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Bruce Cockburn is the featured artist in part three of Revolutions Per Minute: Indispensable Canadian Albums, which you can hear this weekend -- broadcast details at end of post.
Host Kevin Courrier (who has written books about Zappa and Randy Newman) focuses on Cockburn's 1981 recording, Inner City Front. It was a pivotal recording in Cockburn's career -- until 1980, he was pretty much viewed as a folk musician.
In part it reflected some dramatic changes in his personal life, moving from rural Ontario to Toronto, and changes in his musical thinking -- it was a full-on electric album with a band, not Cockburn with guitar. Musically it was a hybrid of rock, jazz, electronica and reggae, and today's show makes a case for the album signaling a seismic shift in Cockburn's life and art. (It also was an indication of the political direction he’d move in throughout the eighties.)
re: that country to city transition -- in a 1981 interview Cockburn is quoted as saying:
It's the Office/TGIF/Workin' For The Weekend version of the Radio 2 Blog video fest. For anyone who has ever worked in an office, the following is for you.
At least there's nothing moldy in the fridge!
Gets going at :32. And remember, it's from 1961...
(Note: Self Dispensing Cups! At 1:20)
Just a two-video fest this week, as no other high quality office music videos emerged from the filing cabinet.
Vampires, werewolves and ghosts, oh my! Yes, it's that day, the one associated with molasses candies wrapped in orange and black paper that now seem impossible to find. Oh, and also associated with scary things, and bones.
Tonight Pat Carrabré, weekend host of The Signal (10 p.m.), celebrates Halloween with a concert by The Ghost Bees, who the Signalites describe as "spooky Halifax twins." It's an accurate description of some of their music -- echoed by a writer for Halifax's The Coast:
"Strange, spirited and often spooky, acoustic folk sometimes called freak folk."
Earlier this fall Zimbabwean singer Chiwoniso launched an annual world music festival held in Toronto called the Small World Festival. She's a powerful singer, and her music is a very contemporary take on tradition of Zimbabwean Shona music. (The mbira, if you're unfamiliar, is sometimes called a "thumb piano," although really, it's not that hard to say "mbira"; pronouncer = em-BEER-uh, which sounds a lot nicer.)
Anyway, the concert is being broadcast Friday night on Canada Live (8 p.m.). Though for the last few years there's been quite an interest in mbiras coming from non-Zimbabwean musicians, Chiwoniso is more of an example of young, urban Zimbabwean's becoming increasingly into mbira. Some of the resulting music is even less traditionally oriented than Chiwoniso's. And all of it, it being Zimbabwe, is political.
Paul Brickhill, who runs a cafe in Harare called The Book Cafe was interviewed about this back in 2002.
"You see these young people, they are very experimental, and they are very free in the way they think. They are not so bound by categories as we older musicians are. You would see them looking towards the cutting edge for them of contemporary music internationally. So they would be into rap and there is in fact a version of Shona rap developing. Or they'd be looking into Hip-Hop and all this kind of thing. It was very noticeable how increasingly they put away their electric guitars and other electric instruments and started to pick up mbira and percussion because mbira always goes together with percussion, but then they mix it with other stuff."
Burt Bacharach has had an interesting career "trajectory," as they say, from writing very popular music that was frequently the object of fun-poking (some considered his music sappy), to a new kind of hipness in the latter part of his career. That's partly down to a genuine recognition of the beauty of his songs, and his influence -- he's had an impact on many younger musicians, from Elvis Costello to Jarvis Cocker, Michael Stipe, Ron Sexsmith, the list goes ever on.
As mentioned earlier today on the Radio 2 Blog, this evening you can hear Burt Bacharach in concert on Canada Live (8 p.m.), recorded at Pop Montreal in the Eglise de St. Jean-Baptiste, performing a relatively intimate show for around 1,200 people.
So what is it about Bacharach's writing that's had such an impact? The answer lies in one word: melody.
Bacharach, who studied with French composer Darius Milhaud, was apparently embarrassed by early efforts -- but then Milhaud, according to one interview (see Burt Bacharach In Love With Us) told his student: "Never be ashamed of a melody."
And he hasn't been. As one Melody Maker (pun definitely not intended, mere coincidence) article put it:
"...if you look up the word "melody" in the dictionary, you'll see a photo of Burt Bacharach. If you asked thousands of record buyers and record makers who they considered to be the most gifted pop melodicist of the last 30 years, most of them would probably agree on three men: Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach."
(Feel free to argue among yourselves.)
As for Mr. Bacharach, which song in his body of work is his own favourite? Even though he claims it's mostly about Hal David's words:
Holy long ovation! But that is a great reminder that in the case of Alfie, even if the words did come first, that little melodic line that goes with "what's it all about, Alfie" is pretty much perfect.
Raindrops keep falling on my, or no, actually it's been snow across much of the country. And it not yet November, shocking.
But bets that the opening line of this post made you think, Burt, as in Bacharach. At 80 Burt Bacharach still performing, and one of those recent performances was recorded by CBC Radio 2 and will be broadcast tonight, Thursday, on Canada Live (8 p.m.).
The performance was recorded at Pop Montreal in the Eglise de St. Jean-Baptiste before 1200 appreciative Burt fans -- so if you are of that clan, do tune into the show this evening.
Also wanted to note that today Drive broadcasts an interview by Rich Terfry with Shad -- here's just a little bit of what you can hear:
For the rest, tune into Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.). Now to the rest of the day's broadcast highlights:
...through iTunes. That's the rest of today's topic, but those long subject headings start looking funny on the page. But it is indeed the subject for this week's Tech Q's? column. (For previous editions, just click on that link and scroll down.)
For people who don't use iTunes and don't want to, no problem, as Peter Cook, our resident Tech Doc will explain. But if you are one of the many who like listening to music this way, today's column explains how you can customize your experience of listening to those four CBC music channels in your own iHome.
Over to you, Peter:
"In Sept 2008 CBC Radio 2 introduced four new internet radio services which we've been calling "Music Channels". With these services you can listen 24/7 to one of four genre-specific stations: Classical, Jazz, Canadian Songwriters and Canadian Composers.
You can read more about this service and you can use the CBC Radio 2 Channel Player to listen to the streams on the Music Channels page. One advantage of using our player is that you see lots of information about what music is currently playing. And we have many more features planned for this player in the future.
But a lot of people have iTunes at the centre of their music world so today we're going to look at how to listen to the Music Channels using iTunes. And I'll show you an easy way to return to our channels without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
Start up iTunes. You may not have noticed it before but near the top on the left is an icon labelled "Radio". Click on the Radio icon and you'll see a long list of genres. There's a ton of stuff out there!
To find the CBC offerings you'll need to look inside the appropriate genres. Click on the small triangle beside Classical. The list expands to show all the stations sorted alphabetically. A short way down the list you'll find CBC Canadian Composers and then CBC Classical.
You can find the other CBC Channels by looking inside other genres. CBC Jazz is inside (no surprise here) the Jazz genre. CBC Canadian Songwriter is inside the Pop genre. There's a pdf file here with pretty pictures to illustrate what I've just described.
You probably know that you can create playlists to organize the music you have in your iTunes library. What most people don't know is that you can put internet Radio stations in your playlist as well.
A little while ago an email came in with the subject heading: The Old Prince Goes Viral. Had I not known that one of Canada's most interesting hip hop artists, Shad, has a recording called The Old Prince I might have been concerned. However, the "viral" part of the subject heading did naturally make me (and everyone else who got the email, thus leading to more viralness) watch the video for his hit from that album, The Old Prince Still Lives At Home.
It's pretty funny. (Or, as one viewer put it: "dooooooooooooooope!!!") Go to 2:25 for the best bit...though you do kind of need the build up to really appreciate it it.
Tomorrow, Thursday, Shad will be on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) with Rich Terfry, performing and talking about music. That's in the third hour of the show.
Right now, for another side of Shad -- and he has many, watch Brother (Watchin'): skillful, moving, smart.
Today is the last day of the "Brahms Fest" on Tempo (10 a.m. - 3 p.m.), and on this afternoon's broadcast you can hear the great Brahms Violin Concerto with Pinchas Zukerman as soloist, and his longtime friend, Zubin Mehta, leading the National Arts Centre Orchestra.
Many of the concerts are already available on Concerts On Demand. Also, podcasts featuring Radio 2 host Bill Richardson in conversation with Pinchas Zukerman (speaking about the place these works hold in the classical repertoire) will be available in the next couple of weeks. (More information about that will be posted at Brahms Festival.)
Please also note: On Sunday, November 16th the entire Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) programme will be devoted to the music of Brahms.
And here are the rest of today's broadcast highlights:
There are few things that thrill the way finding hidden musical treasure does. Particularly when it is from the beginning of the very history of recordings, as is the case with the discovery of some cylinder recordings that represent the "largest cache of classical music from the dawn of the recorded age known to exist: hundreds of cylinders incised on an Edison phonograph from the 1890s by a music-loving businessman, Julius H. Block."
And today a find of another musical kind finally sees the light of day -- radio broadcasts by the great Hank Williams. Serious fans have long know about these recordings -- 143 never-before-released recordings from a radio series sponsored by Mother's Best flour in 1951.
It was the height of Williams' career -- Cold Cold Heart had been covered by Tony Bennett and Perry Como, he was on national TV shows (including Como's).
Depending on your schedule, you may or may not be aware of what happens on CBC Radio 2 in the wee sma's. For myself, in a former life when I was directing morning radio shows, I was well and truly if sleepily familiar with whatever was on the radio at the 4:00 a.m. rise. These days less so.
But plenty of people are working overnights, counting sheep or getting up to feed them when Nightstream (1:00 a.m./1:30 NT) is on the airwaves. These days the programme is hosted full time by Philly Markowitz, doing her usual weekend Nightstream gig in addition to filling in for weekday host Jowi Taylor, who is on a leave of absence.
The "Paganini of the steel pan" is on The Signal (10 p.m.) Tuesday night -- Liam Teague, in a broadcast that features his live performance of a world premiere, a composition called Pan Trio by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Michael Colgrass, recorded at the Cool Drummings festival.
As well as being hailed as the Paganini etc., Teague teaches music and is one of the leaders of the steelband at Northern Illinois University. (If you're interested in some of his thoughts about steelpan and formal education you may want to have a look at the Pan In Education project.)
Please continue reading for the rest of the day's programming highlights:
In the ongoing Radio 2 Blog exploration of music and its connections to/reflections of the U.S. election, we present Music For Sarah. No, not Song For Sarah by the two young Russian guys who responded to Ms. Palin's comments about seeing (or not) Russia from Alaska -- this is music written as accompaniment to Ms. Palin, and it's quite an interesting example of music created as a response to the cadence of speech.
