NOTE: This page is no longer being updated, but is available for reference purposes. To see the new Radio 2 blog program highlights, visit the Radio 2 home page.
On Monday you'll begin hearing some changes to the Radio 2 schedule, and also to the Radio 2 website. On air you'll hear a new show hosted by Mr. Tom Allen each weekday at 2 p.m., called Shift. And there are a number of tweaks to when shows start and end (as you'll see if you click through that last link).
But the website is also having a little "refresh" (which makes me picture a computer surrounded by spa technicians -- massaging, maybe applying a little nail polish). The refreshed site will be "live" at some point Monday. But sometimes changes behind the scenes on websites aren't instantaneous, (all that buffing and polishing), so if there is any bumpiness as the transition happens, your patience is appreciated!
Still the best selling jazz album of all time, and still shiver-inducing -- that's Kind Of Blue, recorded in 1959 by an incredible group of musicians assembled by Miles Davis. Its sound, based on modes rather than loads of chord changes, and the mood that created, (moody! and exquisite) connected in a way that few single recordings do.
It has stood the test of time too -- August 2009 marks its 50th year. Noting that anniversary, Saturday on Inside The Music -- a documentary about the making of Kind Of Blue. Interviews include Herbie Hancock, David Amram, and the only extant member of the original group, drummer Jimmy Cobb. (Who also recently reminisced about the experience before a date at the Calgary Jazz fest).
Cobb is eighty now, and leading a band named after one of the Kind Of Blue tunes, the So What Band, which brings me to the concert: Canada Live is recording the So What Band performing the music of Kind Of Blue, and broadcasts the concert on July 13th.
SATO presents Alban Berg’s decadent swan song, today: Lulu, which was nearing completion at the time of his death in 1935.
The story was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box, 1904), and tells of Lulu's steady decline from unfaithful wife to mistress to murderess to fugitive and prostitute. Yet she exudes a particular kind of attraction - Sir Andrew Davis, music director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, was so smitten by the character and the score that he named his dog Lulu!
Paolo Pietropaolo is guest host for today's performance, which is a production from the Lyric Opera of Chicago and WFMT in Chicago.
For more, much more, about the opera and today's production, please continue reading:
Last night traveling through my city there was a low level buzz: "Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson." Everyone was talking about the news. Michael Jackson dying at 50 has an impact like...well, that's still to be revealed. But today the shock waves and analysis sure seem in the Elvis/Lennon category of response.
For better or for worse, news about his death has bumped stories like Iran off the front page of publications like the Huffington Post -- Jackson was a strange and fascinating and without question significant figure in popular culture, music, and dance. (Maybe especially dance...)
How do you feel about the current wave of intensity about Jackson's premature passing? And of course, about his music...
When people talk about "the great American songbook" you probably think of someone crooning something like It Had To Be You. Well, call me irresponsible, but I think that jazz pianist John Stetch has stretched the boundaries of what's considered part of that canon. His latest recording is called TV Trio, and on it he does things with The Waltons theme you'd never dreamed possible.
Not just the Waltons theme, of course, but a whole bunch of TV themes mostly from the 70s and 80s -- Six Million Dollar Man, Love Boat, The Price is Right, Rocky and Bullwinkle, All My Children, Dallas, and more.
It's jazz, it's fun, and you can hear a live performance featuring this music tonight on Canada Live.
Probably most of us have woken from a dream wishing we could somehow capture the sensation in waking life. The startling and incongruous things that happen: a friend from childhood shows up with a goldfish that turns into your boss. Stuff like that.
R. Murray Schafer decided not just to lie in bed thinking about it, but to do it. In 26 days he wrote a composition that reveals how dreams shift and mutate in such odd and unexpected ways.
Schafer says the piece, called Dream-E-Scape, makes us "witness one image, now another -- shocking, alluring, repellent, voluptuous, risible -- totally without consistency or order."
The premiere of Dream-E-Scape is broadcast tonight on The Signal. It was commissioned in honour of Schafer's 75th birthday, and was part of a four day Schafer-fest put on by the National Arts Centre.
When the True North label signed Catherine MacLellan you couldn't be surprised. True North (the "Bruce Cockburn label") is very discriminating, and MacLellan is a singer-songwriter who is standout. And yes, her father was the great songwriter Gene MacLellan, of Snowbird and Put Your Hand In The Hand fame, who left this earth too soon. But his daughter is adding to his legacy.
