news for other reasons these days too, and in light of these bicycle-theft newsy days, I thought it was also timely to mention the bike racks that Byrne designed, installed around NYC. According to the AP story, the "Department of Transportation says the artistic installations by the Talking Heads singer are meant to spark interest in bicycling."
Byrne talks about this project here, should you be interested in hearing what he has to say.
btw, Byrne is a cycling advocate, and sometimes a music & cycling advocate too. How much fun would it have been to be at his How New Yorker's Ride Bikes event last year? A lot, I suspect.
Possibly the most popular (and certainly the best known) part of Wagner's epic Ring Cycle is featured this weekend on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera (Saturday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT).
And that is Die Walküre, which does not mean death to Valkyries, despite what you might have thought as a non-German speaking kid. No, it means The Valkyrie, which literally translates from Old Norse to "chooser of the slain." That's all my Norse though, old or otherwise, so to the business of the broadcast.
It's a recent production that comes to you from the Vienna State Opera. Its incoming music director, Franz Welser-Möst (he officially takes over in 2010) leads an all-star cast including South African tenor Johan Botha, (click on his webpage and listen to him sing, it will stop you in your tracks, at least for the few seconds of sound you get) and Swedish soprano Nina Stemme. (Her homepage will stop you in your tracks for another reason, I daresay. What a dress!)
And for more details on the opera, please continue reading.
I think it's fair to say that the relationship between human beings and animals, (sometimes called Anthrozoology), both domesticated and wild is changing -- because of increased urbanization, climate change and likely deep cultural shifts that are being explored in dissertations even as we speak.
So it stands to reason (us being the animal able to do so after all, although that thinking is being challenged more and more -- see Pill Popping Pets) there would be a growing body of musical work connected to critters.
Tonight The Signal (10 p.m.) explores just that, with tributes to apes, foxes, cats and even the mystical phoenix. (Can the mystical phoenix count as a critter? On The Signal, yes, absolutely.)
Rumba Calzada call themselves a Latin Jazz + Afro Cuban + Salsa Band (and also a "Latin explosion featuring original and classic Latin Jazz & Salsa music") so that should give you a fairly specific idea of their sound. To actually hear their sound though, tune in this evening to Canada Live (8 p.m.). CBC recorded the band in Vancouver's Studio One as part of the 2008 Vancouver International Jazz Festival, and that concert is broadcast tonight.
Also from Vancouver, the sextet Ugetsu (which means "fantasy in Japanese). You may know the word from Ugetsu the 1953 movie by Kenji Mizoguchi, considered a masterpiece of Japanese cinema. Or in a more musical context as the name of a 1963 recording by Art Blakey. And it is indeed that context that Ugetsu the band reference -- they've taken charts from the famed Jazz Messengers and re-created, as well as doing original music in that style.
What you'll hear tonight is another CBC Studio 1 recording, featuring Ugetsu bandleader and drummer Bernie Arai, Brad Turner on trumpet, Steve Kaldestad on tenor, Rod Murray on trombone, Ross Taggart on piano and Andre Lachance on bass. Weirdly cannot seem to find a website for them, but here is some info about the band via Vancouver Jazz.
Oscar Peterson once said of pianist and Hammond B-3 organ player Mike LeDonne that he was "one of the most promising and talented pianists of this era..." Today on Tonic (6 p.m.) Katie will feature a live set by the talented Mr. LeDonne on the B3.
Speaking of the Hammond, in perusing the "virtual museum at The Hammond Zone, a website devoted to the mighty organ, was entertained to find this vintage advertisement for a version called the Hammond Chord Organ, claiming "You'll play a tune in 30 minutes!"
"A few weeks at home with the Hammond Chord Organ and you'll master dozens of pieces from the hit songs to classics. And you'll do it without lessons or boring scales and exercises!"
Ah those boring scales and exercises, who needs 'em. (Guess at that point no one had thought of "air organ," let alone Organ Hero.)
Somehow it did not seem surprising to read this morning's news that iTunes online music store has been blocked in China -- because some athletes had downloaded protest music. Specifically, a compilation called Songs For Tibet, featuring music performed by Sting, John Mayer, Ben Harper, Moby, Alanis Morrisette and others.
According to a report in The Guardian (China Blocks iTunes Music Store) the organization behind the compilation, Art Of Peace Foundation, suggested that by listening to these songs in Beijing it would inspire people to recognize (and presumably communicate to others) that "compassion and non-violence can overcome intolerance and oppression - beautiful ideals to be associated with the Olympic spirit."
The suppression of music is another inglorious aspect of these Olympics, but it also points to the enduring power of protest music, something explored in the recent PopMatters feature, Say It Loud! 65 Great Protest Songs.
It starts in 1824 with Beethoven's adaptation of Ode To Joy (exploring the debate surrounding its political origins) and winds up with the Dixie Chicks Not Ready To Make Nice. (Their response to the lather some people got into over their critical remarks about the U.S. involvement in Iraq.)
Really interesting to browse through -- a very wide range of music, illustrated with video and links to the recordings, and with reflections on how music has galvanized, motivated, and influenced thinking. Which, when you think about it, is really the point of protest music. In China, point taken.
Just a note to say don't forget that every week on the Canada Live Podcast you can hear concerts recorded across the country, listened to at your leisure. And this week's podcast includes folk/roots performer Kerri Woelke, drummer Nathan Lawr, and headliner Donné Roberts.
Roberts, who plays Malagasy music, blues, rock and funk, is one of the excellent guitar players involved in the much lauded African Guitar Summit. What he's all about as a solo musician is nicely summed up in this quote from Michael Clifton, percussionist and critic, in the Music Africa newsletter, a few years back.
“Donné has a knack for cracking the code; for taking two completely disparate art forms and bringing them together somehow. He can bridge the sensibilities of African and blues music very effectively. He makes the innate connection between North American Black music and African, as well.”
The numbers of people -- musicians and otherwise -- inspired by Glenn Gould are vast. But of course it's the musicians who translate that influence in the way Gould knew best, through music.
Last autumn ten Canadian composers wrote preludes and fugues inspired by Glenn Gould -- and ten pianists performed them. Appropriately enough, it was called So You Want To Write A Fugue.
Tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) you can hear some of that music, featuring Stewart Goodyear's Prelude And Fugue and pianist Gregory Oh's performance of Andre Ristic'sPrelude et Fugue.
Sometimes Gould's influence manifests itself in some less positive ways though. For instance through some fakery -- as uncovered by the ever-vigilant folks at the Glenn Gould Foundation. Here's what they uncovered:
"Recently we were startled to see a series of audio recordings on YouTube that purported to offer Gould, as one half of a duet, performing the complete Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, in a two-piano transcription by Liszt.
The series was posted on August 5, by “ehttsinaip,” a student in St. Petersburg, Russia. (“My name is Marco,” he wrote. “I like math, anatomy, physics, astronomy, telephone numbers, car number plates, and classical music.”) But the posting was clearly made in error. There is no evidence of any such recording by Gould, and the likelihood that he made one could conservatively be estimated as only slightly higher than zero. Gould’s supposed duet partner was given as the French pianist Alain Planes, so we assume that the recording of the Ninth in question was the one that Planes made with Georges Pludermacher. Anyway, Marco seems to have been set straight rather quickly, and after a few days the recording was taken down."
They do go on to point out some good (and authentic) Gould performances on YouTube though, so if you're interested, please continue reading.
Plus, she has a live set from saxophonist Cory Weeds, recorded at the The Cellar in Vancouver. Here's the backstory on that:
Cellar Live is the Vancouver-based record label created in 2001 by musician/producer/jazz club owner Cory Weeds. When he bought the club in 2000 he also decided to record some of the great music that was played at the club. Eight years and around fifty recordings later -- it's quite an archive. And of course one of the benefits of running the show is getting his own music heard too.
Maybe that should be another tip for the Times list (see last post). How to get your music heard? Why, just buy your own club and start your own label.
The entire world (or at least those in it who pay attention to the ever shifting and sometimes desperate industry surrounding music) knows that an entrepreneurial spirit is required. Either that or a creative spirit which is unique enough that it translates into audiences -- really what most musicians hope for anyway.
While a few of the tips on the Times list are potentially useful, if easier said than done -- selling shares in your band, getting your song featured in a video game -- #5 borders on what is sometimes called "magical thinking" -- sell an heirloom. Yes of course, everyone has one of those lying around waiting to be sold.
Apparently it did work for Nell Bryden (a New York singer songwriter) though, whose family agreed that selling a painting that was just kicking around, thus raising $350,000 to launch her career was the thing to do. (Honestly, as a piece of advice to budding musicians?) Eminently more practical would be to read everything Bob Lefsetz has to say on marketing, pick and choose, then chart your own course.
Interesting to see that as phones have become such a central part of modern existence that music made with phones, or in response to phones, has become something of a growing/going concern.
One example of the former: "Telephone Piano," owing a debt of gratitude to Mozart.
And of the latter (if you can stomach the melodic line), the "Nokia Fugue."
Brings new shades of meaning to the notion of "phoning it in," don't you think?
If you happen to be in Chicago's marvellous Grant Park on Sunday you can hear Los Lobos live at the Viva Chicago Latin Music Festival. If not, you can hear them Wednesday night on Canada Live (8 p.m.) with their usual Los Lobos blend of blues, rock, various Mexican and Tex-Mex styles.
Apparently their next album is covers of songs associated with Walt Disney flicks -- could this really be true? I can hear them doing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. I think.
The Wolves aside, also on this evening's programme, a concert by one-time Van the Man sideMan, James Hunter, this from last year's Edmonton Folk Fest. And to round out the evening from the same festival, music from Marty Stuart And The Fabulous Superlatives. What can I say, they're brilliant, amazing, incredible!
A bit of a musical tour of wilderness destinations on The Signal (10 p.m.) tonight, according to the Team Signal. They tell me that this evening "Granny’Ark starts you at Home; then Absent Sound takes you on a Highway in Canada. En route, you’ll experience Life in a Day by No Man's Land, and let yourself be Sundrenched by The North Atlantic Explorers."
Guess it's one of those "tune in to find out" stories. Though I will say, the gorgeous vista on Absent Sound's homepage is such that one could just stare at it forever. Or one could check out the wilderness of the scene in the Winter Solstice video embedded on that page (also by clicking on that last link). Giant snow monsters in bars! Cool.
Tonic (6 p.m.), plays some music by the Oliver Jones Trio on this evening's programme, a bright tune called Scrambled.
This put me in mind of Jones, who was in the news yesterday for being named to a committee which will determine how the late Oscar Peterson's memory should best be publicly honoured. The two pianists were long time friends, and Jones was involved in most of the major tributes for Mr. Peterson.
One group in Montreal suggested renaming a metro station in Peterson's honour, back in March. But I wonder, if people across the country were polled, what other suggestions might come up?
Mine would be to create a Montreal music garden, a beautiful spot for reflection and for music, with regular live concerts...maybe the only proviso for musicians would be that one piece of music in their set would in some way connect to Peterson. (I can dream, can't I?)
You may have heard that Brazilian songwriter and singer Dorival Caymmi has died, at the age of 94. Caymmi had a long (60 years!) and hugely influential career -- his place in Brazilian society is indicated by the fact that governors in the states of Bahia and Rio declared three days of official mourning in his honour.
He wrote over 100 songs, many of which have been recorded by Brazil's leading musicians. (And one of which has been credited with launching Carmen Miranda's Hollywood career, his 1939 hit What does the Bahiana Have?)
No, not the name of a band, also not a lyric. But evidence of the inventive lengths to which people will go to get their creative work out there in the world. One of the more fun byproducts of these times of shifting technologies, economies and concepts of ownership... fun to watch it as it develops, that is.
The examples keep trickling in. Fer instance, the aptly named The Craft Economy, who have been stapling their new demo CD to telephone poles, (along with a statement criticizing the proposed federal copyright bill, C-61).
Leaving aside other issues (staples, property, splinters) it's an interesting way to share music and ideas -- here's what that statement says, according to Larry Leblanc's The Leblanc Newsletter.
"Copyright should protect the rights of artists and producers of creative content, but it should not suppress creative and artistic expression. The Craft Economy has licensed our music, including this CD, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 license. This license gives you the freedom to share our music with your friends and enemies, and remix and use it in new and creative ways, provided you attribute the work back to us, and you don't make money off our work. It's fair for you and us. This is the way art should work."
Then there's the opposite approach, protecting one's creative work and ideas until one is good and ready to release in controlled fashion. But the road to hell and all that -- poor Bono, unthinkingly blasting new U2 tunes at his holiday villa, only for some passerby to record it on a cell phone...you can imagine the rest. And if not, see Bono Accidentally Leaks New Songs.
Late in the last century Australian Tommy Emmanuel was named "Certified Guitar Player" by Chet Atkins, for the former's contributions to the instrument. On Canada Live (8 p.m.) Tuesday night you can hear why, with a concert featuring the finger style guitar player, recorded at Montreal's Theatre Outremont.