She's 26, she's collaborated with John Hiatt, Bruce Cockburn, Daniel Lanois...and today she's on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.).
Her new recording, No Love For The Poisonous, is out this week, thus the timeliness of her appearance on Drive. Speaking of that song, if you go to Potvin's website you can hear it -- actually sounds pretty Lanois-ish to me -- and that's a good thing. For those curious about her b.g., here are a few interesting outside observations:
How the bluesy, soulful Ms. Potvin got that way:
"...catching young bluesman Jonny Lang on TV was like being hit by lightening — Lang led her, curiosity working overtime, to the music of B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters and dozens of others — from Howlin’ Wolf to Aretha Franklin. At 15, she got her first guitar. 'It was a white Japanese Telecaster,' she remembers now. 'It had a buzzing in the strings they couldn’t fix, so I returned it to the store, and got another Tele, an American-made cream one that I still play today.' -- Beaches Jazz
Good Monday morning. Today on Radio 2 one of the highlights is the appearance of Roxanne Potvin on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) -- she dropped by the studio the other day to play some tunes (photographic evidence provided to the right) and Rich broadcasts the music and their conversation today.
Ms. Potvin is a bi-lingual singer from Gatineau, Quebec, whose latest recording is called No Love For The Poisonous. Her previous recording, The Way It Feels, was produced by one Colin Linden -- and yes, her music is bluesy. But also a little bit country, a little rocky, a little Beatles-inspired...here's a snippet of conversation about that very subject:
To her Ms. Potvin performing in studio, and to hear the rest of the interview, tune into Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.)
And here are the rest of the day's show highlights:
Jordan is a virtuoso guitarist, an innovator, and not coincidentally, the other day I posted a video of him playing on two instruments simultaneously. You can see that here, second video down. He's an amazing musician.
He's also completing a grad programme in music therapy. This I did not know, until snooping about the World Wide Web reading about what people think the musical response to the current economic chaos will be.
That led to an article called Guitarist Stanley Jordan: Music Therapy For People And the Planet. A remarkable coincidence, I thought. More remarkable though, is this notion of Jordan's that music therapy should not be seen as restricted to the (music) therapist's couch, as it were, that we should actively use music outside the clinical situation to improve our own every day health. (Many of us already do that, I suspect, whether or not it is as conscious as all that.)
Jordan's Relaxing Music For Difficult Situations was something he recorded for himself before going to the dentist. Really. "I had to go for three days of dental work, so I needed something really powerful," he says. Ouch, three days!
But what about those of us who can't cope with the dentist (or the economic chaos) by recording our own music to combat the anxiety? Here are a few of Jordan's other tips:
If you're feeling that low, you've got the blues. But today on Farrago With Jurgen Gothe (Sunday 5:00 p.m. 5:30 NT) the blues Jurgen explores are of a slightly different order. Here's the explanation:
The inspiration comes from words of the legendary blues artist Bone Man Slim. In case you don't know Bone Man Slim's body of work here's the pivotal lyric:
"It's hard to be a bluesman....in a renovated home." (It's easy, however, to have the blues if you're trying to write a blog in the midst of home renovations, but that's another song.)
This lyric reflects a challenge facing many a young Canadian blues musician. Can one really play the blues when the only heat one feels is blasting from your parents' furnace? While waiting to hear Jurgen attempt to answer this question, plaguing parents across the land, you may want to turn your thoughts to blues names.
It's difficult to better Bone Man Slim, but one way of generating your own blues name is by going to the Blues-Name-O-Rama. Just click on "Create A New Blues Name" once you get there. (Mine is "Digital Earl Thornton.")
Or you may want to peruse this list of fabulous blues names that already exist, and base your name off of one of these. (Using this method I came up with "Lazy Snake-Root Robbins." Needs some work.)
Once you have your blues name, you may wish to embrace a full-on blues lifestyle, which you can do at the Blues Lifestyle Guide. They'll sort you out about appropriate blues transportation etc.
An interesting guide, although I strenuously object to point #7:
7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St.Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the Blues in any place that don't get rain.
If you're looking forward to a relaxing Sunday afternoon with your radio by your side, here is what you can hear on Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT): music from the Pacific Rim, plus a celebration of the pipe organ, with music from the recent Canadian International Organ Competition.
The former is via two west coast orchestras: Conductor Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, fresh off their seven concert Asia-Pacific tour is featured with music from their final performance, from the Shanghai Music Festival. (Music includes: Jeffrey Ryan's The Linearity Of Light, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, and the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz.)
Also, the Victoria Symphony performs a fusion of classical Chinese music with Silk Road Music. Compositions are by Alexina Louie, Chan Ka Nin, and a newly commissioned work by Jin Zhang.
As to the pipe organ music -- as previously mentioned it comes to you from the new triennial Canadian International Organ Competition, which welcomed fifteen organists from around the world to compete for $72,000 in prize money. Montreal organist and broadcaster Patrick Wedd is a special guest today, presenting some of the festival highlights.
For the rest of the day's radio highlights, please continue reading:
Norman Lebrecht thinks The Fate Of Music Hinges On A $20 Million Violin. He also thinks that musicians -- at least, top flight classical musicians -- will weather the "economic crisis" just fine, thank you very much. (I think we need a new term for the "economic crisis" don't you? How about "chaos" instead of crisis? In response, SNL fans may wish to join me in a hearty cry of "FIX IT!")
Anyway, another response to music and the credit crunch is to listen to Bach's Cantata 168, and here's why, according to blogger Paul Lay:
"The opening bass aria is a pungent, ardent attack on the money men of 1720s Weimar, around the words Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort! literally 'Give an account of yourself, word of thunder,' but sometimes translated as 'Thine Accounting! Judgment Day!' The bass vents his spleen amid a swirl of music like a demented broker seeing all his screens turn red, who thrashes around before finally pledging to be a good steward who puts his trust in the lord. "
Giuseppe Verdi's ninth opera revolves around one of the most feared of feared enemies -- 5th century warrior Attila the Hun, who controlled much of what we know as Europe, from the Danube to the Baltic, from the Steppes of Central Asia to the forests of Germany. (And thence to the gates of Rome!)
"You may have the universe but let Italy remain mine!" was Italian General Ezio's comeback to the invading warrior, which wasn't much of a deterrent. Three people step up to the plate in an attempt to defeat the oppressor: the aforementioned Ezio, a Knight named Foresto and a fearless female prisoner, Odabella, whom Attila has taken as his concubine. (Serves him right.)
Today on SATO, a production of the opera from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam featuring Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov as Attila, King of the Huns, and Hasmik Papian as the fearless female prisoner, Odabella. (That's her in the photo, clearly not as the fearless female prisoner, but a great shot of her in La Traviata. ) Today's performance is with the Netherlands Radio Chorus and Orchestra directed by Jaap van Zweden.
Please continue reading for full cast and character details, as well as the always handy plot synopsis.
You know there's a folk show on Saturdays, right? Or maybe wrong, since with all the new programming some of the new-ish shows have been neglected on the Radio 2 Blog of late, and I fear Deep Roots (Saturday 11:00 a.m., 12:00 AT, 12:30 NT) has fallen into that category.
But don't let that happen to you! Deep Roots a very nice hour of music presented by the charming Tom Power from Newfoundland. Today's highlights include the latest from Canada's traveling King of the Blues (Big Dave McLean) a Canadian bluegrass band covering a Coldplay hit, and what Tom calls Grammy winner Norah Jones' "sordid Country and Western past." Heh.
And since this is a small spotlight on the folk, I should add that for the rest of the weekend Tom, along with much of the Canadian folk music community, will be at the Ontario Conference Of Folk Festivals -- I'm sure he'll have plenty of fresh folk from that conference for listeners on upcoming editions of Deep Roots.
And here's what else you can hear on your radio today:
The other day, after a conversation about Beethoven going deaf, talk turned to Joni Mitchell. This because she wrote an amazing song about just that (lyrics at the end of this post). It got me thinking yet again about what an extraordinary poet and musician she is.
This weekend, in the second part of Revolutions Per Minute: Indispensable Canadian Albums, host Kevin Courrier looks at Mitchell's classic 1971 album Blue, which predated her turn towards jazz and more abstract pop music. As the producer of the series puts it, Blue "presented audiences with Mitchell’s sensibility: a deep, honest perspective of love and romance from a woman’s point of view."
The episode examines why so many listeners feel this record changed their lives -- songs include This Flight Tonight, River, Carey, A Case of You, and interviews include cultural critic Camille Paglia and Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon.
You can hear Revolutions Per Minute: Indispensable Canadian Albums on Inside The Music:
Radio 2: Saturday, October 25th at 12 noon in Ontario, Quebec, Central, Mountain and Pacific; 1 p.m. in Maritimes; 1:30 p.m. in Nfld.
Radio 1: Sunday October 26 on Radio 1 at 8 p.m. in Ontario, Quebec, Central, Mountain and Pacific; 9 p.m. in Maritimes; 9:30 p.m. in Nfld.]
Yes, Reader, it happened. This week in my hometown the first flakes fell, and everyone got into a tizzy. (Southern Canadians are so easily perturbed by any hint of winter.) And it seemed to take the accompanying wintry winds to enact what much of the rest of the country has already been ho-hum business-as-usual about -- the autumn leaves began to fall. Since then they've been falling in earnest -- neighbours' houses are suddenly visible, dog walkers idling out front cannot hide the deed of their dog.
But on a more poetic note, the falling leaves inspired this week's Radio 2 Video Festival: three contrasting versions of the classic, Autumn Leaves.
Because Eva Cassidy Sings It Beautifully:
Because Stanley Jordan Plays It On Two Instruments At The Same Time:
(Why? Because he can, I guess.)
Because It's The Classic:
(Oh, to be in Paris dancing to Yves, sigh...)
Zaki Ibrahim, who hails from T.O./Cape Town/Vancity, is on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) today, in the third hour of the show.
Ibrahim's music is an original blend of soul and jazz and hip hop -- to learn a little more about her, you may want to click on over to yesterday's feature post.
World music lovers also take note: tonight Canada Live (8 p.m.) broadcasts a concert of Balkan music by Lubo And Kaba Horo -- a concert that launches Mundo Montréal, an original CBC series of world music concerts taking place at the Lion D'Or in Montreal.
Please continue reading for the rest of the daily highlights:
"Chihuahua Themed Embroidery." "Life In Plastic, It's Fantastic." "You Say Professional Like It's A Bad Thing."
These are just some of the blog post headlines that gave me pause earlier today. But putting aside the obvious charms of Chihuahua Themed Embroidery, (oh alright, here's the link) the headline this post focuses on is perhaps less eye-catching, but of no small significance: "Why The Fate Of Music Hinges On A $20 Million Violin."