"Roots music authority" No Depression posted a comparison of her True North recording, Water In The Ground, with Bob Dylan's latest. A really interesting review, (originally from Restless And Real) concluding by saying: "Catherine Maclellan may just have the key for what ails us. Highly recommended for the young at heart and pure of spirit."
Tonight Canada Live broadcasts a concert MacLellan did at The Harbourfront Theatre in her hometown, Summerside PEI.
Is a composition only a composition if it's written down? Is it a composition if an improvisation creates certain musical elements revisited in subsequent performances? These are some of the questions the Instant Composers' Pool Orchestra inevitably provoke. They're based around pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink, and tonight you can hear them on The Signal, recorded at the Guelph Jazz Festival.
In a way it's a question jazz has asked since it began. Think of Ellington, he wrote arrangements borrowing from his musicians favourite improvised licks. He also wrote "charts," as those jazz cats say, that were designed to feature the improvising strengths of his soloists.
Once upon a time the day was celebrated with a bonfire and cannon shots, but on Radio 2 Fête Nationale Du Quebéc celebrations are strictly musical. (Wise, cannon shots tend to distort.) And this year Canada Live's Fête Nationale broadcast is proof of how multicultural music making in Quebec can be.
Three concerts, and dozens of cultural influences -- but all of it rooted in Quebec musical culture: First, the Brazilian-born Bia, now a resident of Montreal. (After living in Chile, Peru, Portugal and France.) You've probably heard her on Radio 2 Morning or Tonic -- her music seems to mix effortlessly with jazz, singer songwriter, pop. And her singing is pretty irresistible, whatever language she chooses.
Randy Jackson apparently once said slap bass was the ketchup of the bass playing world. (Take that, Seinfeld theme.) Tonight on The Signal, it's more like the Dijon of the bass playing world, when Laurie features what The Signal Team calls "otherworldly double bass dexterity."
Expect everything from "surreal jazz sounds" to "high-speed minimalism." Otherworldly dexterous players featured tonight include:
Avishai Cohen, who, as you can see, is so dextrous he doesn't necessarily require an actual instrument. (The bass of the mind.) But seriously, that's just his latest album cover -- what Cohen specializes in begins with jazz and takes you many places, some with bass and voice -- singing in Hebrew, English, Spanish and Ladino.
The Fugitives probably didn't mind when the director of a festival in the UK said their work was "right up there with Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey." True they play more instruments than Al and Ken -- banjo, guitar, percussion and accordion -- but spoken word is their bag, to put in jazz parlance. (See end of last post.)
Tonight, hear The Fugitives in concert on Canada Live, recorded at the ColdSnap Festival in Prince George. Meanwhile, have a look at this:
When New York Times jazz writer Ben Ratliff asked "what do you think is the best jazz festival" one reader said:
"What about the Montreal Jazz Festival in July? For my money, free and paid concerts, variety, stars, unknowns, food, atmosphere, the best in the world."
That's just to further tantalize you -- since tonight on Tonic Katie Malloch announces the winners of the Tonic Montreal Jazz Festival Contest. If you entered, tune in this evening to see if you won. If you didn't, lots of good music on the show anyway, of course, including: John Pizzarelli, Nina Simone, Diana Krall, Sophie Milman, Boz Scaggs, Blossom Dearie, Scott Hamilton, Sonny Stitt, and Horace Silver.
There are a bunch of new Concerts On Demand posted, but before we get to the list, the prize for best performer name goes to...Friendly Rich And The Lollipop People! You probably guessed that's Friendly R. in the photo.( Not Bruce Cockburn or Angela Hewitt or any of the other musicians recorded by Radio 2 with new CoDs.)
Friendly Rich et al perform what's been described as "experimental cabaret music," and you know, that's pretty much exactly what it is. Emphasis on experimental. (So if you were thinking "music for kids," nope. That said, Friendly Rich, aka Richard Marsalla, is behind a project to get kids involved with music, called Bang The Drum -- Loudly!)
Here's where you can hear the Friendly Rich concert. And here's where you can hear the rest of the recent additions to CoD:
First, the prizes. Today is your last chance to enter to win a trip to the Montreal Jazz Festival, courtesy of Tonic. Weekend Tonic host Tim Tamashiro has the final question of the contest -- all you do is listen for it this evening, answer correctly, and enter the draw. Good luck!