Right now you can see/hear him on the R2 Blog, with Over The Rainbow, a rather nice way to start the day...
As well as the Tommy Emmanuel concert on this evening's broadcast, you can hear another of the A Propos 20th anniversary Songwriters' Sessions. Host Jim Corcoran is joined by Pierre Flynn, Michel Faubert, Jérôme Minière and Eve Cournoyer at Monteal's Studio 12, where the musicians performed for the first time together on stage.
P.S. A Propos, should you be unfamiliar, is a CBC Radio 1 show that celebrates "the diversity and audacity of the French-speaking popular music scene."
The Signal (10 p.m.) heads east tonight for music from this year’s Newfound Music Festival. It's a small contemporary music festival that includes work by established and emerging composers, as well as students. But I sadly cannot seem to find a festival website to give you any more info.
Less sadly, at least I can tell you that it's held every February in St. John's, and is run by composer Clark Ross. Tonight's performances on The Signal's broadcast include Untouchable, a work by Rob Power for marimbas and vibraphone.
Tonic (6 p.m.) features some out-takes from the soundtrack of the jazz film Round Midnight on this evening's show -- music that features Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson and John McLaughlin. And really, one needs no more excuse than that to post the above -- the Thelonious Monk Quartet with one version of that very tune.
Naturally there are many contradictory opinions (about 280 of them) of the above performance. This one's interesting:
"Not the definitive reading of Round Midnight, its value is in seeing Monk at work. Wedged on the chair back. The ever-present hat. The metronomic foot. What strike me as much anything is the joylessness of it all. Look again at the last few seconds of this clip. The sidemen, unblinking, carved in stone, staring off into the middle distance. Monk turning away... Vanishing...Evanescing... Coming back to only regard something he sees on the ceiling.
Joyless? Well, they're certainly in some other zone...but I would quibble with "metronomic" -- at times Monk's foot appears to dance.
Ah, the debate that never goes away. This summer, the McSweeeney publication The Believer takes a stab at it to ensuing criticism, for instance at Idolator. (Hey, I've been there -- my own piece for The Walrus a few years back called Off Beat raised hackles in some quarters.)
Believer's Notes On The 2008 Believer CD proposes the following terminology as a way of getting around the "W" Word: that rock and hip-hop musicians shall be known as MABELs (for musicians of American, British, or [Western] European Lineage) when they draw inspiration from traditions by "Nigerian, Peruvian, Indonesian, and other non-local musicians" (a.k.a. ANABELs, for artists not of American, British, or [Western] European Lineage).
MABEL and ANABEL were "born as a way of avoiding broad, inaccurate locutions such as 'world music,' 'Anglo music,' and other unfortunate 'us vs. them' terminology."
Nothing like a good absurd extreme to brighten one's day! And something tells me MABEL and ANABEl will not be the next Fannie May and Freddie Mac, in terms of household words. But good on the Believer for underscoring this musical 21st century reality, that "W" music is everywhere:
"Musicians like Beirut create entire styles out of Balkan Gypsy music; singers such as Devendra Banhart sing Spanish lyrics in homage to Tropicália; Radiohead nods to Jorge Ben; Vampire Weekend borrows from reggaeton beats; and producers such as Bill Laswell and Timbaland merge dub and bhangra into otherwise apple-pie rock-pop genres."
After the initial sturm und drang over the loss of the Hockey Night In Canada theme died down, the quest for the new theme heated up. Not something, I confess, that I've paid much attention to. Until over the weekend I read Sarmishta Subramanian's entertaining Macleans piece, Settling The Score.
Apparently since the contest to find a new theme for the hockey broadcast was announced in June, there have been over 4,000 tracks submitted. Four thousand! ("Songs with titles such as Slap Shot, GOAL!, Anthem Of Rockin Proportions and Fasten Your Jock Straps.")
This propelled me over to the contest site, Canada's Hockey Anthem Challenge, to check out some of the entries. Some surprises -- like the anti-anthem Fire And Ice (perhaps an attempt to reduce hockey violence by giving pause for sombre thought?) Similarly Drop The Funkin Puck, which sounds like potential outro music to me. But there seems to be some momentum for Hockey Night Forever: The Score, at least if "most commented on" is anything to go by.
Still time to enter your hockey magnum opus -- the contest closes on Aug. 31.
Good Monday morning to you. Hope you had lovely weather over the weekend where you are. The weekend in T.O. was not so bad at all, but the Friday afternoon hail and rain was something else, a deluge. Apparently it is now the rainiest summer on history in T-town! "It's good for the garden" is simply no longer an acceptable response.
But to music and radio, since today is a new day, Miss Scarlett. Canada Live (8 p.m.) will be broadcasting two concerts this evening, first from singer-songwriter Anne Schaefer (pictured here). When this concert was recorded she had just released her second album, The Waiting Room, and the concert features material from the recording, performed in front of an audience at Victoria's Alix Goolden Hall.
The second concert is also from the west coast, a reprise of the Penthouse Song Circle No. 1 -- featuring just what you'd think (leaving the Penthouse part aside that is) -- performances of original songs. The songwriters in question are Vancouver's Coco Love Alcorn, Christa Couture and Halifax's Ian Sherwood.
The Signal (10 p.m.) wraps up its weekend in Winnipeg tonight by celebrating the city’s new music scene. Pat begins with a composition from the Winnipeg Symphony’s present composer in residence, Vincent Ho, followed by a work from composer Randolph Peters.
You can also hear music from a concert recorded in in Winnipeg featuring mezzo-soprano Rosemary Vanderhooft and keyboard player Cheryl Pauls, followed by a Trevor Grahl piece, recorded during Winnipeg’s third New Music Festival.
Speaking of Winnipeg, as Pat has been all weekend on The Signal, stumbled on a nice Peg (mostly indie) music blog, Painting Over Silence. Love that name.
Here's a neat story. Residents of the North Point Douglas area of Winnipeg were frustrated by drugs, gangs and crime in the area, (not the neat part) so as part of a "take back the street" initiative they decided to stage a music festival every weekend through the summer. (The neat part.)
Local CBC helped out by putting on two concerts to mark the beginning and end of the festival. The first concerts featured singer-songwriter stalwart James Keelaghan, (pictured here), and an up and coming duo, Tracy Bone and J.C. Campbell. This evening on Canada Live (8 p.m.) you can hear some of the music they performed.
After that it's over to the Groove Jazz Winnipeg Festival for some music from a 17-year-old singer named Sophie Berkal Sarbit, something of a prodigy of famed Toronto pianist Bill King, who produced her debut recording. This live recording was made just after Ms. Berkal Sarbit had completed grade 12. (How sweet!)
As posted yesterday, but just in case you missed it, this week on Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT), guest host Robert Harris presents performances from several Ontario music festivals. (Mariachi bands on the hill are not actually on the menu, but quite liked the image.)
The menu does start with music from Ottawa though. The Gryphon Trio took on the formidable task of curating the hugely successful Ottawa Chamber Festival, which always generates much excitement in Ottawa, as noted in this post during the festival. (Less excitement about decent prime rib roast purveyors for your pre-concert dinners though-- according to Eat, Drink, Ottawa.
As to the music you can hear on SAIC, it is as follows:
Pianist Andre Laplante in a recital featuring Liszt and Chopin, as well as the Schumann Quintet, Op. 44, joined by the members of the Shanghai Quartet.
Also featured from Parry Sound is violinist Laurence Kayaleh. She joins pianist Paul Stewart in Tchaikovsky's Souvenir of a dear place, and the Sonata No. 2 by Nikolai Medtner. Piano works by that same Russian master are also featured, performed by Marc-André Hamelin.
You may have already read on the R2 blog that Patti Smith would be hosting a four-part series about Bob Dylan which was to begin last Sunday. It did not. This was due to circumstances beyond anyone's control -- the explosion at a propane depot in Toronto, the Olympics, the ensuing (and understandable) confusion in Master Control. Apologies to anyone who was waiting to hear it, only to have it fail to materialize.
The good news is that it really does start today, on Inside The Music (Sunday Edition 12:00 p.m., 12:30 NT). The series, which comes to CBC R2 via the Public Radio Exchange, is called Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind .
Smith presents four hours of music and conversation about Dylan, including interviews with friends, collaborators and journalists -- plus some rare clips from the man himself. In today's episode you'll hear about Dylan's move to New York City in 1961, and his meteoric rise to becoming "the voice of a generation."
In other but related news, Smith herself is also the subject of a recent (film) documentary -- Patti Smith: Dream Of Life, which opened last week in New York. (Note to horse lovers -- you will want to click on that last link, whether or not you are a Patti Smith fan!)
Brought to you by the magic of radio: In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT). Today's show, an "encore presentation," (a.k.a. a repeat) is devoted to that very notion of things magical, things that bewitch, bother and bewilder. In other words, most of life.
Gregory plays music from the usual unusual line up of musical suspects, including Sammy Davis Jr., Creedence Clearwater Revival, Caetano Veloso, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Ella Fitzgerald, and many others -- for the complete playlist, check out the aptly named playlists.
Your Choral Concert Bulletin: Choral Concert (Sunday 8:00 a.m.) broadcasts a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic Chorus of Dvorak’s Requiem this Sunday. It's an immensely powerful work, although many feel it was overshadowed by the work of composers like Berlioz, Brahms and Verdi. Not today though!
It's Winnipeg Weekend Part Two tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) as Pat presents music from the talented and idiosyncratic Christine Fellows, electronica from Blunderspublik and hip hop from Lil Disciples.
Also, in the third hour Pat plays music from Clive Holden’s experimental film Trains Of Winnipeg. (Not to be confused with other experimental trains of Winnipeg, for instance Guy Maddin's.
No, Trains Of Winnipeg is a multimedia, multidisciplinary art project -- a website, an audio CD, a book, and a feature-length cycle of films. From the website's mouth:
"The post modern era shattered the boundaries between art's dominant paradigms, and we've entered the 21st century far less able to specialize on a single artistic focus, various lenses are required to see clearly in this new multilateral world. And which clothes should we wear? What music are we supposed to like now? Is low art the new high art? Is hate the new love?"
Earlier this week the headline Elgar Without Vibrato? Fiddlesticks caught my eye. Apparently a new (yet retro) version of Elgar has gotten up the noses of some critics at this year's Proms. (“Elgar without vibrato is the musical equivalent of dead roses,” Stephen Pollard, a columnist, harrumphed in The Times of London last week...")
Today Katherine has all the details on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT), delivered with nary a warble. She'll also explain why pianist Martha Argerich, known for being a very private person, is confessing her innermost fears – on DVD.
Maybe it's the old "face your fears" thing, something that always strikes me as overrated. Why should you touch a spider if you don't want to? Or tremble on the edge of the Grand Canyon? There are plenty of other ways to pass the time.
But back to the show...Katherine also has the goods on how a Canadian made a musical reform at the Vatican that requires changes in both vocal -- and washroom -- arrangements for the choir of St. Peter’s. Would not make this up. Really.
In case you missed the earlier post on this week's opera broadcast...today it's Richard Strauss's last operatic work, Capriccio, which you could view as pretty much the story of the old Pete Yarrow song, Torn Between Two Lovers. (And loving them both is breakin' all the rules.)
You can hear how this afternoon on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera ( Saturday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT), with a broadcast of the Vienna State Opera production of Capriccio. Here's the nutshell: A young widow, Countess Madeleine, (sung by Renée Fleming) is being wooed by a poet, Olivier, (Adrian Eröd, baritone) and a composer, Flamand (Canadian tenor Michael Schade). Will she go for words, or for music?
This is her solution -- throw them together in an opera. Complications ensue.
For more info on the opera, including full synopsis and cast and character details, please continue reading.
It's not easy getting an opera produced. (Understatement.) Yet despite what typically entails great expense and considerable production logistics, opera continues to lure composers -- and a considerable number of Canadian composers at that. Today on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT) there's a programme on this very subject, as André Alexis presents A Good Story For Opera.
It's the second part of a series called Driven To Music. (Not Driven By Music, as claimed last week.) Either way, one happy listener/blog reader described that week's episode as "a wonderful show." This week's episode features composers John Estacio and James Rolfe, with additional thoughts on the subject from Abigail Richardson, Chan Ka Nin, Alexina Louie, and the late Harry Somers.
P.S. That's a rehearsal from The Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra's production of Orlando, which began at the Sydney Opera House on August 15...speaking of logistical challenges.
If you're in Ottawa this weekend, keep an eye out for Deep Roots host Tom Power, who is doing some hosting at the Ottawa Folk Fest.
If you're not, you can still hear him presenting some of the artists he'll be introducing in Ottawa -- on Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) today. Fer instance: Carolina Chocolate Drops (pictured here) Donna The Buffalo, and The Sadies.
And you'll also hear yet another of the talented Wainwright crew, step-sibling to Rufus and Martha but not related to the McGarrigles...Loudon's daughter, Lucy Wainwright Roche with a cover song that Tom says "melts all the cheesiness of the original," Superman's Song, originally by Winnipeg's Crash Test Dummies. Oh, Tom, Brad Roberts wouldn't like to hear that. Maybe "sentimental," rather than cheesy?