It's the title of a post by Norman Lebrecht, and the story is this: A 1741 Guarnerius del Gesu violin, owned by an elderly merchant banker, has been put on sale for $20 million --Lebrecht says this is "twice as much as the highest sum ever paid for a musical instrument."
It's a lead in to an exploration of how musicians survive recessions and depressions. (Not talking hairlines and the state-of-mind many artistic souls are prone to, but the economic kind.)
"The pianist Artur Schnabel, his share holdings suddenly worthless, lifted his firm ban on making records and signed with EMI to play the 32 Beethoven sonatas. Jascha Heifetz, another crash victim, put his spare income into buying rare first editions of English literature, which he could barely read. Igor Stravinsky composed a simple Capriccio for piano and orchestra that he could play himself as soloist, earning two cheques every time he took it on tour. Sergei Rachmaninov bought property in Switzerland."
"Thick with poetics and steeped in a delicious mixture of earnest emotion and social commentary." That's one (self) description of Zaki Imbrahim's music.
The emphasis should be on "delicious," though, "earnest" sounds so, well "earnest." And what I've heard of her music definitely falls more on the delicious side of the musical equation. You can get a sense of Ibrahim's music yourself on Friday's Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.), when she's in studio to perform, and to chat with Mr. Terfry.
Meanwhile, here are the 5 W's of Ms. Zaki Ibrahim:
Who: "Toronto singer Zaki Ibrahim may prove to be the star that outshines all others"-Hour
What: "Let’s just leave it at 'urban...Let’s figure out what the hell ‘urban’ means and then get back to me."-As quoted in Now Magazine
Where: Raised in British Columbia and South Africa, currently resides in T.O.
When: Tune in to the 3rd hour of Drive on Friday.
Why (Music): "I have early memories of music holding this esteemed position in our household, because most music was banned in South Africa during Apartheid. There were these mixed tapes that went underground that became lifelines to the world around us." -- Official bio
How: Not a "w," actually. But here's how anyhow: She has a powerful set of pipes; most of her music is a blend of soul and jazz and hip hop that has a strong original spark to it, which is why people say things like "may prove to be the star that outshines all others." (Please see "Who.")
Sometimes a performer's name suddenly crops up everywhere, and that's been the case for me with Courtney Wing. He's a singer-songwriter working with a pretty rich musical palette, in fact the concert broadcast tonight features what has been called an "operatic folk ensemble" featuring members of Bell Orchestre and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
His own background provides some of the musical influence (a Chinese father and a Russion/Icelandic mother -- Wing can play traditional Chinese percussion, and has sung Icelandic music...). Did I mention the concert is being broadcast on The Signal (10 p.m.) Thursday night? Now I did.
And here are rest of the day's programme highlights:
Sam Joseph Melville was an infamous inmate at Attica prison, a conspirator and bomb setter key to instigating the 1971 riots in that prison, riots in which he lost his life. One of his journal entries was used by the composer Frederic Rzewski in a composition called Coming Together, which host Laurie Brown features on The Signal (10 p.m.) tonight.
It's not a happy story. But when The Signal's producer sent a note about the piece referring to it as "prison music," it led to thinking about some positive and current stories about music not inspired by prison experiences, but in prisons. Partly triggered by a memory of a project Billy Bragg is involved in called Jail Guitar Doors. (They provide instruments for inmates serving time "in Her Majesty’s prisons." The name is from the b-side of the Clash’s 1978 single Clash City Rockers.)
This programme actually has stats that show ex-prisoners who were involved in the guitar playing workshops have a "re-conviction rate of between 10%-15%" compared to Britains national average of 61%." Incredible. (Although is it possible that the prisoners who got involved with the music programmes were also prisoners who didn't "have form," as they say? But keep reading, there are more quantifiable results ahead.)
Bragg's involvement inspired a similar American programme in the city of Lansing, Michigan. See Careful With That Axe, Eugene for more details on the programme. (Can't you just imagine the hilarity that ensued when someone came up with that headline?)
Britain does seem to be leading the way with these kinds of endeavors though -- the Music In Prisons project in the UK has been running since 1995. As well, a very recent study, called Beats And Bars based in large part on this programme concluded that these music programmes also increased prisoners' "readiness to read and write." (See Music Boosts Prisoner's Learning.)
Many years ago I worked in a bookstore. Sometimes customers would come in looking for a book. Fair enough. But all they could remember was that it had a character in it who loved cows and, oh, that the cover was green. Amazingly, more often than not a light would go on, and lo and behold, we clerks would trot over to retrieve the book with the green cover that involved a boy who adored cows.
Sometimes trying to figure out what the piece of music you heard on the radio was can feel like that search for the green cow book. Except, and it's a big except, there are playlists on the Radio 2 site for every show that have all of the info. you need to find the piece of music you heard and loved. You don't even have to remember what colour the music was. Just time of day, or show, or...well, I'll turn it over to the Tech Doctor, Peter Cook, to explain:
"Are we all getting used to navigating the Radio 2 site? Maybe I should do a little tour of the site in one of these Tech Q posts. For now I'll try to get into the habit of referring to the "left hand nav" (that's "nav" as in "navigation") area. It's your launch pad for all the top level features at Radio 2.
Today we're going to look down just past the half way point on the left hand nav at Playlists. When you click on the Playlists link the first thing you see is a list of Programs for the current date.
Just click on the program name of interest - or the plus sign beside the program name - and the playlist expands to show you all the information that's hiding underneath. Click on the program name again - or the minus sign - and the info folds back up.
A much buzzed about concert featuring the man some call "the future of reggae" will be aired Wednesday evening on Canada Live (8 p.m.). The man in question is Jason Wilson, and the concert also features the guy who taught Bob Marley how to play guitar -- Ernest Ranglin. But wait, there's more --Pee Wee Ellis on sax and Brinsley Forde of Aswad.
All that, and a second concert with the young, talented Juno-award winning bass player, of whom Oscar Peterson once said "she has the same lope or rhythmical pulse as my late bass player Ray Brown. She is what we call serious"...Brandi Disterheft.
Please continue reading for the rest of today's show highlights:
At the end of last week I noted the passing of Canadian jazz guitarist Nelson Symonds. If you didn't know his playing, you can hear some of it this evening on Tonic (6 p.m.) when Katie features some of his music, as well as no doubt sharing her own memories of Symonds, who was based in Montreal. (As is Tonic, and Katie.)
Since the news broke of his death there have been some lovely insights into his playing written by musicians who knew him well. He was one of those players who was hugely respected in the Canadian jazz community - but not much known outside of that. Many have speculated that if he had left Montreal and taken up residency south of the border, he would have been much better known.
But he didn't -- as it says in the description of Mary Ellen Davis' documentaries about Symonds (written while he was still alive), "Symonds has turned down possibilities of playing elsewhere; he likes Montreal."
Regardless, Canadian jazz musicians understand what kind of musician he was, and what his contributions were, and it's been great to read some of their reminiscences -- so I thought I'd share a couple.
How many of us have wondered "how long will it be before we get Barack, The Musical?" Not you? Well, I'm willing to put imaginary money on it that the day will come to pass.
Meanwhile, here's this low-fi attempt to capture Barack Obama's life story -- recently released by New York City comic book artist and "antifolk" performer Jeffrey Lewis.
Perhaps it could use a little melodic development, but at least it's succinct.
It continues to fascinate (some of us, anyway) that music, in various guises, continues to be such a part of the Obama campaign, from the previously linked to Ralph Stanley endorsement (see O Barack, Where Art Thou) to original songs -- Obamapedia has a partial round up of music associated with the presidential hopeful. (Always loved that term, "presidential hopeful." Somehow seems oddly innocent. As opposed to the reality of politics.) Then there's Obama Rap -- Top 10 Rap Songs About Obama.
And wouldn't you know it, if you google Barack, The Musical, you will turn up a number of attempts of a kind, like this -- though no full blown musicals yet. Still, I bet (with more of that imaginary dough) that someone out there, even as we speak, is trying to figure out if Hilary is an alto or a mezzo, and whether or not will.I.Am might be will.I.ng to play himself...
In September the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra collaborated with DJ Masonic (a.ka. Mason Bates, both a composer and a club DJ) with a work called Omnivorous Furniture. It was part of a KWSO series called Electronica, which featured laptop and percussion pad along with the percussion section of the KWSO.
It's not the first time Bates has worked in this kind of context by any means -- his Carnegie Hall debut included performing live electronica in the percussion section of The National Symphony, a work he had premiered at The Kennedy Center under the baton of Leonard Slatkin.
As for the KWSO collaboration, that you can hear on Tuesday night's edition of The Signal (10 p.m.). And now to the rest of the daily highlights:
Ideas about what composition is and how and where it should happen evolve and change -- witness CBC/Radio Canada's new competition, Evolution (and the discussion it has raised right here on the Radio 2 Blog -- in response to a post called Evolution: Canadian Composer Competition Announced.)
Tonight The Signal (10 p.m.) features what many would not consider composition at all, as it is music "composed" in the moment. It's "instant composition," a term first coined by the great jazz guitarist Jim Hall in the late '50s, then later taken up by the (also great) jazz pianist Misha Mengleberg.
Mengleberg is at the core of the group you can hear Laurie showcase tonight -- the Instant Composers Pool (ICP). (The other musician at that core is drummer Han Bennink -- and the concert Laurie plays is the ICP recorded by CBC Radio 2 at the Guelph Jazz Festival.)
According to the history of the group, when Mengleberg used the term, it was a way to describe (or perhaps really more to legitimize) improvising.
Justin Rutledge decided to call his latest recording "Man Descending" after the great short story collection of that name by Guy Vanderhaeghe. Here's the official record co. (Six Shooter Records) explanation:
"Inspired by the 1982 book by Guy Vanderhaeghe, Man Descending follows ten characters down certain half-deserted avenues of their lives where they encounter alternate sides of themselves of which they are relatively unfamiliar. As each character reevaluates their lot in life, the songs tend to function as questions rather than answers."
Perhaps Rutledge has more to say about it to Rich Terfry -- you can hear for yourself today when Justin Rutledge is on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.).
And here's a Blog's Eye View on Rutledge's latest:
Justin Rutledge, he of the literary turn of album title (his latest, Man Descending, is named after the excellent Guy Vanderhaeghe short story collection) is Rich's guest on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) this Monday afternoon. (He's also featured in a documentary about Dolly Parton -- something tells me he and Rich will have plenty to chat about.) And as per usual with a "Drive Live," Justin R. will play some songs as well.