And now to the laureates. First it's the Laureates of the 2008 Montreal Symphony Orchestra/Standard Life Competition, featured on Sunday Afternoon In Concert. The broadcast includes clarinetist Hubert Tanguay-Labrosse with music by Carl Maria von Weber, and trombonist Keith Dyrda performing Henri Tomasi's Concerto For Trombone. (Plus Marc Wigglesworth leads the MSO in Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2 In E Minor, Op. 27.)
But there's another kind of laureate on the show too -- American poet Rita Dove.
Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony was first performed in 1943, with Vaughan Williams conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Proms. No wonder Peter & The Symphony host Eric Friesen describes the work as "an affirmation of everything that was England." In other words, the music connects to everything that seemed at risk at the height of World War 2.
Today, Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Peter Oundjian goes inside the 5th, taking us back to that summer, after the blitz, but before the outcome of the war was at all a certainty.
That's one way of describing Strauss's opera Salome ("reality twisted to extract maximum emotional effect"). Jonathan Darlington, Music Director of Vancouver Opera put it that way -- talking about his favourite Strauss opera, broadcast today on SATO.
Another might be the Twitter synopsis of the plot: "Out of control teen uses stepdad to get back at would-be boyfriend, learns some confusing lessons about love." (For more fun, see Twitter Opera Plots.)
Today's production (from Vancouver Opera) features Russian soprano Mlada Khudoley as Salome, bass-baritone Greer Grimsley as John the Baptist, mezzo-soprano Judith Forst as Herodias, and New Brunswick-born tenor John Mac Master as Herod.
When Salome was first performed at the turn of the last century, Strauss's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's story of obsession, murder and manipulation had many opera goers aghast. Darlington says that's in part because it was "truly groundbreaking," belonging to the same camp of other provocative early 20th century works, like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. (That and "a fundamental distaste for the subject matter.") After its premiere in Dresden the opera was variously censored, banned and canceled at some of the world's best opera houses. But as we all know know, the Dance of the Seven Veils still shimmys to this day.
The other day, finally catching up with PVR'd episodes of Elvis Costello's TV show, Spectacle, I watched the interview that Elton John did with Diana Krall. She was at the piano, illustrating the conversation musically. (Sir Elton wisely kept his musical contributions to a minimum.) On Saturday's edition of Inside The Music Jian Ghomeshi does one better -- it's all about Diana.
And if ever you had the impression blonde/beautiful/crooner = lightweight, this interview will correct that assumption. She's smart, thoughtful, and funny. And a superb musician. So if you missed it the first time around, today you have a second chance to hear Jian Ghomeshi in conversation with Diana Krall on Radio 2.
Nothing like a little overstatement from time to time -- as the folks at the Cardiff Singer Of The World Prize know. (They could have called it "The Cardiff Singer Of The Western Hemisphere, This Calendar Year," but hey, "singer of the world" has a better ring to it.)
And this year's winner is very good. If not the singer of the world, she certainly is one of them:
Saturday on In Tune host Katherine Duncan will introduce you to the singer in the video, Singer of the World winner Ekaterina Shcherbachenko (which is easier to say than it looks). Some are already calling her "the next Renee Fleming."
Tuneinto InTune for this and other stories Katherine is following this weekend:
From blues to rock to throat singing, Canada Live features concerts recognizing National Aboriginal Day this weekend.
The first concert is tonight, Anishinabe rock & roll/blues guitarist Billy Joe Green. As a kid he was taken from his family and put in a Residential School. Last year he went back to that same school (that must have been intense) to perform in a concert called Nanaadawe'iti Nagamonan: Healing Songs. You can hear his performance towards the end of tonight's show.
Everyone seems to like winning. But what is a winner in music? How do you quantify what is the "best?" (Judging music makes determining the strike zone in baseball seem like a science.)
This week the long list for the Polaris Prize came out. Full disclosure: the Radio 2 Blogger is on the jury. And behind the scenes there is much gnashing over who made it onto the list, and why.
One thing that seems certain is that at the very least prestigious music prizes indicate a significant level of excellence, talent, artistry. The Jules Leger Prize, for example, an award for Canadian composers writing a new piece of chamber music. Past winners include James Rolf and Chris Paul Harman -- proof positive.
Tonight The Signal broadcasts a performance of the work which was awarded the Jules Leger prize this year -- Que Sommes-Nous by Analia Llugdar. She's originally from Argentina, and studied at the University de Montréal, ending up with a PhD in composition.So why did the jury pick her piece?