Lucy Wainright Roche does a sweet version of Wild Mountain Thyme, btw, on her myspace site (last link). Nothing extraordinary, but nice. (Sorry if that sounds like damning with faint praise, don't mean it to be...)
Summer and music festivals go together like, well, summer and music festivals. And looking ahead to Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) this week, guest host Robert Harris will be presenting several performances from Ontario music festivals. (Likely without the chorus girls or the saxophone, but still...)
As to the music you can hear on SAIC, it is as follows:
Pianist Andre Laplante in a recital featuring Liszt and Chopin, as well as the Schumann Quintet, Op. 44, joined by the members of the Shanghai Quartet.
Also featured from Parry Sound is violinist Laurence Kayaleh. She joins pianist Paul Stewart in Tchaikovsky's Souvenir of a dear place, and the Sonata No. 2 by Nikolai Medtner. Piano works by that same Russian master are also featured, performed by Marc-André Hamelin.
Nice triple bill this Saturday evening on Canada Live (8 p.m.), starting with Malagasy-Canadian music from Donne Roberts, (that's him in the photo), who you may know as a member of the African Guitar Summit. Actually, same is true of the second performer too, The Mighty Popo. Both of these concerts were recorded recently as part of Can. Live's ongoing coverage of Canadian festivals, in the first case at Toronto's Afrofest, in the second at London Ont.'s Sunfest.
The third concert goes in another direction, with Tambuco & Glen Velez -- Tambuco is a world-class percussion ensemble, and for this performance they teamed up with a world-class soloist: Glen Velez. Trivia note: Both Tambuco and Velez are Grammy nominees -- something not too many percussion specialists can likely claim.
Ah, the wintery Winnipeg jokes, they're like mother-in-law jokes in the Catskills or something. (But hey, it's a dry cold, right?) When I was growing up there I never ever called it Winterpeg, but in the missive I received from the weekend crew of The Signal (10 p.m.) (who are based in my hometown) the very first line was "drop your bathing suits and put on your parkas." Maybe they meant as a shield against the mosquitoes? Ba dum dum.
But anyway, to the music, which is indeed a celebration of musical Winnipeg. Tonight Pat begins with The Weakerthans, and then samples the soundtracks of Winnipeg directors Deco Dawson and Guy Maddin. The legacy of Glenn Buhr is celebrated and then there's some klezmer from Marilyn Lerner (surely a former Winnipeger, I ran into her in T-town not long ago). Plus, a Klezmer Suite by Sid Robinovitch.
Canada Live (8 p.m.) has really been hitting the road this summer, recording at festivals and parks across the country. Tonight's show comes to you from Vancouver's Grandview Park, and features local musicians Cameron Lattimer and Eneida Marta (pictured here).
Country/folk/pop (covers off almost everything he plays, right?) guitarist Cameron Latimer studied Jazz at Malaspina College in Nanaimo and quickly started playing in bands on the island and in Vancouver, graduating from sideman to leading his own group. This concert was recorded just as he was releasing his debut album, Fallen Apart.
Eneida Marta is a Vancouverite originally from Guineau Bissau, and a lot of her music (sung in Portuguese and Kriol) is based on the lives of women in Guinea Bissau. Her band includes musicians with roots also in Guinea-Bissau, as well as Portugal and Cape Verde, playing loads of percussion. (Among those percussion instruments is the Guinean national instrument known as the "tina" a water drum using an inverted gourd in a barrel containing 50 litres of H2O. A whole lot of H2O, and a whole lot of sound!)
Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was thus nicknamed because he apparently had a huge appetite as a kid (and as a man, judging from pictures), resulting in the nickname "Cannibal," which devolved to "Cannonball."
Tonight Tonic (6 p.m.) salutes the great alto player, and right now so does the Radio 2 blog, with a look back at 1958 and a TV programme called The Subject Is Jazz, with Cannonball as the guest.
This starts at around 2:00 into the video -- Cannonball talking about bebop, about hearing Charlie Parker for the first time...if you've any interest in bop and Adderley (who also plays) you'll want to watch this!
"Not everyone knows it, but I've been a maestro for years. I have charged through Brahms's Third on the Metropolitan Line and swooned through Mahler's Fifth on the Circle Line; I have led an apocalyptically frenzied Verdi Requiem in the comfort of my own living room, fed by the kind of furious rage that probably would have resulted in physical harm had it not been for my wonderful leadership of the Vienna Philharmonic."
Ah, who among us cannot relate on some level to the urge to conduct. Air conducting, as it were.
The above quote is from an article by Neil Fisher about the BBC's latest reality TV show, Maestro. (Billed as "Eight Celebrities, one top-class orchestra and the opportunity of a lifetime," the "final challenge" being that you get to conduct an orchestra in front of a live audience of thousands at the Proms…)
How long will it be before we have a Canadian Maestro? Well, a Canadian SYTYCD is coming our way soon, so we shall see. Meanwhile, here's the rest of that most entertaining piece about the longing to conduct, and about the show Maestro itself -- Make Me A Conductor.
(P.S. Leonard Bernstein, in case you're wondering.)
Richard Strauss's last operatic work, Capriccio, is pretty much the story of the old Pete Yarrow song, Torn Between Two Lovers. (And loving them both is breakin' all the rules.)
You can hear just how those rules are broken this weekend on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera ( Saturday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT), with a broadcast of the Vienna State Opera production of Capriccio. Here's the story in briefest of brief. A young widow, Countess Madeleine, (sung by Renée Fleming) is being wooed by a poet, Olivier, (Adrian Eröd, baritone) and a composer, Flamand (Canadian tenor Michael Schade). Clearly she's not in it for the dough, since she finds both poet and composer irresistible.
Anyway, this is her solution -- throw them together in an opera. (Ah yes, the old production within a production trick.) Complications ensue.
Do note -- according to Mostly Opera, the production was "superb, superb, superb."
For more info on the opera, including full synopsis and cast and character details, please continue reading.
"It was something that could only happen in Halifax" - Stephen Pedersen, Halifax Chronicle Herald.
The something Pederson was referring to was the collaboration between Symphony Nova Scotia and hip hop artist/songwriter (and soon to be CBC host) Buck 65. He worked with conductor/composer Dinuk Wijeratne to create a programme featuring arrangements of some of Buck 65's hits, like Way Back When and Cries A Girl, and a new CBC commission of a brand new work written by Wijeratne - a triple concerto for cellist, turntablist and percussionist.
Tonight you can hear this collaboration on The Signal (10 p.m.), and come September you can hear Buck 65, under his real handle, Rich Trefry, hosting a new daily afternoon programme from 3 pm. to 6 p.m.
Jeremy Zmuda is one of the many guitarists to owe a debt of gratitude to one of jazz's most influential guitarists, Jim Hall. Zmuda translated that debt into musical currency, by writing a piece called Jimmy, which Katie will play this evening on Tonic (6 p.m.)
Speaking of Jim Hall, did you know that he's collaborating with Bill Frisell? He is, and here's what he has to say about that: I am very excited about my current collaboration with fellow guitarist Bill Frisell. We recently finished mixing the music we recorded a few months ago and are getting ready for the release. The process of creating this CD was quite different than those in the past. We recorded the majority of the music at Tony Sherr's studio in Brooklyn which was an adventure in itself. Tony is a wiz with analog recording and everything thus far was done to tape."
To tape, no less! Their downloadable collaboration will be available on September 1 via ArtistShare, a project designed to enable fans to participate in the making of a CD in various ways. So, for example you can submit cover art ideas, among other things.
And a note to Hall complete-ists -- to see Jim with his dog "Django," click here.
Some sad news. Multi-instrumentalist Eval Manigat passed away in Haiti this week. He was sometimes called "Quebec's father of world music," known to festival goers across the country in the 1990s for his work leading the award winning group Tchaka -- I well recall dancing under a starry sky to Manigat and company.
So many Quebec musicians benefited from his leadership, and learned from his musicianship, whether on vibes, bass or percussion. Although not a household name across the country, he did not go unrecognized either, winning the 1994 Juno Award for Best Roots recording.
For those who will be in Montreal this weekend, there will be a musical celebration of his life at Memoria, 4231 Blv. St Laurent, Sunday Aug 17 from 4 to 10 pm. And for those who read French, yesterday Philippe Renaude wrote about Manigat's life in La Press: Décès D'Éval Manigat, Père De La Musique Du Monde Québécoise
The performance below features Eval Manigat on vibes in fine funky form at the "Katrinaid Concert" held at the Montreal Spectrum in December of 2005, with the late Georges Thurston and Olivier René de Cotret.
Thursday evening Canada Live (8 p.m.) broadcasts highlights from the first Tirgan: Iranian Festival at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. (Tirgan is an ancient Iranian celebration observed in the month of July.) The theme of the festival was "exploring diversity," and so the festival organizers tried to include contributions from the various ethnic groups found in Iran, and the various art forms too.
Apparently it was the largest festival of its kind ever produced in North America. How large is that? Well, it featured more than 150 artists working in Iranian traditions in all artistic disciplines from Iran, the Middle East, Europe, the U.S. and Canada.
What you'll hear on the broadcast is music from Saeid Shanbehzadeh (the photo was taken during his performance at Tirgan). He's an internationally acclaimed Paris-based Iranian musician and dancer whose ensemble was the first Iranian ensemble to perform at the huge, annual world music conference -- WOMEX 2007 in Spain. His ensemble focuses on the traditional music and dance of southern Iran.
But first up on the show is music from another mega-fest -- Toronto's biggest celebration of Latin culture, Salsa on St. Clair. Since it began three years ago it's become a great celebration of all things Latin, and has a real neighborhood/street feel -- despite attracting around 750,000 revelers to the streets of Toronto since its launch.
Tonight's broadcast includes two local Toronto Latin acts, Lady Son (who I just heard a few weeks ago at another street fest -- fun, laidback music) and the salsa group whose slogan is "We play Latin music for dancers": Cache.
Eve Egoyan specializes in contemporary solo piano music, so it's not a surprise that she would take on Alvin Curran's epic work for solo piano, Inner Cities. Curran has been working on this expanding body of work since 1996, and one listener has described it as "by turns charming, maddening, annoying, gorgeous, funny, thoughtful, reckless, tedious, dull, stunning -- a fully realized sonic portrait... and a long distance journey you will savor..."
Tonight The Signal (10 p.m.) broadcasts excerpts, of course, it's too humongous to play more than that. What you can hear is a set of "contradictory" etudes, which the composer offers as "autobiographical fragments like a drawer full of fossilized imprints".
Curran's writing on all of his inner cities makes for a great read, by the way, with passages like this:
There is no shortage of fiddling traditions in Canada, but possibly the most idiosyncratic is Métis fiddling. Its unique structures and phrase lengths (sometimes called "crooked" phrasing) give it such a distinctive sound. If you'd like to learn more about this style of fiddling, you might want to start by reading some of the estimable Anne Lederman's work on the subject, for instance her study Old Indian And Métis Fiddling In Manitoba.
You might also want to listen to the broadcast on Canada Live (8 p.m.) this evening. It features three concerts -- the second of which is music from three young fiddlers who are passionate about this style. The occasion was the Walter Flett Tribute, the late Walter Flett being a fiddle champion, father to Lawrence "Teddy Boy" Houle and James Flett, and a huge influence to anyone coming up in the tradition. (For more information on Walter Flett, check out The Métis Fiddler Quartet's website.)
The fiddlers in question on the broadcast are Ryan Daoust and Matthew Contois, fiddlers from small communities in Northern Manitoba who are old school -- they learned to play by ear, and Alyssa Delbaere-Sawchuk (pictured here) a Toronto based violinist who you could say is new school (classically trained) but spent time learning fiddle tunes with Lawrence "Teddy Boy Houle" a couple years back. (She also was behind a recorded tribute to Flett called O Megwassi: Reel Métis.)
What you'll hear is all three playing a mixture of Walter Flett's music, standards and originals, recorded at Winnipeg's West End Cultural Centre -- and I have it on good authority the concert was in front of a "full, boisterous house of Métis music fans."
Before the Walter Flett Tribute you can also hear a concert from everyone's favourite Winnipeg band who lovingly hate their hometown -- The Weakerthans, and after the Metis fiddling concert, a performance by Winnipeg singer-songwriter Cara Luft.
Mali's Issa Bagayogo has been nicknamed "Techno-Issa," and if you decide to download his latest recording, Mali Koura, from iSteveJobs you will find it marked electronica.
Well, as you'll hear if you tune into Tonic (6 p.m.) this evening, when Katie samples his music, though electronica is a grab bag term it's unlikely that this will be the first description that will pop into mind upon hearing his music. The new recording weighs in too much on the Malian acoustic instruments side for that. You may, however, think the word "dance," since so much of his music impels a body to do just that.