More on Mr. Rutledge on the Radio 2 Blog later today; for now, here are all of the daily programme highlights:
Sometimes music stories emerge thematically. Young women pop singers have "issues" with addictive substances. Oboe players are obsessed with reeds. This past week, a trickle of stories connected to kids and music. For example:
Story 1: "Babies as young as five months old can distinguish between upbeat and gloomy music, providing more evidence that the brain's ability to detect emotion develops early, researchers report. 'They can tell emotions apart,' said study author Ross Flom, an associate professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. 'They don't understand that this is happy music and this is sad music, but they know they're different.'"
Leaving aside the debatable issue of what is happy music and what is sad music, the above will come as no surprise to anyone who has every dandled a babe or tottered around a living room with a small child on their shoes in time to some bright tempo or danceable rhythm.
This study was based on findings from 96 babies who responded to music that included the theme from Peanuts, the Ode To Joy from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 and Tiger Rag performed by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. (That's the "happy" music, click on the source to find out the "sad.") Researchers watched the babies (nice work if you can get it!) and noted whether they "perked up" as the music was played, or did the opposite of perking up.
Well, it is mere days away from the opening of the fall classic. But in this case it isn't that "the bags are juiced," as we tobacco chawin', hard talkin' baseball fans like to say. No, these bas(s)es are of the musical variety.
Because today Jurgen celebrates "the doghouse," as the acoustic bass is sometimes called, on Farrago With Jurgen Gothe (Sunday 5:00 p.m. 5:30 NT). He calls today's edition of the show "Basses Loaded" (so actually you can blame the pun on him, not me) and on it you'll hear heavy hitters (ditto) from Mingus to Slam Stewart to Michel Donato.
This bass-centric show provides the perfect excuse to post the first video in a series that was recorded at a Ray Brown master-class. (Ray Brown of Oscar Peterson fame, as well as a long legacy of playing with other jazz greats. Also, it should be noted, co-composer along with original Tonight Show host Steve Allen of Gravy Waltz, which got a lot of play last Thanksgiving weekend, appropriately enough. But I digress.)
This video opens with Frankie And Johnny, and then Brown launches right into talking about the bass and how he plays it -- a revealing glimpse into the world of jazz bass (history, technique etc.) through the eyes of one of the masters. (With loads of little demos featuring some remarkable bass playing from Mr. Brown.)
To view the rest of the Ray Brown master class, offered sequentially, go to a blog belonging to Matthew Wengerd (Bassist, Student, Educator), and a post called Back In Brown.
This week Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) is hosted by Ms. Katherine Duncan, who also hosts Saturday's classical music news show, In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT). What's making headlines today on Sunday Afternoon In Concert though is a feature profile of the St. Lawrence String Quartet at twenty, and the Calgary Philharmonic playing tango.
The St. Lawrence String Quartet is well established as one of the world-class chamber ensembles of its generation -- early on (in 1992) they won both the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Young Concert Artists Auditions. Since then they've toured North and South America, Europe and Asia.
As part of their 20th Anniversary Tour, the quartet re-unites with founding members Barry Shiffman, and Marina Hoover in a concert for the Calgary Pro Musica Society. In addition to music by Strauss, Haydn and Dvorak, you can hear them premiere one of a series of commissions - Table At The Bushwaaker by Elizabeth Raum.
As to the tango -- the music of Argentinean tango king Astor Piazzolla is performed by bandoneón virtuoso Daniel Binelli. And more dance-related music too as The Calgary Philharmonic and conductor Roberto Minczuk perform Copland’s El Salón México and Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.
Please continue reading for the rest of the day's programme highlights:
No doubt you've heard songs or read stories that were written from a non-human perspective, but have you ever kept up with one of your favourite musicians by getting daily bulletins in the voice of their instrument case?
If you're a serious fan of Hilary Hahn's you have -- via Twitter, a way of staying in touch with all your friends and strangers, all the time. (Sometimes called "microblogging." So, for example, were I writing the Radio 2 Blog by Twitter right now you'd get a note saying something like "I'm writing about violin cases!" Then you could Twitter me back, saying "wow!" or something similarly inspired.)
So why twitter on about this? Well, it's one of the Hahn stories Katherine looks at today on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT). But just to give you a sense of what kinds of utterances are coming from the violin case, here's a brief sample:
"There was an afternoon concert today. Hilary was a little under the weather, so she went to the pharmacy, where someone called her 'Sir.'"
"Hilary likes me! Today, in the rain, she held the umbrella over me instead of herself."
"Gah! Bedtime."
C'mon, it's a violin case, what do you expect? (And yes, it's whimsical in the extreme, but fun for diehard fans.)
Meanwhile, Hilary Hahn's violin case makes waves for other reasons on Violinist.com:
"...in the Hilary Hahn's part, I have seen her with her violin case covered with a much bigger violin case cover and strapped up with two coloured straps. As she mentioned in her lastest dvd portarit that she doesn't like the violin to bump around during flights."
As opposed to all those fiddlers who prefer the violin be bumped? But seriously, if you are in the market for a good violin case, that last link will take you to a discussion board where you can gab away for hours about violin case possibilities. (Did you know that "Cushy" cases are "absolutely bullet proof?" I'm hoping the person who said this didn't put it to the test.)
Political intrigue! Treachery! Personal entanglements where they had ought not to be!
You might think this was an opera based in the 21st century, but no, it's the 15th -- Verdi's I Due Foscari. It's based on a real life, 15th-century doge (essentially the chief magistrate) of Venice, Francesco Foscari, and his ill-fated son, Jacopo. (Thus the title, the "two Foscaris.")
So here's what happens with Foscari Sr. and Jr.: Falsely accused of crimes, Jr. is persecuted by Venice’s other governing body, known as the Council of Ten. The Doge struggles for a balance between the demands of his political office and the parental urge to smooth the way for Jr. Naturally there is also a woman involved, Jacopo's excessively loyal wife, Lucrezia.
Cliffhanger: Will justice be served or will politics play out to a deadly conclusion?
An early heads up that today on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera the opera broadcast is Verdi's I Due Foscari, a production from Vienna’s Konzerthaus, with baritone Leo Nucci as the Doge of Venice, tenor Francisco Casanova as his son, and Canadian soprano Manon Feubel as Jacopo’s wife, Lucrezia.
Please stay tuned to the Radio 2 Blog for more about the opera later this morning; for now, the rest of the daily programming highlights:
As the week draws to a close, I wanted to acknowledge the recent passing of two great musicians, both of whom made tremendous contributions to jazz, and in the case of one of them, to popular culture.
First, Canadian jazz man, guitarist Nelson Symonds, a musician B.B. King once called "one of the greatest guitar players anywhere."
He was a Montreal institution for many years. Or, as jazz critic and author Mark Miller put in Jazz In Canada -- 14 Lives, "equally an institution and a legend.":
"The Symonds sound is raw, his attack rough, with a kind of backwoods virtuosity, and his phrasing jagged and cutting . . . equally an institution and a legend . . . has the power to impress, and his influence on other guitarists in the city -directly through teaching privately, and indirectly- is marked.
For more about Mr. Symonds life, please see this obituary at cbc.ca/arts.
And the American jazz composer Neal Hefti also died this week. Though Hefti was a trumpet player he was probably best known as a composer and arranger (for people like Woody Herman and Count Basie). But outside of jazz he was most famous as the composer of the themes for both the movie and TV incarnation of The Odd Couple, and for the theme music to the TV show Batman.
Interestingly, his son, Paul Hefti, speaking to the International Tribune Herald, said that "He felt his true work was done for the movies and television," not his work for big bands.
As to the Batman theme, Hefti Jr. said, "He had to find something that worked with the lowest common denominator, so it would appeal to kids, yet wouldn't sound stupid. What he came up with was a 12-bar blues with a guitar hook and one word."
Next week on Tonic (6 p.m.) the music of both men will be featured; please stay tuned to the Radio 2 Blog for more about that.
Maybe because Thanksgiving brought with it many roots and tubers, or maybe because recently the subject of potato music arose, (in this, the International Year Of The Potato) today's Radio 2 Video Festival is devoted to music played on vegetables. (Just click on the last link and scroll down to view previous editions of the fest.)
There are only two videos today, but both feature professional vegetable music.
So you lovers of the carrot pan flute will have to move along via the last link. But I recommend you stay here since some more, well, "sophisticated" carrot music is our first feature:
Linsey Pollak, a.k.a. "A guy who can do incredible things with a simple carrot":
Vienna Vegetable Orchestra of whom it has been said, "playing with food never had such interesting results":
Yes, that's Colin Linden in the Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) studio playing some tunes, talking some talk -- all of which you can hear on the show Friday afternoon.
There are few things that a certain breed of music person likes to jaw over more than Desert Island/Most Essential/Top 10 List recordings. (See 1,000 Recordings To Hear Before...).
But it makes it a slightly more manageable proposition when you narrow the field, as the host and producer of a new series starting up on Inside The Music have.
It's called Revolutions Per Minute: Indispensable Canadian Albums, and you can hear it this weekend -- broadcast details at end of post.
The aforementioned host, Kevin Courrier (who has written books about Zappa and Randy Newman) and producer/archivist John Corcelli, have created striking portraits of some of the most important LPs in Canada’s rock, pop and folk history.
Long Story: Colin Linden is a producer (including artists like Lucinda Williams), songwriter, guitar player (he's played on something in the neighbourhood of 300 albums) who has a strong solo career as well as being part of the Canadian roots-rock “supergroup” Blackie And The Rodeo Kings.
Short: Colin Linden is a bluesman.
And the entire long and short of it is that Linden is on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) tomorrow, Friday Oct. 17th in the second hour of the programme. He'll also be joined by another great Canadian bluesman, Paul Reddick -- his latest CD is just out, and Linden's new recording is coming in November.
As for that bluesman claim, here are a few key points as to his bluesman cred:
It's been described as "living, pulsing chamber music," and you can hear it Thursday evening on The Signal (10 p.m.) "It," in case you are now wondering, is some music that blurs the lines between composition and improvisation, performed at this year's Guelph Jazz Festival and recorded by CBC Radio 2.
The musicians doing the living and pulsing are British bassist Barry Guy, (who has collaborated with the likes of Evan Parker and Derek Bailey), Swiss violinist Maya Homburger (who has performed with John Eliot Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists and Trevor Pinnock's The English Concert and leads The Chandos Baroque Players) and Canadian Jeff Reilly on bass clarinet. Reilly is familiar to many CBC listeners, through his work with a broad spectrum of performers and ensembles, from Jerry Granelli to Symphony Nova Scotia, and as a CBC producer himself.