"It's the voice of a landscape, a geographic and emotional space that only seems to get wider and more mysterious the more we explore it." That's how David Newland, host of this year's (7th annual) tribute to Gordon Lightfoot at Hugh's Room describes Lightfoot's music. Nice, eh?
Not only does Lightfoot's landscape get "wider and more mysterious" as time goes by, it also resonates with newer artists and audiences -- which is why tributes to Lightfoot and remixes of his music continue. Tonight, no remixes, but definitely tributes, broadcast on Canada Live.
It's also available as a Concert On Demand (Gordon Lightfoot Tribute). Reviews there are uniformly glowing -- here's just one:
"This concert is awesome! I didn't think that anyone could do Lightfoot's songs like he can, but these performers make all the old songs new again!"
One answer: Charles Spearin'sHappiness Project. It's a series of interviews about happiness, set to music. Oh, but that doesn't do it justice, you have to hear it. And you can -- a live version too, recorded at the Music Gallery in Toronto, broadcast tonight on The Signal.
You know how sometimes when someone's talking you hear it as melody, or as a rhythmic phrase? Charles Spearin took that idea and ran a long way with it -- creating a highly imaginative musical interpretation of the melodic qualities in speech. He's not the first musician to fool around with the concept, but his project is one of the most musically accessible. Another part of what makes it so satisfying to listen to is the specific topic -- happiness.
The album has not gone unrecognized. Tons of press, and this week it made the long list for the Polaris Prize. (Exciting to have music that unusual alongside of singer songwriters, pop, hip hop and...Leonard Cohen.)
No, not the big house, we're talking the kind with a living room. Here's betting that Martha's House Concert rules would probably involve good things. (Hey, she lists frozen vodka as a "good thing," so it might be true.) Really though, we don't know. But kudos to Canadian folksinger Bob Bossin for "co-authoring" a house concert guide with Ms. Stewart: How To Put On The Perfect House Concert."
Kidding aside, the house concert continues to be popular, affordable and fun. Canada Live broadcasts them from time to time -- tonight you can hear one billed as Return Of The Bottle And The Truth. More whiskey than vodka though -- it's alt country from three guys who used to play regularly as The Bottle And The Truth, but have since gone on to have solo careers. (Ridley Bent, Cameron Latimer and Dustin Bentall.)
At 7:17 this morning if you were following Leopold Bloom you read this Tweet, for example: "I idly turn over pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, then of Aristotle's Masterpiece. Crooked botched print."
The Signal celebrates Bloomsday too tonight, not by enacting Ulysses in studio, there wasn't quite enough time, but with music inspired by the book. It's a concert called Tales of Brave Ulysses, and it pairs Winnipeg actor Arne MacPherson with new music group Groundswell Ensemble.
When people talk about "African music" it's a little like talking about "world music" or "jazz." So many styles, so many languages, so much diverse music! But you can understand how it happens, it's a short hand: African music, world music, jazz, popular music...
So it's interesting that the music from one African country seems to have made its mark more distinctly on the global musical consciousness. And that country is Mali. Largely because of the late Ali Farka Toure, his son, Vieux, Amadou and Mariam...and Habib Koite.
Habib Koite has a great voice, and he plays a mean guitar. And you can hear a concert recorded in Montreal featuring his music tonight on Canada Live.
"Until you've experienced the Jazz Festival in Montreal, you can't believe what it's like! It takes place in a beautiful part of the city, the streets are closed to traffic, the atmosphere is friendly, and there's an incredible range of music being offered on a variety of stages.... It's like a Disneyland for people who love jazz."
Katie is right -- you can't quite believe it 'til you see (and hear) it. Now you have a chance to do just that -- win a trip for two courtesy of the Tonic Montreal Jazz Festival Contest. Each day this week Katie (and Tim Tamashiro on the weekend) will ask a jazz question -- all you have to do to enter the draw is answer. Correctly, obviously. But the questions won't be too tough. For example:
Radio 2 Morning regulars will notice that Tom Allen isn't hosting this week, but Bill Murray is. At least, you might have thought that if the show was televised -- guest host Bob Mackowycz bears an uncanny resemblance to Murray. Despite this, he's chosen not to have a career as a Bill Murray imitator -- instead taking up the challenge of filling in for Tom until June 26. (And again for parts of July and August.)