But this older song, Dambalou, (doesn't seem to be any videos of his new stuff) will explain both the electronica tag, and why his music has been a hit on dance floors the world over:
Here it is almost mid-August and we still haven't got a true Summer Song. Despite my own plea for the Ting Tings, and CBC host Matt Galloway (currently reporting from Beijing) rooting for Little Jackie, among others. (See Songs Of Summer).
But while there is undeniably a certain amount of tristesse at the dearth of a song that defines summer 2008, I don't think we should just settle for something that merely hints at being a decent Summer Song. So I was glad to see Vulture's Six Reasons Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl Isn't The Song Of Summer. (Cheap shot about Canada aside.) They are right on most counts, for instance you can't dance to it, at least not while having unbridled fun. And it certainly does seem transparently intended to to push the boundaries of the conventional -- in a conventional way.
As for the apparent lack of a true summer song of 2008? Well, as Tony Soprano would say, whaddyagonna do? (And please don't start talking about the Jonas Bros. Burnin' Up or Kid Rock's All Summer Long, the Summer Song bar has got to be set higher than that, right?)
Sometime in the early part of the last century Joseph Canteloube (sometimes called "le bard d'Auvergne") collected folk songs from the Auvergne region of France and arranged them for voice and orchestra. And ever since then I think people associate this music with a kind of nostalgia for days gone by in rural France.
So if you too are pining for France take note -- this morning on Here's To You (9 a.m.), thanks to one listener who was feeling homesick for Auvergne, guest host Andre Alexis will play Canteloube's Songs From The Auvergne.
Also on the show this morning, music by Canadian composer Jean Coulthard, requested by an artist in Gibsons, B.C. who presumably was pining for the music of Coulthard. And why not -- as Mavor Moore once said, Coulthard was "an extraordinarily original composer, with a voice very much her own."
Tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) Laurie updates the notion of the one man (or woman) band, with music from solo artists who are less likely to be tricked out in Rube Goldberg-like concoctions, more likely to rely on laptops, samplers, loopers and keyboards for their one-person musical performances.
And speaking of...if you missed this back in May, you might be interested to read The Return Of The One-Man Band, a fairly in depth look at the contemporary one-m/w-band, exploring some of the reasons for the trend (if it is a trend), beyond the obvious shifts in technology.
Speaking of instruments that have been, at times, dubbed novelty turns (see previous post) vibist/composer Bobby Hutcherson is sometimes credited with helping vibes to be seen as a legitimate jazz voice, not just an occasional quirky colour in the palette. Among many accomplishments, Hutcherson played on some great Bluenote classics (including a personal fav, Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch).
So pair him with a pianist like Cedar Walton, (note -- like the previous link, a fan appreciation site due to lack of official) who came up roughly in the same era and have the same musical vocabulary, chances are you'll hear some excellent jazz. Tonight on Tonic (6 p.m.), Katie will give proof to my theory via music from a live recording the pair made in 1982, at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco.
Ah, the mighty Uke. At last the New York Times sits up on its venerable hind-legs to acknowledge that which Radio 2 blog-readers have long known (see Ukuleles Sweeping Britain, as just one example of our long-knowingness).
The ukulele is having its day. (Or, as is pointed out in the article, something of its third day.)
In a piece called Those Four Irresistible Strings, they shrewdly note that it's not just the sound that is at the heart of the instrument's appeal, no, it's bigger than that: "What the world seems to need now is something tiny, fun and inexpensive."
So it's also smaller than that, but you get the point. Ukes are hot. Move over brass, look out glockenspiels, and auto harps? Keep twangily harping away, but you'll never come close to the Uke.
Photo Note: The year was 1938, and "Jack" was thrilling audiences with his "upside down antics" featuring ukulele playing at the Windmill Theatre in London. (Personally, I think someone should pitch this to the IOC, at least as a demo sport.)
It was somehow eerily disconcerting yesterday to read that both Isaac Hayes and Bernie Mac had died on the weekend -- and that both are in the upcoming movie Soul Men. It just seems too soon -- Mac was 50, Hayes was 65.
For many, Isaac Hayes' music first came their way via Shaft. Nothing wrong with that. But as this Wall St. Journal article quite rightly points out, Hayes was Much More Than Shaft. And more than Southpark too.
As the opening to the piece puts it: "The multi generational appeal of Isaac Hayes, who died on Sunday at age 65, speaks to the breadth of his talent. But it also serves to distort the perception of his contribution to American popular culture."
As always the best tribute to a musician is to listen to the music, and I really wanted to post a great live performance video. Couldn't find one. Most of what's available is badly recorded, and the tributes (collages set to Hayes' actual recordings) are typically dull, or just static.
So here's something of a compromise, a polite studio recording from a 1969 TV show -- there were obviously constraints of various kinds. But it's still both a small window into the past and, more importantly, it gives you a few minutes of that voice, singing Walk On By.
A Propos is celebrating its 20th season of "providing a home for Francophone performers from around the world" (something of a slogan for them, actually).
The show, hosted by Jim Corcoran, (pictured here) has been celebrating throughout the year with a series of collaborations between songwriters, showcasing what they rightly describe as "the diversity and audacity of the French-speaking popular music scene."
Tonight on Canada Live (8 p.m.) you can hear Corcoran with some of those diverse and audacious musicians (Daniel Lavoie, Martin Léon, Jonathan Paichaud and Mélanie Auclair). They'll perform for the first time together, no less.
Yes, that Paul McCandless, of Paul Winter and Oregon fame -- and tonight he is true to his claim of multi-instrumentalist -- you can hear him play oboe, english horn, soprano sax, soprano sax, and bass clarinet.
Note: for more information on the A Propos Songwriters Sessions, please click on over.
Geof Holbrook's composition Glitch is inspired by the electronic music of Aphex Twin (great homepage -- you oughta click on that link) and Squarepusher, but performed entirely on acoustic instruments. If you know Squarepusher's music you may find that hard to imagine -- but you can hear how it worked out for yourself tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.).
Glitch is performed by the sax quartet Quasar in collaboration with Montreal percussion ensemble Sixtrum. They'll also perform Indonesian/Dutch composer Roderick de Man's composition called Zest. So, a little glitch, a little zest, and you have a uni-syllabic evening of music that's anything but.
re: the photo -- it's Squarepusher, a.k.a. Tom Jenkinson, taken at the John Peel Night of BBC's Electric Proms a couple of years ago. He's there, lurking on the right.
As a slightly out-of-date listing on Verve Music aptly puts it, "Even almost a decade after her death in 1994, Carmen McRae remains an institution unto herself."
It's just as true for jazz vocal fans in 2008, something Katie notes this evening on Tonic (6 p.m.), with a live set McRae recorded at the Blue Note in New York in 1983.
Here she is with one of her signature tunes, I'm Gonna Lock My Heart.
So utterly decisive and swinging -- what a singer. What a woman!
From hearing motion (see last post) to watching music...sometimes, at live music shows, I find myself looking at the faces of people listening. Do they look gripped by the music? Or like they're thinking about the fact that they forgot to buy milk for morning coffee?
Then there are the times when someone truly looks transported. When music has that affect on me I close my eyes, and consequently have no idea what anyone looks like at all.
Clearly a photographer named Simon Bowcock doesn't have this problem. He was so taken by the expressions on young faces at concerts he began to document them -- you can see some of those shots along with his thoughts about the work in a photo essay at The Guardian called Music Fans Lost In The Moment.
There's something quite stylized about the work, but given that fans as photographic subject matter have been neglected probably since The Beatles era, it's still interesting to see.
And on a related note -- while of course there are tons of good photographers shooting musicians, this newly launched website featuring the work of New Orleans photographer Skip Bolen caught my eye. Some real nice stuff there, particularly that opening James Brown shot.
On various occasions in the past the R2 Blog has touched upon synaesthesia, the neurological condition where two or more senses are linked -- sometimes called "cross-activated senses." One that gets a lot of press is when people hear sound as colours. Musicians like Laura Rosser, for example, who hears D-flat as periwinkle blue.
The results of a new study indicate a new kind of synaesthesia -- where people "hear" motion. The study was conducted by the California Institute of Technology , and what it showed was that some people hear beeping or tapping when they see something flash by. (This happens to me too sometimes, but in my case it's usually some electronic device I forgot to recharge.)
The study was published in Current Biology, and in an article that came out last week in Scientific American Mind called Seeing Is Hearing, neuroscientist (and one of authors of the study), Melissa Saenz, says that she thinks of these people as "having an enhanced soundtrack in life.”
That's putting a positive spin on it. What if you're a symphony orchestra conductor? A soccer player? Or live on the side of a highway?
Monday night Canada Live (8 p.m.) reprises a concert featuring the return of Compadres, a.k.a. Oscar Lopez and James Keelaghan, who like to call their Celtic/Latin mix "Celtino."
It had been ten years since Juno award-winning (singer-songwriter) James Keelaghan and (Latin guitarist) Oscar Lopez released their excellent recording, Compadres. When they reunited they took off for what would prove to be a successful tour of Australia and New Zealand, and to record a new album -- from whence came this concert of celebration, recorded at Jack Singer concert Hall in Calgary.
The second concert on the broadcast tonight is a McLean/MacLean fest -- as in Canadian bluesman Big Dave (McLean) and Delta bluesman Doc (MacLean). They toured together from coast to coast, and along the way Can. Live recorded them. The "blues brothers" also kept a blog of their tour -- The Big Road Blues Tour. Sure was big -- they did 55 shows and logged 20,000 Kilometres!
If you were in the UK this winter, and of a certain age and musical predisposition, you might have noticed a name in the classical music charts that made you take a second look -- Mike Oldfield. Yup, Oldfield was charting for the first time in three decades, with an album called Music Of The Spheres.
But back in the 70s it was all about Tubular Bells. The impact of that recording was huge -- as Calgary pianist Marcel Bergmann will attest to -- his teenaged passion for the music led him to arranging some of it for piano, actually for four pianos.
You can hear some of this music tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) as part of a collaboration commissioned by One Yellow Rabbit, organizers of the annual High Performance Rodeo, a multi-disciplinary theatre fest. Bergmann's arrangement is performed by The Bergmann Duo, Jeroen Van Veen from the Netherlands, and Hong Xu from China -- on four Steinway grands.
Shearwater singer Tammy Fassaert's voice was once described (by a writer with the Victoria Times-Colonist) as "the sound of wood smoke and clear mountain streams, ancient echoes of folk and country music before the business men in designer cowboy boots stole the music ..."
Oh, The Man in designer boots, you do want to watch out for him. Meantime, if you're into acoustic music with harmony singing and acoustic picking, tune into Canada Live (8 p.m.) on Sunday evening to hear Shearwater, recorded at the Vancouver Island Music Festival.
And then, one of the granddaddies of the scene, Valdy. (Who also has a voice that could be said to have a certain wood smoke quality, come to think of it.)
And speaking of Dylan, as we were in the last post, and of audiences rejecting performers (as we weren't). Although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the notion of Dylan being universally booed for "going electric" at Newport back in 1965 is untrue, the legend persists. Now here's the Valdy connection. Valdy's big hit as a solo performer was about an experience that could be said to be the inverse -- a folkie who wanted nothing more than to be a folkie in front of a rock n' roll crowd.
I hadn't heard that song in ages, and so when sitting down to write about Valdy did a search on it, and lo and behold...here's Valdy with Rock N' Roll Song.
Still in good voice, eh?
And one more quick mention re: tonight's Can. Live broadcast -- you can also hear some music from three women who go by the name of Pacific Curls, and play music with Mâori, Pacific and Celtic influences.
Patti Smith hosts a four-part series about Bob Dylan that begins today on Inside The Music (Sunday Edition 12:00 p.m., 12:30 NT). The series, which comes to CBC R2 via the Public Radio Exchange, is called Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind .
Smith presents four hours of music and conversation about Dylan, including interviews with friends, collaborators and journalists -- plus some rare clips from the man himself. In today's episode you'll hear about Dylan's move to New York City in 1961, and his meteoric rise to becoming "the voice of a generation."
In other but related news, Smith herself is also the subject of a recent (film) documentary -- Patti Smith: Dream Of Life, which opened last week in New York. (Note to horse lovers -- you will want to click on that last link, whether or not you are a Patti Smith fan!)
Today on In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT), a reprise of Gregory's show about cities.
For lovers of cities, an excellent theme. Dreaming about being in one's favourite city is one of life's great pleasures. (As is renting Paris, Je T'Aime.)
But music can also transport you in mind if not body to the great cities of the world, and today Gregory takes a musical trip around the globe -- from Tokyo to Paris, from Chicago to Saskatoon. (For those who want to run back there, from time to time.)
For the playlist for today's show, please click here.
Katherine Duncan has double duties this weekend, yesterday as host of In Tune, today as guest host of Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT). She'll presenting music from four different summer festivals taking place in the prairie provinces.
And those festivals are as follows:
From Edmonton's first ever Summer Solstice Festival, performances of trios by Beethoven and Ravel.