Five composers, somewhere in the middle of the Canadian Rockies. Each one is burning the midnight oil, furiously writing music for one appointed ensemble. Who will be the first to snap their pencil and pack their bags? Sent home, their manuscript paper trailing behind them?
You'll be relieved to know that it's actually not that kind of "reality" contest, but "Evolution"is a new approach to a competition for composers. It's a new CBC/Radio Canada project, and basically it works like this:
Composers (who must be Canadian and between the ages of 19-35) enter the competition by submitting a work "of unlimited length, composed for a music ensemble of their choice," by December 15th to the competition headquarters (address at the end of this post).
Five composers will be chosen by a jury of smart music people. That's when it gets interesting for the rest of us. In early March those five finalists enter into a residency at the Banff Centre where they are given a theme, and a set of constraints -- for example the kind of ensemble they are writing music for. (So one composer can't decide to write for harp and ukulele, while another goes the trombone quartet route or what have you.)
They have a certain amount of time (not much, about 18 days) in which to work on their piece before rehearsals start in late March. For about four days (this is the end of March 2009 we're talking about), at The Banff Centre’s Rolston Hall, the five composers and the music ensemble will rehearse the five finalists’ works.
And then on March 26, 2009, a major concert featuring the five works will be held at the Banff Centre, broadcast live on CBC Radio 2, CBC Radio 2 online, Espace musique and on Espace classique, Espace musique’s Web radio service (video and audio). (And the five finalists’ works will be available via podcast starting March 27.)
What will be most exciting for the audience throughout the process is that the finalists will be followed by a CBC/Radio-Canada Web audio/video team, will blog about the experience etc., so it will be a kind of "composition-enthusiast's eye view" on the experience.
If you're already sharpening your pencil, read on for the address and the prize info.
Another Wednesday, another edition of Tech Q's, wherein all of your questions of a technical nature regarding Radio 2 are answered by the esteemed Peter Cook, a.k.a. the Good (Tech) Doctor. If you click on the last link, you can scroll down through every "episode" thus far.
Today's subject heading might surprise you -- visuals, not audio. But the photos of performers taken at CBC-recorded concerts are frequently a nice addition to the experience of listening to concerts at Concerts On Demand, once you figure out how to navigate them. Peter explains:
"We all stayed up late last night watching the big show (streaming video online, of course) so let's keep it simple today. This is a hint about navigating the Photo Gallery which appears in each concert at Concerts on Demand.
Seems pretty straight-forward. Let's see if we can surprise anyone with a trick they didn't know.
Click on one of the small photos in the Photo Gallery. A larger version of the image pops up. Hands up, who closes the photo and then clicks on the next one to pop it up? I see a few hands out there. (OK, the truth is we've seen some feedback via the Contact Us page which tells us that some of you are opening and closing photos like this.)
Here's the first tip. With the first photo popped up, move your mouse to the upper right-hand corner of the photo. You should see the text "NEXT". Click on that and sure enough you're sent off to the "next" photo in the gallery. Now that you are on the second photo, move your mouse to the upper left corner. You should see the text "PREV". Click on that and you will go to the "previous" photo.
Not impressed? How about a keyboard shortcut? The more I can do without reaching for the mouse, the happier my wrist is.
Brahms fans take note, October is Brahms Festival month on Tempo (10 a.m. - 3 p.m.), and Julie has been featuring each of Brahms' symphonies, recorded live by the National Arts Centre Orchestra.
Today at 13:00 (that's 1 p.m. for civilians) it's Brahms' 3rd Symphony, a work thought of as being so perfect that Sir Edward Elgar once said, "When I look at the Third Symphony of Brahms I feel like a tinker." So modest.
Please continue reading for the rest of the day's show highlights:
It's one of the odder moments in the many odd moments of the history of the Beatles. The day that Ringo Starr told his fans to quit sending him fanmail.
If you haven't seen the video yet, here you go:
"Grouch" is probably the mildest description of Mr. Starkey out in the blogosphere today as a result. Much breast beating about turning his back on his fans, and 'remember who got you where you are' sort of thing. Though there's truth to this, it seems an odd conclusion to draw -- that just because people like someone's music (or painting or book) automatically means the creator of said artwork is obliged to sign autographs. And yet many seem to feel it's a fan's "right."
Why do fans place so much value on an autograph, anyway? (Leaving aside the matter of selling autographs, which is not why a true fan wants the signature in the first place since they won't sell it, except under duress.) It's one thing to get an autograph as part of actually meeting the person -- then it seems a personal seal of the occasion.
But Ringo, as he "warns" his fans "with peace and love," is trying to get fans to simply stop mailing in their requests. Surely he's suggesting fans save money on postage and find something else to obsess about, like the music? (Not to mention that he's certainly still willing to autograph a drumhead for the lucky winner of his All Starr 2008 Photo Contest.)
Besides, as the Times online points out "For $12.95 ( £7.35) they [fans] can purchase a ying yang necklace featuring the soon-to-be retired Starr autograph stamped on the back."
That's the charming Halifax based singer songwriter, David Myles, singing his charming When It Comes My Turn in his living room. (I don't know if his living room is charming, though it looks it. But the man and his song definitely are.)
For an intimate performance by Myles on your radio, tune in today to Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) in the third hour of the programme, when he joins Rich to play a couple songs from his most recent recording, On the Line. (He and Rich will likely have lots to discuss -- the multi-instrumentalist Myles has also played trumpet with Buck 65.)
Meanwhile, here's the truth about the David Myles' lip synching abilities as well as his knowledge of poutine and other edibles:
Today's the day when we all (or at least many of us) stand behind the little cardboard facade and make the "X" with a pencil that apparently was designed for this and no other purpose.
It's also the day when someone will find out that they are the lucky winner of the Ron Sexsmith Contest -- as Tom draws the winner's name live on Radio 2 Morning (6 a.m.-10 a.m.). So if you entered, don't forget to tune into The Morning to see if you won, and to stock up on quality coffee as per Ron's request.
A quick note about today's Canada Live Podcast as well -- the concerts this week include Sarah McLachlan, which I know will be of interest to some listeners who heard the concert when it was originally broadcast.
Listener/blog reader Jonathan Crone wrote in at that time to say: "I wasn't able to listen to most of it due to the kid's bedtime, but what I did hear was fantastic. Her, a guitar, and a piano. There are so few performers that can pull that off...Amazing. "
I suppose because Thanskgiving makes one's thoughts turn to the idea of counting blessings and giving thanks, it's a mere hop, skip and a lateral thought away to thinking about singing religious music.
As anyone who has ever sung good devotional/religious/spiritual music will likely attest, even if you are not a believer it can be an elevating experience. Yet I've always wondered how those who are deeply religious view those who are not, when it comes to singing the music associated with various religious traditions. So it was interesting to see this post in a blog I've been reading of late called Lies Like Truth, the post titled I'm A Believer?
Its writer suggests that you don't have to "be a believer in order to sing religious music masterfully," and I would agree. But she takes it further -- she asks a number of people in the gospel singing community what they think about this, and without exception they all pretty much agree with what chart topping gospel singer Marvin Sapp says: "Gospel music is about conviction. it isn't easy to have a conviction about someone if you don't have a relationship with them."
Last week Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) started something new on the Radio 2 website, posting audio from some of the interviews they've been doing. In the hurly burly of the typical daily show rush they arrived on the website with little fanfare, something I'd like to correct now.
Lacking an ability to play trumpet will have to settle for the written equivalent though, Bold or CAPS or better still, BOTH. So here goes:
LISTEN TO BECK INTERVIEW HERE!:
(Photo Note: That's Rich with Beck. Rich is not wearing a purple hat.)
There are many other Drive Lives coming up as you will see if you continue reading. One caveat though, the broadcast dates are subject to change -- so do mark your calendars, but possibly in pencil or whatever the equivalent is in your hand held electronic device:
Happy Thanksgiving Monday! And there is much music of a Thanksgiving nature in today's programming, from Oscar Peterson's The Gravy Waltz (using the term Thanksgiving music liberally) which you can hear on Radio 2 Morning (6 a.m.-10 a.m.), to a spoken word piece on the theme of homecoming, much later today on The Signal (10 p.m.).
Also wanted to note that today you can hear Prokofiev's beloved Peter And The Wolf. No, not with Ustinov, but with the fine Canadian actor Colm Feore -- Julie will be playing it in entirety on the holiday Monday version of Tempo (10 a.m. - 3 p.m.). (Can already hear him saying, "suppose a wolf came out of the forest!")
And now to the rest of the day's broadcast highlights:
In light of the past few weeks on the economic front, and in light of the fact that The Signal (10 p.m.) is playing some music by Ólafur Arnalds this evening, I give you this. (The music starts at around :45 into the video.)
As young Mr. Arnalds said (and this a year or so ago, but rather a propos today), while it may seem the skies are falling, the stars still look beautiful. And as he also phrased it, though the world "will always be falling apart," when we say things like this we usually follow the statement with a "but..."
Wise words, and something to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Sunday.
I hope you could get past the slight audio issues (that buzz), and enjoyed Arnalds' (simple but lovely) music. He's from Iceland, is still in his early twenties, and I think he's emblematic of a new crop of new music composers/performers. Both in terms of his compositional approach and attitude.
No, not a slogan from the Kittens N' Lager party, but a song title that hints at the theme of today's edition of Farrago With Jurgen Gothe (Sunday 5:00 p.m. 5:30 NT). The feline part of that equation, that is, the beer and the voting may be tackled by Jurgen on another occasion.
Today he celebrates through song the creature who occasionally deigns to make eye contact, in a programme he calls "Caterwaul." The show includes music from the late Norm Hacking's tribute CD, the soulful When Cats Go Wrong. (The dog people among us might ask 'when do they go right?' But that too is another episode.)
You can also hear music from Ry Cooder -- a song about the adventures of a cat named Buddy -- that's where the cat/vote/beer song comes from. Perhaps Jurgen will play the Weakerthans' most recent song from the perspective of a cat as well, Virtue The Cat Explains Her Departure?
Not having seen his playlist at time of bloggin', I also can't say if he's planning to play this particular cat song, (which I think Ry Cooder also covered, coincidentally) so I thought I'd share it here in all of its from-another-era glory -- Three Cool Cats:
So, maybe not the kind of Cat Song Jurgen has in mind. But for all you cat-music lovers interested in some additional resources contributing to this burgeoning genre (like cats you can apparently never have too many), here you go:
Much to hear on Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) today, starting with a 100th anniversary celebration of the University of British Columbia, which included a gala from the Chan Centre featuring superstar tenor and UBC grad Ben Heppner singing Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, as well as My Secret Heart - favourites from his collection of Parlour songs. Plus there's music of Beethoven, Jean Coulthard and Earth Songs, a new commission by Steven Chatman.