From the Windy Mountain Festival in Fort Macleod, music including the Overture On Hebrew Themes by Sergei Prokofiev and the Suite Hebraique No. 2 by Srul Irving Glick.
From the Banff Summer Arts Festival, (that photo of the Rockies is a tip of the hat in their direction, not to mention a nice sight for those of us spending the summer in our offices!) a chamber music concert called To Russia With Love. Featured music includes the Souvenir De Florence by Tchaikovsky, led by violinist Barry Shiffman.
And from the Agassiz Festival in Winnipeg, in honour of the 180th anniversary of Schubert's death, a performance of his Quintet In C D956.
Your Choral Concert Bulletin: Choral Concert (Sunday 8:00 a.m.) salutes the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing this week with a program of choral music that has ties to the games, and to the Olympic ideal.
On a (somewhat) related note, the World Choir Games recently took place in Austria -- interesting to note that among their ideals are the "hope that choirs take an interest in cultural and musical traditions elsewhere in the world," resulting in the competing choirs performing "at least one piece that does not have its origins in their native cultural circles." Strikes me as a rather healthy, less flag-waving oriented ideal...
You have to like a show that plays all three of the above artists in one go. Well, you don't have to, but if you have eclectic tastes in music you probably will. That show is The Signal (10 p.m.), and tonight Pat will indeed be playing music from Iceland's Mugison, the premiere of an acoustic Signal session. And as Mugison fans know, live Mugison is a good thing. Take it from Chimpomatic:
"I insist that you make the effort to see Mugison live, as more than anything his recorded work serves as an exhilarating document of his enthralling live shows..."
And as advertised, Pat also plays music from Toronto’s electronic - international - folk - soul - protest music band, LAL, and from the world's best known Touareg band, Tinariwen.
Photo of Mugison and beautiful but unnamed Icelandic pony by Ari Magg.
Nope, not a rich summer patch of raspberries or blueberries, but guitar strings -- tonight on Canada Live(8 p.m.), first from Alberta guitar ace Amos Garrett, recorded at the Edmonton Folk Festival's Stage Six Sessions.
And from the same stage, same festival, you can hear a concert billed as Shades Of Africa featuring Bill Bourne and Madagascar Slim (pictured here) playing songs with roots in or influences from Africa.
Note -- Bill and Slim are two-thirds of the group Tri-Continental, and if you're interested in this music you may also want to check them out online, at Concerts On Demand: Tri-Continental.
I kid you not. The amazingly successful author of the No. 1 Ladies books, Alexander McCall Smith, has opened an opera house in Botswana, Africa -- and today on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT) Katherine will have all the details.
As well, on her ongoing "health n' music" beat, Katherine has a story about an eye surgeon in Hawaii who puts his musical talents to work in the operating room -- he plays the piano before committing surgery. (Do you suppose the patient gets a say in repertoire?)
I have heard many stories about surgeons who like to play specific recorded music before or during, but I've never heard of someone actually sitting down at the keyboard as a pre-surgery ritual. Hopefully he doesn't go in for too many pieces marked "vivace."
As fate would have it, a stray bullet from a gun pierces the heart of the Marquis of Calatrava, and thus the wheel of fortune is set in motion, forcing lovers apart, pitting brother against sister, and creating one heck of a convoluted plot in Verdi's opera, La Forza Del Destino (The Force Of Destiny).
Today on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera ( Saturday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) soprano Nina Stemme stars in the Vienna State Opera's production as the daughter Leonora who finds refuge disguised as a monk. Baritone Carlos Álvarez plays her vengeful brother Don Carlo, and tenor Salvatore Licitra is Don Alvaro, her lover on the lam.
And here, as a small preview, is Nina Stemme in what passes for monk's garb in these po-mo times.
And one more thing. Today on the show host Bill Richardson will have a response to the following, via a conversation re: a pro-football player turned opera singer.
Tune in for a rebuttal on today's show!
P.S. Also on the show today...in light of the Olympics, Bill takes a look at the Chinese operatic tradition.
P.P.S. Please keep reading for full cast and character details of the opera, as well as the plot synopsis. (That should keep you going for a few hours.)
Certainly not for massive financial gain, in most instances. But today on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT) documentarist Hele Montagna explores what motivates and inspires composers to create, in part one of a series called Driven To Music.
The first episode is called Wilderness Symphonies, and it looks at one very familiar source of inspiration for Canadian artists of all kinds -- the Canadian landscape. Ms. Montagna talks to composers including Allan Bell, Gilles Tremblay, Murray Schafer, Hildegard Westerkamp, John Estacio and Alexina Louie about how land, nature and the natural aural environment affects their music.
Tomorrow I'll be south of the border, and as well as witnessing what I hope will be a fierce victory by the Lansing Lugnuts (you really don't want to think too hard about their mascot) I'm also hoping to catch some music at The Great Lakes Folk Fest. Looking at the schedule it amused me to see several Canadian performers, including an Ottawa Valley fiddler -- you leave home and home is there.
Of course Ottawa valley fiddling is a rich tradition -- a combination of styles that immigrants from a handful of European countries forged in the logging camps on the Ottawa River. (What else was there to do for entertainment after schlepping logs all day?)
All this to say that today on Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) Tom plays music from an Ottawa Valley fiddler with a penchant for evolving that tradition through composition -- Matt Pepin. You'll also hear music from another tradition -- popular music using history as a basis for songs -- with Alberta's current purveyor of the legacy of horse soldiers -- Corb Lund.
All this and yes! More! Try a Montreal bluegrass super group that’s the talk of the town, at least in folk circles -- they're called Yonder Hill (pictured here). Possibly establishing a new tradition which contrasts nicely with Ottawa Valley Fiddling -- Montreal Mountain Grass.
The weekend Signal team says that tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) with Pat Carrabré "the sparks will fly." Without yet knowing the music featured I can only assume they have some stirring and/or sensual stuff lined up.
I do know some of the featured artists -- a concert from Lily Frost, and featured recordings from Nick Cave, Jean Martin, Amute and E.S.L. Nothing to do with English as a second language, of course, everything to do with a Vancouver band who cover, among other songs, Lou Reed's Venus In Furs.
Speaking of Lou Reed, apparently the Julian Schnabel concert film, Lou Reed's Berlin, will be out in October on DVD. The 1973 album it's based on, which was essentially the story of one couple's downward spiral told in song, is often cited as an example of the most depressing recording ever made.
The movie, should you not have heard of it, is a re-creation of the album in concert, performed a couple years ago in four sold out concerts in New York -- performing the music live for the first time. And this on that from Rolling Stone:
"The story still thrills as it repels, the way Reed, with a poet's ear and a reporter's eye and no intruding moral comment, renders both artificial ecstasies (booze, speed, reckless sex) and real-life horror (beatings, blood on the sheets)."
Afrofest is one of those examples of how a city can host a music festival right in its core -- and have it be a peaceful, beautiful (if sometimes somewhat muddy underfoot) event, complete with lots of good local music. (And food, as Spotlight Toronto so beautifully illustrates.)
Most years I make it down to Queen's Park for the fest, this year sad to say I did not. But on the positive tip, some of my R2 colleagues were there to record, and tonight you can hear a broadcast of a couple of those concerts, on Canada Live (8 p.m.)
First, Femi Abosede. Not to be confused with Femi Kuti, son of Fela, but definitely to be associated with the famous Fela Kuti, founder of Afrobeat. Femi Abosede is a sax player who worked with Kuti senior, and then moved to Canada in the late 1990s. This concert features him with Culture Force, his 17-piece big band.
The second concert is from a band that specializes in the music of southern Sudan, Konyokonyo. That music includes soukous, reggae, hip hop and other styles -- sung in Arabic Juba (the lingua franca spoken in parts of Southern Sudan). The band is also based in Canada, and has been performing around southern Ontario since they formed two years ago -- but this Afrofest appearance marks one of their first high profile shows. (Now there's a potential slogan, From Southern Sudan To Southern Ontario!)
Also should mention that some music from the Toronto Jazz Festival rounds out the show -- from trumpet man Alexis Baro.
The people behind the scenes at CBC are a talented bunch. And it's always nice to share news about what the bunch are doing off-campus.
In The Key Of Charles producer Scott Tresham, for example. He's also a composer, and today if you are in Montreal you can hear his sound installation celebrating Olivier Messiaen's centenary. It's called Banquet pour O : catalogue de durées, based on Messiaen’s own recording of Le Banquet céleste for organ, his first published composition.
“I’m sure it will take [the audience] a while to adjust to this new level of slow," says Mr. Tresham, "but once you do you enter a real contemplative state. There’s a whole universe to explore in each one of these sonorities. The experience can actually be euphoric.”
There's also a "silent chorus" that accompanies -- a candle is placed at the altar in front of the darkened cathedral every minute that marks the passing of real time.
So if you are in Montreal tonight, here is the lowdown. Banquet pour O is scheduled to begin at 08:08 p.m. on August 8th (08/08/08), a time and date chosen because it is both a precise moment, but also because it is represented by two arabic numerals that symbolize eternity and infinity.
Photo of Scott Tresham rehearsing with The Montreal Organ Consort by David Ward.
Heads up Patti Smith (and Bob Dylan) fans -- starting this Sunday, August 10 on Inside The Music (Sunday Edition 12:00 p.m., 12:30 NT) you can hear the first part of Patti Smith's series about Bob Dylan -- called Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind .
Smith hosts four hours of music and conversation about Dylan, which includes interviews with friends, collaborators and journalists talking about his music and sharing personal anecdotes. You can also hear Bob Dylan himself in rarely heard interview clips.
Part-the-first talks about Dylan's move to New York City in 1961, and his meteoric two year rise to being lauded as the "voice of a generation."
Friday night Tonic (6 p.m.) moves into weekend mode with vintage soul from the O'Jays, latin funk from Marcos Valle, and loads of jazz -- from Art Pepper and Dave Brubeck among others. One of those others is a concert broadcast of Oscar Peterson, recorded live at the Munich Philharmonic in 1998.
Always on the lookout for how Oscar Peterson's memory is being kept alive, so I was pleased to see that this fall there's an Oscar Peterson tribute happening in connection with the 20th edition of Mercat De Musica Viva De Vic (a music industry convention/major festival in Barcelona).
And it points to the international reach of O.P.'s playing. Just to cite one example, here's an excerpt from the translated bio belonging to Spanish pianist David Quevedo, who will be playing at this tribute:
"His main interest was composition, so performed classical studies at conservatory while screaming and guitaring with his first rock band in the early nineties. Also studied with few canarian jazz musicians and worked with too many canarian artists. Then he listened Oscar Peterson music and everything changed."
Tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) Laurie presents a concert that features BNL singer Steven Page with pianist Andrew Burashko's Art of Time Ensemble. Page performs some of his own favourite songs but in new arrangements which were commissioned by CBC -- so for example Leonard Cohen arranged by Gavin Bryars, Philip Glass & Paul Simon arranged by Phil Dwyer, and Jane Siberry arranged by Glenn Buhr, among other compositions.
You can also hear this concert online, at Concerts On Demand: Art Of Time Ensemble With Steven Page. The opening track (playing on my computer as we speak) has quite a neat arrangement of John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats' song Lion's Teeth, arranged by Jim McGrath. Nice to hear Page in a non-BNL setting. Nice to just talk about Page and music, too.
As always, the Tonicians, a.k.a. Katie and her producer Robert, have sent me a note to let ya'll know about what some of the highlights of the show are. And one of those highlights is some music from a collaboration between trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and singer Willie Nelson.
Did you just say "huh" or equivalent? Well, you may have missed it but Nelson did indeed pair up with Marsalis in a programme called Willie Sings The Blues, which had Mr. Nelson fronting the Wynton Marsalis Quintet.
In the spirit of one great universe of public radio, (and musicians of universal interest), I steer you to this week's NPR All Songs Considered Podcast, presented by Bob Boilen, who always sounds to me like some slightly awkward but lovable uncle who just can't wait to tell you about the newest stamp in his collection.
Fortunately Boilen's collection is music, and on the latest episode he has Randy Newman on as co-DJ, to tell some stories, pick some tunes, and play some music from his latest (and so far mostly praised), Harps And Angels.
Newman sounds like he's had a few late nights since the last time I heard him on air, but it's a very nice show -- opening with anecdotes about his famous film scoring family, (his uncles Alfred, Lionel and Emil were all film composers and conductors; his father physician father wrote a few numbers for Bing Crosby), and moving swiftly through a bunch of topics and related music.
btw Newman will be playing one Canadian date that I know of -- Sat. Sept. 20, at Convocation Hall on the University of Toronto campus. Nice smallish venue for those lucky enough to attend.
And on the subject of podcasts, don't forget that you can download Canada Live concerts on their weekly podcast, to be found at Radio 2's Podcasts. This week you can hear three summer music festival concerts: Kinnie Starr in Ottawa, jazz quartet Altered Laws in Vancouver, and Mighty Popo London, Ontario.
Award Nominees Bulletin: For those who follow (or are interested in following) the Quebec indie music scene -- the nominees for Gala de l’Alternative Musicale Indépendante du Québec (GAMIQ) 2008 have been announced, and you can see the full nominee list here.
It's an interesting test-of-Canadian-music-knowledge to see how many bands you know -- and how many you don't. Which is to say that the GAMIQ's can act as a way in to a whole bunch of good music, some of which really is not well known outside of Quebec, but should be.
But if you do know the music -- or get to know it quickly -- you can have a hand in deciding who wins. 50% of the vote goes to a jury, the other 50% to the public. You can vote for a winner in each category at GAMIQ until Saturday, September 6th 2008 at 11:59PM. The public vote and jury vote will be combined and the winners will be decided by the highest average.
Inclusive, and more fair than a voting process that at some point along the way is entirely dependent on public choice, as in the voting for SYTYCD, for example. But please, no one tell me a thing about the finale! Have been PVRing the series and am not up to date -- and already the producer of Tonic (who tells me all of CBC Montreal is equally obsessed with the show) has delivered one spoiler.
But back to the GAMIQs -- that's Ghislain Poirier and friend in the photo, nominated for GAMIQ Artist Of The Year. (Poirier is nominated, that is, can't speak for his friend.)
Pianist/singer/larger than life guy Dr. John - (aka Malcolm John "Mac" Rebenack or "the night tripper") is "headlining" Thursday night's Canada Live (8 p.m.) broadcast. (Inasmuch any edited broadcast of several concerts can be said to have a headliner.)
Dr. John has become practically synonymous with New Orleans music. No surprise he's been quite involved with various charities aimed at rebuilding New Orleans, post-Katrina, and supporting artists there, including via promoting the New Orleans Musicians Clinic. But getting back to this broadcast -- the concert you can hear tonight is from the Harvest Jazz And Blues Festival in Fredericton, NB.
The "opening acts" both were recorded at the Atlantic Jazz Festival, first Joe Murphy & The Water Street Blues Band, Murphy being a harp and slide guitar playing blues singer. He's something of a Halifax instutition, who has played with guys like Otis Rush, Johnny Copeland, John Lee Hooker and Pinetop Perkins.
The second show from the Atlantic Jazz Fest is with the John Cumming Quintet. As other jazz players have done before him, he's had a musical day job playing in a military band (in his case the Stadacona Band) and has been quietly working on his jazz trumpet chops. (Not literally, of course, on the quietly front. Although who knows, he could use a mute?) But anyway, tonight you can hear him in jazz not military band guise on Can. Live.
This evening a reprise on The Signal (10 p.m.) of a concert by Jean Derome and Les Dangereux Zhomes + 7, recorded at La Sala Rossa in Montreal.
It's music that has aspects of rock, jazz, funk (I almost wrote "fun," not funk, and that too is true) folk and a whole swathe of other sounds -- Derome is famed for, as his own website accurately puts it, "mixing together a vast range of elements and re-expressing them in an eclectic language that is completely contemporary."
The concert includes Traquenards, a world premiere piece to mark the 25th anniversary of the concert’s organizer, Traquen’Art. The work was, in Derome’s own words, “a kind of check-up on the state of things in today’s creative musics.”
Katie will be featuring a set of tunes recorded live by Dinah Washington on Tonic (6 p.m.) this evening -- from 1954.
Let's see, that would mean Washington was about 30 at the time, coming into in her prime. (Which was of course cut short far too prematurely -- she died when she was only 39, on December 14, 1963.) What a loss of a voice.
As Quincy Jones said, in his biography, "Q," Washington could "take the melody in her hand, hold it like an egg, crack it open, fry it, let it sizzle, reconstruct it, put the egg back in the box and back in the refrigerator and you would've still understood every single syllable."
Apparently, one-fifth of British citizens want to be rock stars. Or at least, trade in their current jobs for work in the music industry. (Somehow it seems unlikely one in five Brits are dreaming of being publicists and roadies, but you never know.)
The poll was conducted by a mobile phone company sponsored talent search called O2 Undiscovered -- their slogan is that they're "all about access to the music business." (Initially criticized in some quarters for ripping off Virgin mobile's similar endeavor, but that's a separate issue.)
More interesting than the one-fifth of would be rockers is that the poll also found that 75% of Brits had been discouraged by family and school from pursuing a career in music. Now that's sad but not really a surprise, I suppose. It's not what you'd call a security oriented career choice.
Over at MOG (Music Signposts On The Web's Lonely Road) some folks had interesting response to the question "Would YOU trade your current job for something in the music biz?". A few sample responses:
1. I'd wanna be Stevie Wonder's dresser
2. I'd trade a million dollar lottery ticket to be a broke musician...
3. Does it mean I would have to take a pay cut?.....oh wait I am a teacher, who am I kidding.
#3, stick to your day job (and try not to get too bitter). #2, don't be a fool. #1, I can't begin to formulate a response for you.
Wonder how many Canadian citizens would rather work in music than anything else?
This goes out to all who feel that the categorizing of music (eg. they're a "Neo-Industrial-Post-Emo-Punk-Funk...") and attendant High Fidelity attitude is a tad out of hand:
Pretty funny! Came across it via everyone's favourite minimalist blog, Web Zen, on their July 25th post Video Killed The Radio Zen.
First I ever heard Montreal bassist Michel Donato's playing was with jazz singer Karen Young -- and was captivated by his sensitivity as a player -- you know when people talk about an instrument being a voice -- their music really had that quality, two voices, one just happened to have strings attached.
Over the years I've heard Donato in various configurations. But I didn't realize what a "pedigree" he actually has -- among the many he's worked with are Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans (apparently declining an invite to become a regular member of the latter's trio).
This year in honour of his 50 years on the Montreal jazz scene, the Festival International De Montreal honoured Donato by showcasing his music in two concerts called Michel Donato 50 Ans De Contrebasse -- and you can hear some of that music Wednesday night on Canada Live (8 p.m.)
Donato is heard with a number of the Quebec musicians he's worked with for years, starting with the aforementioned Karen Young, and including pianists James Gelfand, Francois Bourassa and sax players Yannick Rieu and André Leroux.
Note, you can hear a second concert on the programme tonight that is another kind of hommage, in this case to the late Leo Ferré, one of the all-time greats of French chanson. (Almost as beloved as Brassens, perhaps.) This concert is with a wonderful Italian vocalist named Gianmaria Testa, who along with pianist Roberto Cipelliput together an evening dedicated to his memory.
A Tonic (6 p.m.) highlight du jour: The theme from Kojak "re-grooved" by percussionist and bandleader Willie Bobo.
This leads me nicely to a subject I've been musing about lately, since I'm on a kick of watching The Wire from beginning to end. And that subject is "re-grooving" TV theme songs -- and what a nice impact that can have on the viewing experience. The two themes that leap to mind are the theme to Weeds (which features a different interpretation of Malvina Reynolds' Little Boxes each episode) and The Wire, which recasts the Tom Waits song Way Down In The Hole for every season.
It makes the theme seem more integrated as a creative part of the entire show, and it's evolutionary rather than static -- very appealing. Plus, as I'm sure the makers of these shows know, in the era of DVD viewing this means you're less likely to fast forward through it to immediately get to the action. (In the case of The Wire it also doesn't hurt that they re-edit the opening so regularly and so brilliantly.)
But back to the Kojak theme. Check this out, if you are of an analytical frame of mind,...and have a lot of patience: Kojak: 50 Seconds Of TV Music To Analyze.
The video was based on the ideas of a book by Philip Tagg, because, according to the writeup at Media Music Studies: "By 1976 the title theme for the TV series Kojak had been heard by at least 100 million people in at least seventy countries. It is an infinitesimal part of all the mass media music outside the traditional musicological frames of reference. Tagg argues that conventional musicology cannot help us understand how music works on an everyday basis in the popular mass media market of ideas."
Tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.), the third movement of Christos Hatzis' Juno award winning piece, Constantinople, called Odd World. It is apparently thus named because of its eclectic musical content, which includes hints celtic fiddling, Stravinsky and Brahms. (Also thus named because of its rhythmic structure.)
And another featured piece, this one I've not heard, Swarm, from vocalist Theo Bleckmann and guitarist Ben Monder. According to The Signalites, "they approximate the sounds of all sorts of flying insects. Time Out, for a second point of reference, calls it "skittery improv." Both intriguing descriptions (if a bit daunting in the height of a Canadian summer).
The folks at Concerts On Demand have been busy busy -- and in case you are not in the habit of checking the aforelinked COD mainpage, here are some of the recent concerts that have gone up:
From London, Ontario's Sunfest, you can hear a revival of a group of Toronto-based Jamaican-Canadian musicians who first mixed Jamaican music with funk and soul -- some thirty years ago -- called Jamaica To Toronto. Also, Rwandan/Burundian-Canadian guitarist Mighty Popo.
From Toronto, Ontario's Afrofest, Malagasy singer/guitarist Donne Roberts and Sudanese music group KonyoKonyo.
From the the Ottawa Bluesfest, Six Shooter Showcase, which features Christine Fellows, Justin Rutledge, Elliott Brood, Luke Doucet, NQ Arbuckle, Melissa McClelland, and Martin Tielli. Also from the Ott. Blues Fest., Richard Thompson, Brit guitarist/songwriter extraordinaire. (Blogged about recently in a post called, with startling originality, Richard Thompson On Canada Live Tonight. That "tonight" really makes it. Heh.)
Plus a couple concerts went up from Soundstreams Cool Drummings Festival, including Tambuco & Glen Velez (pictured here), as well as the Opening Gala, which features star percussionist Beverley Johnston, among many other musicians.
Although it is true that the relationship many people have to music is highly personal -- people like to listen to what they want to listen to when and where they want to listen to it -- it is equally true that music surrounds us in just about any public setting. Fine by me, it's part of what makes getting out of your own home (or from under the cone of your headphones) interesting. It makes you think about music.
For example, at baseball games. (Hey, some people think about knitting at baseball games, those who like to Stitch N' Pitch. Tonight, btw, is the second annual Stitch N' Pitch Toronto, as reported in The Star.)
Anyway, thinking about music at baseball games happens for many reasons, but this post will be far too long if we get into that. So I'll single out just one -- the "Hey Ho Let's Go" chant, which inevitably conjures The Ramones. Which then leads to thoughts of punk. And thence to what seems to me to be a growing nostalgia about punk, possibly the last form of music that those who played it in its heyday would want people to wax nostalgic about.
"As punk rock later transformed itself into a kind of suburban cult of violence, the type of people who formed this initial New York scene not surprisingly began to drop out of the movement. It's heartening to know, though, that their vision has found a home in the literary world, that there's such a thing as punk literature to remind us in the book biz that rules are meant to be broken and that artistry and adherence to one's vision are values that still have a place in a rapidly homogenizing world."
Now if only one could say the same about the music programmed in most ballparks. But that's another story.
Canada Live (8 p.m.) presents Hey Ocean! (pictured here with their mascot) on Tuesday night.
Something very peppy about that name (which does come with the exclamation point, by the way). Apparently it was inspired by the place the band was conceived -- Costa Rica.
According to Now magazine, the band members were frustrated by ongoing torrential downpours (and if you've ever been in Costa Rica during rainy season you will know just how torrential they can be). So one day, fed up with wanting to surf and being unable to do so, they just started yelling "hey, ocean!" And lo, a band name was born. (If not a good day's surfing.) You can hear the pop/reggae/funk of Hey Ocean! tonight, and online at Concerts On Demand: Hey Ocean.
There's a second concert on the show as well, by Delhi2Dublin. As you might imagine, given the name, the band blends Indian and Irish styles. And the last time these two concerts were broadcast a listener/blog reader who goes by "e" so loved both that he or she (or "e") wrote in to say the following:
"These are both amazing bands, both of which I have had the privilege to hear live, I am glad they are getting the recognition they deserve! With such captivating beats, smooth vocals, and irresistible rhythm, its hard to stay off they dance floor when they are onstage!"
Just a reminder that this evening you can hear music from Caribana (the annual summer festival of Caribbean culture celebrating its 41st anniversary this year) from CBC Radio's first ever Calypso tent.
Canada Live (8 p.m.), broadcasts some of the Calypso competition winners of the past 20 years, performers like "Structure", "Guney", "King Cosmos", "Skippy", "Beginner", "Macomer Fifi", "Lady Pearl", "Pan Man Pat", "Crooner" and "Jayson."
So expect to hear music from the rich tradition of calpyso, from social commentary to the witty improvisatory numbers called 'extempo.' Plus soca, the irresistible calypso inspired dance music of choice for many of the thousands attending Caribana -- or, for that matter, listening to the radio!
Having heard him on his last couple of stops in Canada, including a show earlier this summer, I have to say I'm selfishly pleased about the latter -- he's such a great performer, and I'm sure he has lots more to offer the world of music than he's been able to in recent years because of his political duties. (Apparently his health is OK too -- there had been a scare about that not so long ago.)