One more "SAIC" note before getting to the rest of the daily show highlights -- the Vancouver Recital Society unveils a new Hamburg Steinway with a special recital by pianist Paul Lewis.
Apparently Montreal has taken over from Calgary as the Pipe Organ Capital of Canada. This based on the fact that the once thriving Calgary International Organ Competition has resurfaced in Montreal as the Canadian International Organ Competition, and the inaugural edition is on right now -- as Katherine discusses today on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT).
It looks like a terrific event -- both as a competition and as this press release puts it, "a unique spectator experience," enhanced by large screens and what they call the "innate surround sound" (nicely put) of the organ.
In a completely tangential direction, this leads nicely into this (not very) scientific exploration of some other musical capitals -- we'll say "of the world" rather than Canada just to be more globally minded. But as you will see, there is little agreement in these matters:
That beautiful single line (the thoughts, the wings of gold) is one of the reasons Verdi went from being a young, grieving widower to a lifetime of musical achievement. Legend, also known as wikipedia and other online research, has it that it was "the words of the famous Va pensiero chorus of the Hebrew slaves that inspired Verdi to write music again," resulting in Nabucco.
Certainly Verdi's career was well and truly launched with the success of Nabucco, which was his third opera. It follows the plight of the Jews as they are exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nebbuchadnezzar, a.ka. Nabucco. (Reflecting the political climate in Italy at the time.)
Today's production on SATO is from the Bavarian State Opera and it features baritone Paolo Gavanelli as Nabucco and soprano Maria Guleghina as the King's presumed daughter, Abigaille.
For more details and the plot synopsis, please keep reading:
Opera fans take note -- today on SATO Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco featuring baritone Paolo Gavanelli as Nabucco, soprano Maria Guleghina as the king's presumed daughter, Abigaille, and Alexander Antonenko, tenor, as Ismaele. Paolo Carignani is the conductor in this production, which comes to you from the Bavarian State Opera.
More on the opera a little later Saturday morning, and for now, here are today's show highlights:
The notion that music is inherently happy or sad is a highly debatable one -- although it would be interesting to find out how many people reading this had a music teacher at some point say, "if it's in a minor key it's sad music."
There's no question that we respond emotionally to music, and that as individuals we feel that music creates a certain emotional response within each of us. We use music to shift moods, to set a mood, to retreat from an unwanted mood.
And yet clearly what is moving to one is not necessarily to another. I recently had an intense first hand experience of this as a juror for the Polaris prize -- in a small group of music journalists, all of whom cared passionately about music, what moved one person to raptures could completely irritate another. (And the astonishment that someone else could not have a similar reaction to the same piece of music was at times acute.)
So what are the components of music that create emotional responses? Is there any universality when it comes to music and the emotional responses we have to it? These are some of the questions The Nerve's guests discuss today. They include film composer Howard Shore (pictured here), probably best known for his scores for Lord Of The Rings and Silence Of The Lambs, though he also did the music for the recent opera based on David Cronenberg's The Fly, and Laura-Lee Balkwill from the Music Cognition Lab at Queen's University.
You can hear The Nerve on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT on Radio 2, with a repeat on Sunday on Radio 1 at 8 p.m., 9AT, 9:30 NT).
On what would have been Glenn Gould's 76th birthday I posted his amazing So You Want To Write A Fugue, in both English and Japanese. Along the way other finds of a fugue-alish nature cropped up, and I've just been waiting for the perfect opportunity to share them.
Since Thanksgiving weekend is traditionally celebrated with fugues (research indicates that the tradition began circa 2008), here are three fugues, of a kind, for your viewing pleasure.
First a little lesson on how to write a fugue, based on a melody which will certainly be recognizable to those familiar with the oeuvre of B. Spears:
Oops, I Did It Again: The Fugue
(Note: If you just want to hear the fugue itself, advance to 3:29)
Theme From Dragnet: The Fugue
(Wish they'd played it on 'real' instruments, but to each their own fugue.)
Can Do! Fugue For Tinhorns:
(What are the odds that a fugue on this subject could be so charming?)
(Note: to see previous editions of the weekly Radio 2 Blog Video Fest just click on that link and scroll down.)
'Tis the Friday before Thanksgiving, and just a reminder that if you want to enter the Ron Sexsmith Contest today is your last chance. The draw itself will be live on Radio 2 Morning (6 a.m.-10 a.m.) on Tuesday October 14th, the day after the long weekend. (Also known as the day we go to the polls, but that's the stuff of another blog. Actually many other blogs, politics being what they are.)
As for the music on your radio today -- here's what's coming up:
"Music for humanity" sounds like it could be a slogan in some Utopian campaign. And it seems to be a concept that's been gaining momentum -- the idea that music can be used to increase understanding between diverse groups of people. Whether or not this is actually true is probably impossible to quantify. But certainly it's something people have been gravitating towards.
Why mention it right now, today? Well, tomorrow would have been Daniel Pearl's 45th birthday, Daniel Pearl being the reporter who was murdered "at the hands of extremists" as it is frequently phrased, in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002.
Following his death his friends and family formed a foundation in his name, their mission to promote cross-cultural understanding in part through music. Music, because Pearl himself was a musician as well as a journalist -- he was a classically trained violinist who also played mandolin.
An "awareness raising" event known as Daniel Pearl World Music Days has existed ever since. It takes place for a month, and last year involved 537 concerts in 42 countries.
Thelonious Sphere Monk was one of those musicians who added something to the music vocabulary that is so distinctive it defies our tendency to describe what music is in terms of something else. No so-and-so-meets so-and-so. Sure, you can hear some of the music he came up with in his playing -- notably the early stride pianists, but ultimately he was as original as original gets. The Glenn Gould of jazz, you might say.
And although he was one of the "architects" of bebop, it's his compositions that stay with us -- instantly recognizable, angular, twisty and lovely. Best known of course is Round Midnight, courtesy of the many covers of it, and because of the movie of that name.
"Experimental composer Anthony Braxton, Andy Summers of The Police, the progressive chamber ensemble Kronos Quartet and a synthesizer duo called Thelonious Moog: They've all recorded entire albums' worth of Monk's music. One tribute project brought out Peter Frampton, Dr. John and John Zorn on the same disc."
Tomorrow on Tonic (6 p.m.) Katie will be featuring some music by Monk in honour of what would have been his 91st birthday -- his legacy always present in jazz radio.
His legacy also lives on through The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, a nonprofit education organization founded in the mid 1980s by his descendants, along with the actor and opera singer Maria Fisher. (She believed that jazz was America's classical music.) It offers free jazz education and sponsors the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competitions.
But now to some music:
These days there are also many videos of Monk playing -- difficult to choose one for the Radio 2 Blog, but the above is short and sweet (at least in one sense of that word). Forgive the chopped ending, the previous few minutes are worth it! And again, tune in Friday to Tonic (6 p.m.) for more Monk.
The inventive singer and banjo player Abigail Washburn heads up The Sparrow Quartet, an all-star musical lineup (Béla Fleck plays banjo in the group) that brings together North American folk and roots music and Chinese traditional tunes. You can hear this concert Thursday night on Canada Live (8 p.m.).
Some beautiful music, though their rendition of His Eye Is On The Sparrow has ruffled some feathers (that really wasn't intended to be a pun, honest, it just slipped out). Still, it opens the concert and sets the tone for the imaginative approach of the group.
Also on the programme, the very fine Carolina Chocolate Drops, a trio made up of a classical violinist, a Celtic musician and a multi-instrumentalist -- who first bonded at an event called the Black Banjo Gathering, held in 2005.
And one more note before getting to the rest of the day's programme highlights -- if you missed the Martha Wainwright interview on Drive yesterday you can listen to it right here, just click on play:
The peripatetic Peter Cook, a.k.a. the R2 Tech Doctor has been doing extremely techie things at an extremely techie gathering somewhere on the west coast. Naturally that has not stopped him from posting this week's Tech Q's column -- probably he knows how to do this from outer space, if he so wishes.
But the column regards an earthly concern some of us have -- with the hundreds of concerts online at Concerts On Demand, how to best filter and find the ones you want to listen to?
(Note: To see all of the Tech Qs? columns, here's our own little filter -- just click on Tech Qs?)
And now, over to you, Doctor Peter.
"Last week we looked at the filtering tools in the Concert Finder at Concerts on Demand. This week we'll look at a couple more tricks for finding the perfect concert to suit your mood.
You can sort information in the Concert Finder by any of the columns: ARTIST, EVENT, GENRE, LOCATION and DATE. The Date field indicates the date the concert was posted. By default the Concert Finder will show you the most recently posted concerts at the top of the list.
If you want to see the oldest concerts at Concerts on Demand click on the word "DATE" at the top of the column of dates. It will toggle the sort state to put the oldest concerts at the top of the list.
The other sort columns become more useful when you combine them with the filters we learned about last week. Let's say you wanted to find all the jazz concerts from Edmonton. Select "Jazz" from the genres filter and then click on "LOCATION" at the top of the column with place names. Now the Concert Finder displays only jazz concerts sorted by location. If you look down the list a bit and you'll see that all of the jazz concerts from Edmonton are grouped together.
Martha Wainwright, she of the wonderfully named I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too, is on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) today, to talk a little music, and play a little music.
If you are vague as to why there is so much to-do about Ms. Wainwright -- here are just a few of the reasons.
1. She's what writers of a purple prose style like to call music "royalty," as she is the daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle. And Rufus' sister as well. (Of whom she told The Observer"when we were growing up we needed to be separated all the time. He tortured me because I was his younger sister." Well of course he did. Fortunately they both grew up and got over it -- she was even his back-up singer for a while before her own career took off.)
2. She really does have a voice. Or, as The Independent puts it "with her strong, supple, deep voice, she is inviting, yet ferally fierce." "Ferally!" Goodness.
Martha Wainwright is on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) today. I know she's famous but I've got feelings too, and mine are agitated by the steady parade of excellent musicians coming through the Drive studio -- earlier this week Beck, now Wainwright! She's going to play a few songs and talk with Rich about inspiration, writing, and meeting Annie Lennox.
In the next couple of months Rich's guests include Daniel Lanois, Tanya Tagaq and many others...will definitely keep you posted. You may also wish to subscribe to the Radio 2 Newsletter via the CBC membership centre, wherein these matters are sometimes released a little earlier than on the website.
But today it is Ms. Wainwright in the second hour of Drive.
Someone once told me that in a job interview the employer makes their decision -- hire or not -- within something like the first 90 seconds. I don't know if that's actually true, but first impressions do seem to be given a lot of weight in our culture -- musically as much as anywhere else. But not always in the way we expect.
"Shuffling on stage with her head bowed, her guitar hung haphazardly around her neck like a baby chimp, spilling liquid from a cup in one hand and carrying a plastic bottle of water in the other, Dement looked like she was carrying huge bags of groceries to her front door rather than getting ready to play before a packed house at one of the west coast's premiere jazz clubs."
What happens at Stompin' Tom Connors' house? I imagine music, and maybe talk of potatoes and hockey, but I could just be turning to stereotypes. Anyway, CBC Radio 2 producer Kelly Cutrara has some inkling since she recently spent an afternoon at Stompin' Tom's place listening to songs from his new album, The Ballad Of Stompin' Tom. (It comes out on October 28th and is apparently somewhat autobiographical. Well I should hope so, with a name like that.)
So today on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) Kelly and Rich play some music from the upcoming, yet-to be-released Stompin' Tom recording. Speaking of Stompin' Tom, and of potatoes (is there anyone who says "potato" quite the way he does?) here's a little round up of potato songs. What, you didn't know it was a genre? It is now.
-2008 is International Year Of The Potato. I didn't know that either, until this morning. Anyway, an old, very moving potato song (don't laugh, it is) is the Irish song, The Praties They Grow Small -- just listen to Carolyn Hester's version.
-Now, for something completely different. Yes, it's one of those "drop the needle" non-video videos, but it's worth it for the music -- a 1939 repressing of the original: Potato Head Blues.
-Somewhat limited, musically speaking, but interesting potato P.O.V.: The Potato Song
And just to cap things off, here's Mr. S.T. Connors himself with, what else, Bud The Spud.
What happens when six banjo players get together in Winnipeg? Sounds like there should be some major punch-line coming up, possibly of an uncomplimentary nature (in the long-standing tradition of banjo jokes). But in this instance it's a legitimate music query, and you can hear the legitimate musical response Tuesday night on Canada Live (8 p.m.)
The banjo gathering in question took place at Winnipeg's West End Cultural Centre, and featured old time, clawhammer and modern styles of banjo playing performed in front of an appreciative banjo-centric audience. The first part of the evening focused on the musicians playing on each other's songs; the second half was mostly given over to solo spots. Among the banjoists, recent Juno award winner Jayme Stone.
Well, Ralph Stanley endorses Barack Obama. Yes, legendary, 81-year-old bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley (that's him on the left with the banjo) of O Brother Where Art Thou? fame. He sang Oh Death (soundtrack recording is a better performance than the one this link will take you to, but it will serve as a reminder); the NYTimes called it "a masterpiece of primitive mountain gospel." I called it beautiful.
Seemingly its singer would be an unlikely conduit for the political ad linked to at the top of this post though. He's one of a handful of elders from the early era of bluegrass music still around -- and the ad is playing on radio in Southwest Virginia -- some are calling it the best ad of the campaign to date.
Beck is on tour, and that tour brought him to Toronto on the weekend. Yesterday, before his concert, Rich and Mich(elle), Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) host and producer, respectively, went backstage and recorded an interview with him. You can hear it today in the third hour of the programme.
Beck is of course the guy who had an early (and bilingual) hit with the rap/song Loser back in 1992, and then went on to record the magnificent Odelay, which had music critics frothing. Real people liked it too.
While you wait to hear Rich's interview with Beck, here's a quick Blog's Eye View of some recent Beck moments to mull over:
re: Beck in recent performance:
"It's not like there's a radio station around here that plays his kind of music. Heck, Beck's a genre unto himself, a swampy blues swilling, hip-hop swaggering, retro-loving, edgy rock tinkering kind of a guy. He's made eight major label albums over the past 14 years and not a one of them sounds alike." -Pullen My Blog
Beck is on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) today. Probably, for Beck fans, I could just stop writing there, the man being so frequently brilliant and all. And word has it that of all the shows in all the world (or at least in Canada) it was Rich's Drive that he wanted to be on.
There will be more on Beck a little later this morning on the Radio 2 Blog, prior to his appearance on Drive, but if you're not familiar with his music, you may want to go straight out and get his seminal Odelay, or maybe just visit his myspace site for a preview of much more recent work.
And here's the rest of what the broadcast day holds in store:
Are you a "thrill seeker?" Then you must gravitate towards music videos. A "self-medicator?" Then you probably have a few Smiths recordings in your collection, or maybe Portishead. And naturally you're neurotic to boot. Are you an introvert? Then you must like music with the symmetry of, say, Bach fugues.
If just about now you are forming a question with the phrase "off her rocker" in it, let me assure you these are not my theories. But they are theories about taste and personality which I have heard about in passing so many times recently I finally decided to go to the source. It's an article in Psychology Today called Accounting For Taste, subtitled "our choices in books, movies, music and art go to the core of who we are." And the sub-subtitle is "what your tastes reveal about you."
It makes for interesting reading, although I'm not sure if I buy the link between personality type and what kinds of music you listen to. The piece cites John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats as an example of the kind of person who is "highly open," and the conclusion is that his insatiable appetite for a wide range of music is as a result. But what is a "highly open" person? What if I'm a thrill seeking introvert (I'm sure it's possible) and I too "spend hours in the garage rooting through jazz records?" (With due respect for Mr. Darnielle, as rooting through jazz records is a fine way to spend time.)
But my favourite part of the article comes under the heading "there is no gene for jazz." Even though a study of 3,000 twins "revealed that whether we like jazz or not is partially heritable." Say what? Is it not possible that parents of said twins played Coltrane during bath time or something?
Borrowing from one of the eternally youthful movies, The Wizard Of Oz, today's edition of In The Key Of Charles (Sunday 10:00 a.m., 10:30 NT) is dedicated to "the Young In Heart." Also to those who are still young -- in conjunction with Montreal Matters 2008, (a CBC programming endeavor centered around the theme of youth). As part of that celebration Monsieur Charles launches the "YouthTube" challenge today on the show.
Want to enter? It's easy! (Sorry, that was a real infomercial moment, but it really is easy.) Just email In The Key Of Charles with a link to a video that relates to youth. It could be your youth, perhaps the youth belonging to a total stranger, or just youths, en masse. And tell Gregory what the music and the video mean to you -- he'll be posting responses on In The Blog Of Charles next week.
Here's my answer to the challenge, and my reason for choosing it is because like many, I have "been faithful to it in return." (And also because I am Young In Heart, when not Cranky In Person.)
Did you see in the credits at the end that "the Wizard is Frank Morgan?" Funny, I always thought it was the other way around...
One of my colleagues at Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT) sent me an email that began like this:
"A mezzo with the voice of an angel. Angelic voices adorn a massive symphony. And a cherubic young pianist whose playing is heavenly."
Lovely. And an indication of a rather celestial musical experience that awaits you, when prize-winning mezzo soprano Susan Platts is heard in recital from the Vancouver International Song Institute, accompanied by Rena Sharon in songs of Schumann, Argento, Mahler and more.
Ms. Platts is also featured in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's season opening concert, joining music director Peter Oundjian, the women of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and the Toronto Children's Chorus to perform Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 In D Minor.
And from the Vancouver Chopin Society - 23 year old Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz, playing Debussy, Szymanowski and Chopin. At the tender age of 20 Blechacz won five first prizes at the Chopin Piano Competition, and one of the judges, distinguished Irish pianist John O'Conor, said that Blechacz is "one of the greatest artists" he's ever heard. Hear for yourself on SAIC this Sunday afternoon.
And here are rest of the broadcast day highlights:
Today on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT) Katherine brings listeners up to date on what's making classical music news, and one of those stories is that the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra is joining Isabel Bayrakdarian on her 6 city tour stateside, which began on Oct. 4th, and winds up later this month in NYC -- where they will play Carnegie Hall.
(In a related note -- Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra is heading to an even more southerly direction, with a performance in Sinaloa, Mexico at La Feria de las Artes Sinaloa, Mexico's international multi-disciplinary performing arts festival.)
But also making news is a tour that isn't really about performing music. This week Canadian musicians Feist and Martha Wainwright (pictured here) joined other performers (including Laurie Anderson and KT Tunstall) and boarded a boat heading to Greenland -- as part of a British project called Cape Farewell -- the trip is meant to inspire works about climate change, to create a "cultural response."
Well, at least there was a "back again," right? Today on SATO you can hear Monteverdi's version of the Greek legend of Orfeo, who followed his beloved wife Euridice to hades, where he appealed to the Gods for their safe return.
Some 400 years after its first production, the Montreal Baroque Festival decided to go beyond the score as published in 1609, and recreate the original ending - a scene in which a gang of vulgar drunks mob and lynch a demi-god. Matthias Maute has composed music to the text of the original libretto, thus making THIS Orfeo a world premiere.
Claudio Monteverdi’s masterpiece, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio, was first performed at the ducal palace of Mantua on Feb 24, 1607. According to writer Roland de Candé it is "an authentic musical drama, the oldest real opera, the first in which balance of form, unity of text and music, musical and dramatic interest, and humanity of characters still can move people in our time."
The production stars Charles Daniels as Orfeo, and Samantha Louise-Jean as Euridice. For more details and the ever-useful plot synopsis please keep reading.
The broadcast day begins, logically enough, with Radio 2 Morning, Weekend Edition (Saturday 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. 6:30 NT; Sunday 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. 6:30 NT), hosted by Molly Johnson. (Who, by the way, I noticed is playing Massey Hall on October 25th, for those in T.O. or planning to visit.)
But this morning she'll be in the radio studio, spinning music about raccoons (not Rocky. R.) from Canadian band Betty And The Bobs, and non-raccoon related music from the man sometimes known as "the Tiger Woods of the ukulele," James Hill from Langley, B.C. (Sadly no commensurate endorsements though.) In the third hour of the show, Molly features the great Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer, and in the final hour, Jesse Cook featuring Melissa McLelland, collaborating on a Bob Dylan song.
As to the rest of the broadcast day, please keep reading:
Today the weekly Radio 2 Blog Video Fest, held every Friday, devotes itself to some "how to" music videos. No, not how to play the guitar solo on Hotel California, or how to play Coldplay's Clocks on piano, although these are certainly things you can also learn to do at the Tube of You.
Instead we present professional "how to" videos. Admittedly the first one is really only an introduction to the "how to" aspect of playing a Casio, but I think it sets the tone of today's video festival quite nicely. And since the videos provide the "how," I provide the "why."
Why Play The Casio? Because "It's A Band In A Box":
Why Play Digeridoo? Because When Else Do You Get To Do This With Your Lips?:
(If impatient, start at :30. And wait for the water at 1:22 --it's worth it!)