Last week's news, sorry not to get to it until now, but then it does give me an opportunity to post this video curiosity. There are many Gilberto Gil videos online, most of them shot with shaky fan hands and accompanying squeaks of approval and terrible sound, but this one is a little bit different. It's not actually a brilliant Gil performance, (he seems to be operating on the slightly deferential side here), but it is a chance to witness a rare musical meeting between Gil...and Stevie Wonder.
Studio Sparks (12 p.m.) is promising three hours of "the most beautiful and contemplative music there is" today, as a holiday treat for those of us taking one (and perhaps as a panacea for those who are not).
The folks at S'Sparks are calling it the "Chill Mix" version of the show. Some of the ingredients are Thomas Tallis, Nina Simone, Bill Evans, Mozart...for the full playlist, please go here. No need to rush to check it out though, just, you know, like chill...
Recent Order Of Canada recipient, trombonist Ian McDougall, is featured on this holiday Monday (well, holiday for most of the country) on Tonic (6 p.m.), many hours from now.
But it's never to early in my books to talk about or listen to jazz. In fact I remember once, years ago, a roommate asking me if it was possible for me to listen to some other kind of music than jazz in the early mornings in our thin-walled bedrooms. "Why, no," I said. (But I did turn it down. A little bit.)
Anyway, this evening Katie will be turning up the live music energy, featuring a concert performance McDougall and his sextet recorded at The Cellar in Vancouver. Randal McIlroy, writing in Coda Magazine said of this recording: "The Ian McDougall Sextet is Old School, as they say...and lord if they don't do it well. Trombonist McDougall holds to the model of well-tailored muscle that made high period Blue Note so thrilling..."
P.S. The photo shows McDougall performing with pianist John Stetch this July.
It's difficult to conjure the energy of Caribana in words, but it is a little easier to capture it on the radio. And that's something that CBC Radio is proud to aid and abet with the first ever CBC Calypso tent.
You can hear some of that music Monday evening on Canada Live (8 p.m.), with a celebration of Caribana Calypso competition winners of the past 20 years. Some of those monarchs (with their regal performing names) are: "Structure", "Guney", "King Cosmos", "Skippy", "Beginner", "Macomer Fifi", "Lady Pearl", "Pan Man Pat", "Crooner" and "Jayson."
These Caribbean-Canadian calypsonians present music from the rich tradition of calypso, which nestles social commentary into sweet music, and also features witty improvisatory numbers called 'extempo.' Plus there will be some sheer dance numbers -- soca tunes meant to inspire you to 'jump up and wave!' Now that's a good way to pass time on a civic holiday (or conclude your hard-working day if you didn't get one).
Pat Carrabré spent a lot of time at this year's edition of the WSO's New Music Festival as one of the on stage hosts, and so has the insider's perspective, which he brings to this Sunday's edition of The Signal (10 p.m.). As well as lots of music, of course, with new works by Nicole Lizée, Glenn Buhr, Jesse Zubot, Pierre Michaud and David Eagle.
It being time for Soundtrack Sunday he also features some music from the Coen Brothers movie that changed the world (or if not the world, at least the world's perception of bluegrass) O, Brother Where Art Thou, as well as some music by Michael Nyman.
Speaking of Michael Nyman, the way his music has been used in the the new documentary Man On Wire has created some controversy. The doc itself sounds really interesting -- it tells the story behind the stunt pulled by French daredevil Philippe Petit in 1974 when he walked back and forth for many minutes on a cable stretched between the towers of the world trade center.
But the Nyman music is drawn from some of his earlier soundtracks -- causing dismay in certain quarters. In a blog called The House Next Door blog-keeper Godfrey Cheshire says:
"The movie’s soundtrack contains frequent borrowings from the Michael Nyman scores of well-known Peter Greenaway films (as well as couple of other Nyman tracks, including one from Jane Campion’s The Piano).
This, for me, totally destroyed the experience of watching Marsh’s film. I would be trying to follow the story when, every three or four minutes, that familiar music would blare out and my mind would be whipsawed back to the images and moods of The Draughtsman’s Contract, Drowning By Numbers, A Zed & Two Noughts or another film. Eventually I realized this distraction would continue throughout, so I left."
Leaving a movie because of the music -- that's a pretty intense reaction. Of course music highly identifiable in one context (particularly attached to visuals as memorable as Greenaway's) does seem an odd choice for another film. Regardless, the doc rocked the world at Sundance -- winning Grand Jury Award for Best World Cinema Documentary and Audience Award for Best World Cinema Documentary.
Calexico is one of the many bands who have a multitude of influences (in their case spaghetti western, rock, country, mariachi) but one of the few to meld those influences into something distinctive enough to ensure they have a loyal cult following. I expect some of those cultish followers were at the 29th annual Calgary Folk Music Festival at the end of July to hear their concert.
Tonight you can hear that concert for yourself on Canada Live (8 p.m.), along with other highlights from the festival, including Widow Maker, Bomba and Andrew Bird.
The Calgary festival is one of the many fine festivals of summer, very laid back, at least it was the last time I attended. For recent substantiation look no farther than Nick Lewis writing in the Calgary Herald on Friday:
"I say this with the sincerity and conviction of a man who reviews concerts for a living — even with 12,000 daily attendees and a perpetually crowded beer tent, the Calgary Folk Music Festival is always entirely idiot-free.That guy you want to punch at the back of the head at every other show? Yeah, he took the weekend off..."
Idiot-free crowds always a good thing. A little mention of Calexico and Andrew Bird in Lewis's review too:
"The 1:50 p.m. pairing of Calexico, Andrew Bird, Bill Callahan and A Hawk & a Hacksaw brought out near 2,000 fans in front of the Mercury Lounge stage. The musicians all took turns playing their own songs as others accompanied, but there was little surprise when the loudest cheers came for Calexico and Bird.
Guest host Kelly Rice presents music in celebration of the recent 400th birthday of Quebec, today on Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT).
First, the Orchestre Symphonique De Québec at the Grand-Théâtre de Québec under Maestro Yoav Talmi, with a programme featuring the world premier of Légendes, by Jacques Hétu. Légendes, commissioned by Radio-Canada for "Quebec 400," is a suite of Quebec folk-tales presented symphonically.
Then it's Les Violons du Roy, under the direction of Bernard Labadie, with a concert from their new home at the Palais Montcalm, just outside the walls of the Old Town. Joining them, star-soprano Karina Gauvin and Belgian cellist David Cohen.
More Labadie and Les Violons to follow with some music from their summer home in the gorgeous Charlevoix region north east of Quebec City. Their all-Bach concert opened the 30th season of the Domaine Forget International Festival. Also from this fest a concert featuring two professors at the Domaine Forget Summer Music Academy: violinist Régis Pasquier and pianist Pascal Rogé.
And the show wraps with music from the lovely hills of Quebec’s Eastern Townships -- from the Orford Festival Montreal pianist Wonny Song teams up with the New Zealand String Quartet for Brahms' Piano Quintet In F Minor.
No, not M.J. and Lionel Ritchie's We Are The World, the world in question is the world that came to Canada with many forms of folk music, some of which hybridized and became new, Canadianized folk music.
This We Are The World is the name of the fifth and final episode of Gary Cristall's series about folk music in Canada, The People's Music.
It explores how the music has changed during the 20th century to welcome and assimilate songs and styles from many cultures. Gary’s story takes us to the beginning of the 70s and the creation of one of Canada’s earliest “multicultural” groups, The Companeros.
You can hear We Are The World (no swaying back and forth, mind), today on Inside The Music (Sunday Edition 12:00 p.m., 12:30 NT).
Today on In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT), Gregory finds country music in both expected and unexpected places, with music from Miles Davis, Shania Twain, Gilles Vigneault, Buffy Sainte-Marie, the OSM and more.
Choral Concert Bulletin: Choral Concert (Sunday 8:00 a.m.) is shifting musical gears this morning, from their "summer oratorio odyssey" mode and into "summer choral odyssey."
First the show takes listeners to Hamburg for Mendelssohn’s setting of Die Erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night), performed by the Danish Radio Chorus with the NDR Chorus and Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock. Then, it’s Orff’s Carmina Burana, directed by Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos. Sounds like an entirely satisfying choral journey of a summer Sunday morning...
Dobet Gnahoré is a young woman originally from Côte Ivoire, now based in France, who is one of the few singers to emerge from that part of Africa of late with a strong sound of her own.
She's also a dynamic performer, singing and dancing with real power. You can't see the latter, but you can hear the former on Canada Live (8 p.m.) tonight, recorded at this year's Festival International Nuits d'Afrique.
Funnily enough I just got an email this morning from an aquaintance who works with London's annual world music fest, Sunfest, and he mentioned that Gnahoré gave "an absolutely riveting performance" there, and he was looking forward to the broadcast of the Nuit d'Afrique concert as a result. (Plus he said that she's "a lovely person, too," always nice to hear.)
And there's also a second show from Nuits d'Afrique on the Can. Live bill tonight -- Pierre-Michel Ménard. He's a Haitian-Canadian who works with an 8-piece band that incorporate salsa, merengue, zouk, soca and more into his shows. In other words? It's Saturday night, time to party. (If only in your own living room!)
When did the whole "extreme" everything begin? Or perhaps the question should be "why?" Maybe today on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT) Katherine will have some answers as she covers the story of a trio of cellists who are inspired by the sport of "Extreme Ironing. "
Don't have a clue what Extreme Ironing is? That's possibly a sign of mental health. But if you are still curious, ExtremeIroning.com will answer all the questions you've ever had about Extreme Ironing but were afraid to ask.
And once you know that, you'll have a very good idea of what Extreme Cello-ing is all about. Still, in case you are still hungering to see those daring cellists, here you go.
Katherine also talks about the artist formerly known as "Kennedy" on the show today, as he puts his own spin on his first ever Mozart recording, and she has a story about the annual and massive BBC Proms, which began on July 18th and continue until September 13th.
p.s. That cellist you see is not one of the Extremes, no, Karl Huros was leaping into the whirly as part of a performance of Stockhausen's Helicopter-Quartet, performed last year in Germany.
Not at all like a "senior moment" (although I've been having those since about the age of twenty). No, this Signal (10 p.m.) moment is just to point out a few highlights on tonight's edition of the show: music from Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra, the new live CD from jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, and more music from Toronto-based composer, keyboardist and electronic musician John Kameel Farah.
Duty sometimes has a way of conflicting with desire; such is the situation for Druid priestess Norma. Today on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera ( Saturday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) the conflict is brought to life by Slovak soprano Edita Gruberova, whose long career is celebrated in this concert performance of Bellini's Norma. The Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus is lead by Friedrich Haider, with tenor José Cura as Pollione, and Elina Garanca as Adalgisa.
The setting is Roman-occupied Gaul. Norma is supposed to rally the troops to war against Rome. But there's one problem, she's secretly borne two children by Pollione, ruler of the opposing Roman army. Then she finds out that a younger priestess, Adalgisa, has attracted his eye. All this is problematic.
But it provides remarkable fodder for a singer -- it's a benchmark diva role, requiring emotions that range from haughty and demanding to desperate and passionate to vengeful and defiant. (How exhausting. Does that not make you thankful that you're neither druid or diva?)
For full cast and character details and for the synopsis, please continue reading.
Photo Of Jose Cura, Elina Garanca and Edita Gruberova by Axel Zeininger/Wiener Staatsoper
Today on Inside The Music (Saturday Edition 12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT), Riding With the King: The B.B. King Story. Riding With The King is also the name of King's acclaimed recording with Eric Clapton, which pre-dates this documentary by about five years.
What you'll hear today is a profile of blues great B.B. King that was made as the guitarist was approaching his 80th birthday, narrated by Keb Mo. So it's a bit of a retrospective -- King talks about his 60 year career (that photo is from this spring at Bonnaroo!) from his early days as a DJ in Memphis to his massive success as a blues guitarist.
Naturally there's music too, including collaborations with Eric Clapton, Ray Charles and U2. Plus other great musicians talk about King's playing and their feelings about his music -- from Koko Taylor, Carlos Santana, John Mayall and Buddy Guy, to Pat Metheny.
I'll share a few of the highlights on Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) this weekend, but first a little horn-blowing about host Tom Power, (second from the left in that photo) who has been busy playing thither and yon with his band The Dardanelles. They're the cover story this week in St. John's The Scope, a feature called Jigs, Reels, And Megadeth?
Favourite quote: (Tom re: traditional music): "I think the whole goal is to make traditional music cooler...I think the way a lot of people treat it is like something to be put away in a glass case. But it’s really wicked, fun, dance music."
And now to this Saturday's show -- here it is, straight from the horse's (a.k.a. the host's) mouth:
"We’ll be hearing a Quebecois chanteuse who plays the cello in a way which I’m sure Yo-Yo Ma never imagined; a young, vivacious group from 'down under' who were hauled along to open for Bob Dylan on one of his recent tours; a tune from the golden boys of Quebecois music; a bluegrass band whose lead singer's voice has been described as 'a cross between Bill Monroe and Tom Waits', and a band from Toronto whose Wikipedia page promises that if you buy its leader a beer, he’ll be sure to tell you a story."