Why Play The Cowbell? Because "It Has Many Intricacies":
A few years back when TV shows started popping up with titles like "My Music," and the concept of creating one's own playlists became as ubiquitous as the reality of having an MP3 player upon which to listen to them, the trend towards music as a marker of who you are was underscored as never before.
Not that this was revolutionary -- people who have a strong attachment to music have always identified themselves by their musical choices. You might view this as cultural, political, a marker of economic status and education, regardless there's no denying the highly charged emotional connection people have to specific music -- and how they see that as a reflection of who they are.
Guests include David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet, throat singer Tagaq, tabla master Zakir Hussain and Bruce Cockburn (pictured here) among others -- a really interesting group of people to talk about this subject.
You can hear The Nerve on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT on Radio 2, with a repeat on Sunday Sept. 28 on Radio 1 at 8 p.m., 9AT, 9:30 NT).
This afternoon, the Radio 2 debut of Ron MacLean on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.). Photographic evidence is provided on the right, and for more details please see Live On Drive: Ron MacLean.
The nutshell version is that Ron plays some of his favourite Canadian music on the show -- and he and Rich talk music and hockey and the connection between the two. Yes, there is one.
Also, a quick alert to a show you may wish to tune into on the weekend -- the fifth episode of The Nerve, which focuses on the fascinating subject of how music is intertwined with a sense of identity. You can hear that on Inside The Music Saturday Edition(12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT), and for more on The Nerve stay tuned to The Blog. For now, here are the rest of the day's broadcast highlights:
The Ron Sexsmith contest (if you win, Ron comes to your house to play a concert for you and your nearest and dearest) has raised the whole notion of the house concert on the R2 blog recently. In an odd bit of synchronicity something came across the transom the other day about the growth of house concerts in Canada's music community.
For a long time folk music has supported itself in part through house concerts -- usually hosted by a fan for a small number of people. This is not a "hootenanny" where you get out your spoons, dusty harmonicas and, gulp, autoharps (although the musician "starring" may encourage this if he/she wishes). No, the house concert is a way for musicians to perform an intimate concert. And in some cases playing house concerts is a necessary economic reality, when venues for the music are far and few between.
But in the past few years musicians have been doing house concert "tours." One of the conduits for this has been Mitch Podolak's Home Routes. (Podolak being the founder of the Winnipeg and Vancouver Folk Festivals and Winnipeg’s West End Cultural Centre.). Home Routes puts musicians in touch with home owners who want to provide their homes for income-generating performances. Income generating for the performers, that is, the homeowner doesn't make a cent, but they do reap the benefit of the music, and of "community building."
Yes, that Ron MacLean. And no, he won't be picking up a guitar to play when he appears on Radio 2 Drive (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) tomorrow, Friday, nor will he make an interference call, as he is in the accompanying picture. (From a stint officiating the second period of the exhibition NHL hockey game in Pittsburgh between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres in 2006. That's for you hockey geeks reading this.)
Nope, Ron is Friday's "Drive Live" to talk about hockey....AND music. Yes, Ron is a die-hard Canadian music fan. And as well as talking about music (and hockey) Ron will also play D.J., picking some of the tunes he's really into these days.
Ron will also chat a bit about the hockey song contest, which is ramping up. He'll be hosting the Hockey Night In Canada Anthem Challenge this Saturday on CBC TV at 9 p.m. eastern, where'er you are. That's when the five semifinalists will be introduced with a recording of their respective entries -- produced by the legendary Bob Rock, no less -- and performed by full orchestra.
Currently three of the semi-finalists have been announced -- if you click on that last link you can hear their submissions. Stirring stuff. (Almost enough to make me watch hockey even! And it's difficult not to be charmed by thirteen-year-old Robert Fraser Burke, playing his theme at the piano.)
As to who Ron MacLean is listening to these days, all will be revealed on Drive tomorrow. We do know that in 2005 he told MacLeans that he was listening to Kathleen Edwards, Matt Mays and Jim Bryson. As well as the fact that he's never had a playoff beard. (Editorial aside: good call, Mr. MacLean.)
Canadian composer Claude Vivier's work explored a wide range of themes, from the expanse of the cosmos to personal mysticism and the ritual of the Catholic mass. If this intrigues you, tune in tonight, Thursday, to The Signal (10 p.m.) when host Laurie Brown presents Vivier's Et Je Reverrai Cette Ville Etrange, inspired by instruments collected by a percussionist friend in Bali, and by Vivier's own trip to Bali in the seventies.
It's one of two works that relate to memory and journey that Laurie will feature -- the other, presented by the Groundswell Ensemble of Winnipeg, is James Harley'sCuimhneachan Urramach, in memory of Harley's grandfather, who emigrated to Canada from Scotland.
But before either Bali or Scotland figure in the listening day, here's what else you can hear:
Today Doctor Peter diagnoses the best way to find concerts at Concerts On Demand. And in a related note -- fans of Lang Lang will want to find this concert pronto. It was recorded during his week long residency in T.O. (see Lang Lang Adopts Toronto ) by CBC Radio 2, and is now available as a "CoD" -- just click on Lang Lang In Recital.
Described in the Globe as "extravagantly gifted and even more extravagantly uninhibited," you'll hear Lang Lang performing music by Schubert, Bartok, Debussy and Chopin.
And now, over to the good Doctor:
" If you go to Concerts on Demand you'll see the 'Concert Finder' at the top of the list of concerts. It offers you a couple of tools to help you to find what you are looking for - or perhaps discover new treasures.
The first is the 'Genres' filter. You can use this to filter the results to show only concerts from a particular genre. Click on 'All Genres' (the default) and a drop down menu appears showing various genres we use to categorize our concerts.
Some genres are hierarchical. For instance, 'Classical' will find every concert with 'classical' music whether it be vocal, chamber, recital, orchestral, etc. If you are in the mood for orchestral music, choosing 'Classical Orchestral' will show you only this subset of classical concerts.
The second tool is the 'Filter by Keyword' feature. What exactly is being filtered? Basically you are searching for text which appears in one of two fields: the 'Artist' field and the 'Event' field.
Brahms enthusiasts take note -- starting today, CBC Radio 2 celebrates the music of Johannes Brahms with a series of special broadcasts featuring one of Canada's finest orchestras, the National Arts Centre Orchestra.
The festival draws from NACO's Brahms/Mozart festival, which began in September, and ends tomorrow. Each concert will feature one of Brahms' four monumental symphonies. Pinchas Zukerman, NACO's music director, conducts Symphonies 1, 3 and 4.
And Zubin Mehta, one of the world's most in-demand conductors, will lead Brahms' Symphony No. 2 and will conduct Brahm's Violin Concerto with Pinchas Zukerman as soloist.
The festival has been "a hit at the box office," as they say. Well, as the Ottawa Citizen says. They also say that the performance of Symphony No. 1, which you can hear today on Tempo (10 a.m. - 3 p.m.), was "uncommonly lucid and engaging."
And this is how you can hear music from the festival on your radio:
Happy first day of October. May the leaves where you live be crimson; may your pumpkins become nice pies.
As for the music on Radio 2 this Oct. 1 -- one highlight is a concert this evening on Canada Live (8 p.m.) featuring the Malian musician Habib Koite, recorded in Montreal where he has a huge fan base who always welcome him with a great deal of enthusiasm. As well as being a good guitarist he has a lovely voice -- here's proof if you can't wait until tonight to find out.
Also on the broadcast, the A Propos' Songwriters Session featuring Daniel Bélanger, Marie-Pierre Fournier, Marc Déry and Ariane Moffatt -- part of the celebration of Quebec City's 400th anniversary.
Bruce Cockburn is the featured artist in part three of Revolutions Per Minute: Indispensable Canadian Albums, which you can hear this weekend -- broadcast details at end of post.
Vampires, werewolves and ghosts, oh my! Yes, it's that day, the one associated with molasses candies wrapped in orange and black paper that now seem impossible to find. Oh, and also associated with scary things, and bones. 
...through iTunes. That's the rest of today's topic, but those long subject headings start looking funny on the page. But it is indeed the subject for this week's 
There are few things that thrill the way finding hidden musical treasure does. Particularly when it is from the beginning of the very history of recordings, as is the case with the discovery of some cylinder recordings that represent the "largest cache of classical music from the dawn of the recorded age known to exist: hundreds of cylinders incised on an Edison phonograph from the 1890s by a music-loving businessman, Julius H. Block."
If you're feeling that low, you've got the blues. But today on Farrago With Jurgen Gothe (Sunday 5:00 p.m. 5:30 NT) the blues Jurgen explores are of a slightly different order. Here's the explanation: 
Norman Lebrecht thinks 
The other day, after a conversation about Beethoven going deaf, talk turned to 
"Chihuahua Themed Embroidery." "Life In Plastic, It's Fantastic." "You Say Professional Like It's A Bad Thing."
Sam Joseph Melville was an infamous inmate at Attica prison, a conspirator and bomb setter key to instigating the 1971 riots in that prison, riots in which he lost his life. One of his journal entries was used by the composer 
At the end of last week I noted the passing of Canadian jazz guitarist 
Ideas about what composition is and how and where it should happen evolve and change -- witness CBC/Radio Canada's new competition, 
Sometimes music stories emerge thematically. Young women pop singers have "issues" with addictive substances. Oboe players are obsessed with reeds. This past week, a trickle of stories connected to kids and music. For example:
Political intrigue! Treachery! Personal entanglements where they had ought not to be! 
Five composers, somewhere in the middle of the Canadian Rockies. Each one is burning the midnight oil, furiously writing music for one appointed ensemble. Who will be the first to snap their pencil and pack their bags? Sent home, their manuscript paper trailing behind them?
"Music for humanity" sounds like it could be a slogan in some Utopian campaign. And it seems to be a concept that's been gaining momentum -- the idea that music can be used to increase understanding between diverse groups of people. Whether or not this is actually true is probably impossible to quantify. But certainly it's something people have been gravitating towards. 
Someone once told me that in a job interview the employer makes their decision -- hire or not -- within something like the first 90 seconds. I don't know if that's actually true, but first impressions do seem to be given a lot of weight in our culture -- musically as much as anywhere else. But not always in the way we expect.
Well, 
Are you a "thrill seeker?" Then you must gravitate towards music videos. A "self-medicator?" Then you probably have a few Smiths recordings in your collection, or maybe Portishead. And naturally you're neurotic to boot. Are you an introvert? Then you must like music with the symmetry of, say, Bach fugues.
Today on In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m., 5:30 NT) Katherine brings listeners up to date on what's making classical music news, and one of those stories is that the 
The 
Yes, that 
Brahms enthusiasts take note -- starting today, CBC Radio 2 celebrates the music of Johannes Brahms with a series of special broadcasts featuring one of Canada's finest orchestras, the 
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