Thanks, Tom. But don't count on that Wikipedia entry being accurate, you know how Wiki can be. (I bet you anything it actually takes two beers before you get a story.)
John Kameel Farah fuses elements of jazz, techno, classical, ambient and middle-Eastern music into his own large-scale works, and tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) you can hear him in performance with German pianist/composer Hauschka, who you have likely heard on the show before -- with his intriguing prepared piano work.
Note: Should you miss the broadcast, you can also hear this performance online at Concert On Demand, John Kameel Farah and Hauschka.
Tonight Pat also spins discs from a wide range of performers, including music from the multifaceted Jaz Coleman (that link takes you to a fan site, but according to said fan, Coleman "acquiesced" to having it posted). Coleman, as you probably know, is a composer, keyboardist and lead singer for England’s Killing Joke.
For Richard Thompson fans just that subject heading is enough. Yup, the legendary Brit songwriter is on Canada Live (8 p.m.) tonight with a solo set. First famous as part of Fairport Convention, he's revered now for his guitar playing, wit, and great songwriting.
Now here's a confession. While I number some huge Richard Thompson fans among my friends and acquaintances, for many years I was never that keen. But then I heard him perform live, and completely got it. So that's my endorsement to listen -- while I've not heard this concert, Thompson is usually a consummate performer. Bonus, this concert is also available online at Concerts On Demand -- Richard Thompson.
And third up, a showcase from the funky little label Six Shooter Records, whose pithy slogan is "because life is too short to listen to shitty music," a POV I heartily agree with. (They also have a cool store in my neighbourhood where t-shirts with this slogan can be purchased -- they make a lovely gift for budding musicians and others who don't mind being stared at.) With this showcase from Ottawa's Bluesfest you can hear Luke Doucet, NQ Arbuckle, Hawksley Workman, Royal Wood, Melissa McClelland, and Martin Tielli.
I was at a mandolin convention once, so I can project from that experience and easily imagine what a fiddle convention might be like: intense! So many strings in one place. (Also a glorious experience for fiddlers and those interested in fiddling though. )
So if you are going to be in St. John's Newfoundland in the next week and have any interest in fiddling you are in luck -- the third North Atlantic Fiddle Convention is being held at Memorial University starting Sunday. (It's the first time that the convention has been held in North America.)
And this is no weeny little convention featuring a few fiddlers and their friends -- it's a six-day festival (Aug. 3 to Aug. 8) "showcasing traditional artists from countries around the North Atlantic rim, each representing distinct fiddle and dance traditions." For the full list of performers, click here.
CBC will be on hand recording a number of shows for broadcast, including one by the Dardanelles -- featuring Deep Roots host Tom Power -- which you'll be able to hear on Canada Live at some point in the not too distant future. Will keep you posted.
Algerian-born, raised in France, California resident, former concertmaster, winner of the International Menuhin Competition and hailed "the violinist of the 21st century" by Lord Menuhin -- all this is true of Apap.
Equally true is that he is, how shall we put it, a somewhat wacky guy. I don't say this lightly. Go to his website for proof.
There you will find a menu that includes the usual -- BIO -- as one choice, but also menu options like BIG EGO and its opposite BAD REVIEWS, wherein Appap's Big Ego is deflated. Hilarious.
To hear more from the man whose bio begins "I began playing the violin at the age of seven with no desire whatsoever," tune in today to Studio Sparks during the second hour of the programme.
P.S. In case you can' t read the fine print that's "Gilles in Tibetan hat."
My colleagues at Saturday Afternoon At The Opera ( Saturday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) sent me a link to this video -- yes it's a commercial, but amusing (in a mighty corny way). And quite well rehearsed, it should be noted.
As for this weekend's real, barrista-free opera on SATO, you can hear the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus' production of Bellini's Norma. Not as many laughs there, but considerably higher production values.
As noted in an earlier post called The Little Giant, jazz sax great Johnny Griffin passed away at the end of last week.
Friday evening Tonic (6 p.m.) pays tribute with a set of tunes from guitarist Wes Montgomery with Johnny Griffin as his special guest -- recorded live at the Theatre des Champs Elysees in Paris in 1965.
And of course in the blogosphere there are numerous tributes to the fleet fingered sax player -- from Rifftides, Jazz.com and Darcy James Argue's Secret Society -- among others. Also of course, as always the real tribute is via taking the time to savor and appreciate the music -- which you can do tonight via Tonic (6 p.m.).
Legendary rocker
The last time this episode of In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT) was broadcast, one listener/blog reader named Harriet wrote in to say : "I've had a radio crush on Gregory Charles for some time now and rarely miss a show. But now I have one on his Dad! Thanks for a musically magical show." 
Last week's opening to the third part of Driven To Music featured some very beautiful music by 
As we approach the weekend some of our thoughts turn to folk. Yes, it's true, with Tom Power's charming Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) programme on Saturdays, it's nice to look forward to that excellent window into the ever-changing world of music that loosely can be called "folk." 
The subject heading of Carrie Brownstein's 
Story update: After yesterday's big headlines about Michael Jackson and Robbie Burns (a bizarre music news moment) it should come as no surprise that there has been reaction in scholarly Burns circles to the idea of MJ performing the poet's words, set to what its composer, David Gest, described as "show tunes."
Michael Jackson does Robbie Burns. Or did. Apparently MJ and David Gest (think: Liza Minnelli-ex) once recorded an album of Burns' poetry, "a modern musical take on some of Burns' classic poems," according to the report in The Guardian (
Which body part do you think is sung about the most? Hands, nape of neck, toes? Bingo, the toes. Kidding, the eyes have it,
For some, just those names "Getz Gilberto" conjures a whole era in music, when bossa and jazz first met and fell in love. Well, tonight you can travel back to that time, as Tonic (6 p.m.) takes you to the Cafe au Go Go in New York City, for a 1964 concert set by saxophonist 
Some days it just seems the bad news won't stop. On the micro level -- you get nothing but error messages, you are the embodiment of Murphy's Law, people find you annoying and you them. On the macro level: tainted food, cutbacks, plant closures. So it's nice to come across a good news story, even when it just pertains to one company. Like the story I just read that begins like this:
Legendary "rock poet" 
Although In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT) has been presenting "Encore Performances" of the show during the summer, today's programme was only heard on its R1 broadcast when it first aired. So Radio 2 listeners, this is a fresh one. And it's all about one of the two things people are said to argue most about. No, the other one, money. 
Quebec group 
This week In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT) starts a few minutes later than those advertised times because of the length of the opera broadcast. But when it does start, it will be back to back best moments featuring some of the best stories they've done so far on the show.
"From Pegasus To Piano-woman" is the name of the third part of the series, Driven To Music, currently running on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT). The series explores how composers create, using what the producer calls "reflections and confession" from an array of outstanding Canadian composers. (Love that, "confession." You can almost hear it..."I must confess I turned to the 12 tone row...despite myself.")
I think it's fair to say that the relationship between human beings and animals, (sometimes called 
Oscar Peterson once said of pianist and Hammond B-3 organ player 
Somehow it did not seem surprising to read this morning's news that iTunes online music store has been blocked in China -- because some athletes had downloaded protest music. Specifically, a compilation called 
The numbers of people -- musicians and otherwise -- inspired by 
Katie is featuring music from Latin jazz group 
If yesterday's reportage re: 
A bit of a musical tour of wilderness destinations on The Signal (10 p.m.) tonight, according to the Team Signal. They tell me that this evening "Granny’Ark starts you at Home; then Absent Sound takes you on a Highway in Canada. En route, you’ll experience Life in a Day by No Man's Land, and let yourself be Sundrenched by The North Atlantic Explorers."
Tonic (6 p.m.), plays some music by the 
No, not the name of a band, also not a lyric. But evidence of the inventive lengths to which people will go to get their creative work out there in the world. One of the more fun byproducts of these times of shifting technologies, economies and concepts of ownership... fun to watch it as it develops, that is.
Ah, the debate that never goes away. This summer, the McSweeeney publication 
After the initial sturm und drang over the 
As posted 
You may have already read on the R2 blog that 
Brought to you by the magic of radio: In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT). Today's show, an "encore presentation," (a.k.a. a repeat) is devoted to that very notion of things magical, things that bewitch, bother and bewilder. In other words, most of life. 
It's Winnipeg Weekend Part Two tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) as Pat presents music from the talented and idiosyncratic 
Earlier this week the headline 
It's not easy getting an opera produced. (Understatement.) Yet despite what typically entails great expense and considerable production logistics, opera continues to lure composers -- and a considerable number of Canadian composers at that. Today on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT) there's a programme on this very subject, as André Alexis presents A Good Story For Opera.
Summer and music festivals go together like, well, summer and music festivals. And looking ahead to Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) this week, guest host Robert Harris will be presenting several performances from Ontario music festivals. (Likely without the chorus girls or the saxophone, but still...)
Ah, the wintery Winnipeg jokes, they're like mother-in-law jokes in the Catskills or something. (But hey, it's a dry cold, right?) When I was growing up there I never ever called it Winterpeg, but in the missive I received from the weekend crew of The Signal (10 p.m.) (who are based in my hometown) the very first line was "drop your bathing suits and put on your parkas." Maybe they meant as a shield against the mosquitoes? Ba dum dum. 
"Not everyone knows it, but I've been a maestro for years. I have charged through Brahms's Third on the Metropolitan Line and swooned through Mahler's Fifth on the Circle Line; I have led an apocalyptically frenzied Verdi Requiem in the comfort of my own living room, fed by the kind of furious rage that probably would have resulted in physical harm had it not been for my wonderful leadership of the Vienna Philharmonic."
Let's see, 
Here it is almost mid-August and we still haven't got a true Summer Song. Despite my own plea for the 
Tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) Laurie updates the notion of the one man (or woman) band, with music from solo artists who are less likely to be tricked out in 
Ah, the mighty Uke. At last the New York Times sits up on its venerable hind-legs to acknowledge that which Radio 2 blog-readers have long known (see 
From hearing motion (see last post) to watching music...sometimes, at live music shows, I find myself looking at the faces of people listening. Do they look gripped by the music? Or like they're thinking about the fact that they forgot to buy milk for morning coffee? 
On various occasions in the past the R2 Blog has touched upon 
Today on In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT), a reprise of Gregory's show about cities. 
Katherine Duncan has double duties this weekend, yesterday as host of In Tune, today as guest host of Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT). She'll presenting music from four different summer festivals taking place in the prairie provinces.
I kid you not. The amazingly successful author of the No. 1 Ladies books, 
Certainly not for massive financial gain, in most instances. But today on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT) documentarist Hele Montagna explores what motivates and inspires composers to create, in part one of a series called Driven To Music.
The weekend Signal team says that tonight on The Signal (10 p.m.) with Pat Carrabré "the sparks will fly." Without yet knowing the music featured I can only assume they have some stirring and/or sensual stuff lined up. 
Heads up 
Friday night Tonic (6 p.m.) moves into weekend mode with vintage soul from the O'Jays, latin funk from Marcos Valle, and loads of jazz -- from Art Pepper and Dave Brubeck among others. One of those others is a concert broadcast of 
As always, the Tonicians, a.k.a. Katie and her producer Robert, have sent me a note to let ya'll know about what some of the highlights of the show are. And one of those highlights is some music from a collaboration between trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and singer Willie Nelson. 
Pianist/singer/larger than life guy 
Katie will be featuring a set of tunes recorded live by 
Apparently, one-fifth of British citizens want to be rock stars. Or at least, trade in their current jobs for work in the music industry. (Somehow it seems unlikely one in five Brits are dreaming of being publicists and roadies, but you never know.)
Although it is true that the relationship many people have to music is highly personal -- people like to listen to what they want to listen to when and where they want to listen to it -- it is equally true that music surrounds us in just about any public setting. Fine by me, it's part of what makes getting out of your own home (or from under the cone of your headphones) interesting. It makes you think about music.
Just a reminder that this evening you can hear music from 
Studio Sparks (12 p.m.) is promising three hours of "the most beautiful and contemplative music there is" today, as a holiday treat for those of us taking one (and perhaps as a panacea for those who are not).
It's difficult to conjure the energy of 
Guest host Kelly Rice presents music in celebration of the recent 400th birthday of Quebec, today on Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT).
Today on In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT), Gregory finds country music in both expected and unexpected places, with music from Miles Davis, Shania Twain, Gilles Vigneault, Buffy Sainte-Marie, the OSM and more. 
When did the whole "extreme" everything begin? Or perhaps the question should be "why?" Maybe today on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT) Katherine will have some answers as she covers the story of a trio of cellists who are inspired by the sport of "Extreme Ironing. "
Today on Inside The Music (Saturday Edition 12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT), Riding With the King: The B.B. King Story. Riding With The King is also the name of King's acclaimed recording with Eric Clapton, which pre-dates this documentary by about five years. 
For 
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