By now you may be asking: What about Bob? Who he? Here's his unofficial bio:
Whatever constellation of qualities are required to make a classical musician big on the international circuit -- these three guys seem to have it: Swedish clarinetist Martin Frost, Canadian conductor Julian Kuerti, and Canadian pianist David Jalbert.
Today Sunday Afternoon In Concert features all three. First, the idiosyncratic Martin Frost, pictured here. He doesn't just play the clarinet, he uses movement, multimedia, and masks. (Watch this.)
On today's broadcast he plays the great Brahms Quintet For Clarinet And Strings. (Plus you'll hear his collaborators, the award-winning Jerusalem Quartet, in concert from Vancouver performing Haydn's String Quartet In F Minor Op. 20 No. 5 and Debussy's String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 10.)
Even the most outwardly accomplished among us may secretly be a big bundle of angst. Take Gustav Mahler. At the turn of the 20th century he was successful as a conductor, a composer, and as a mover and shaker, revitalizing organizations like the New York Philharmonic and the Vienna Court Opera. At the same time -- insecure, self doubting, and all those other fun things. But none of that stopped him from being enormously creative. (Maybe it was part of the reason he was so creative...)
Today on Peter And The Symphony, TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian explores Mahler's attitude towards life -- as revealed through his music. The symphony under the musical microscope is the largest of the large Mahler's, the third -- clocking in at over an hour-and-a-half in performance.
As host Eric Friesen points out, Mahler felt each symphony "contained a whole world" within it. So to hear more about the world within Mahler's third, tune into Inside The Music. After the broadcast the programme will also be streamed online at Peter And The Symphony. And if you want to own the entire Peter And The Symphony series -- put in your order -- it will be available via the CBC shop in September.
Two years ago a young graffiti artist named Sophie Backhouse pleaded guilty to damaging property in her hometown of Liverpool. But what a difference a year or two make -- now she's sought after to do things like creating eye-catching designs commissioned by The Manchester Camerata , work that "challenges the borders between high art and so called urban art." (You can see more of Backhouse's work at here.) Really it's not just about the so-called "high art" of classical music vs. graffiti though -- Backhouse's designs themselves are hybrids of contemporary street art and art nouveau.
Of course the exploration of "high" and "not high" art is part of the essence of In Tune, when host Katherine Duncan looks at where classical music and popular culture meet. Today she shares this story, as well as some updates on other stories making classical music news:
Marrying for love vs. money seems to be a time-honoured dilemma for the young and beautiful. (Who knows, maybe for the old and beautiful too.) One of the most famous operatic views on this is the story of Manon -- there are no less than five operatic adaptations.
So here's Manon's love vs. money dilemma, if you Twittered it: En route to convent, falls in love with student, catches the eye of count, becomes a convict.
The story was based on something a tad longer than a Tweet though, the short novel, Manon Lescaut, written by French author Antoine François Prévost (the Abbé Prévost), first published in 1731.
Now you want to know what happens -- student or nobleman? And how does she end up in the Big House? Ah, for that you should read (and listen) on:
Have you noticed how slowly Leonard Cohen's website loads? Not because of any flash heaviness either. It must be because so many Cohenites are going to the site every minute of every hour, to continue to worship at the shrine.
You can do better though -- Saturday when Inside The Music airs the conversation Jian Ghomeshi had with Cohen, recorded at Cohen's place in Montreal. So if you missed the previous broadcast, here's another chance. They talk about everything from what Cohen does when he first comes home to Montreal (you'll be surprised) to whether he regrets not having a life long partner.
Jian also wrote about the experience of meeting Mr. Cohen, an article slugged Leonard Cohen, The Bard On A Wire. (Oh, those clever headline writers.)
Let's see: You may make BBQ sauce from scratch, then again, you may use bottled. You may decide since it's almost summer -- why bother with spring cleaning? You may celebrate this decision with a beer. And at some point you may have your radio on.
If the final prediction is true at least, here is what you may hear this weekend. (If we consider the weekend as starting Friday night. And we do.)
The Signal plays a concert from Final Fantasy tonight, recorded in Regina.
Fast forward to Saturday morning.
Jian Ghomeshi talks with Leonard Cohen on Inside The Music. He sounds a little in awe. Jian that is. That's OK, who wouldn't be? And Leonard is lovely as always.
Here's your hint for the opera: Diamonds are a girl's best friend...or are they? The opera "Manon" asks the age old question of whether to pursue love or riches, on Saturday Afternoon At The Opera.
You've probably hear their song Surround in a computer ad, but hear them as they're meant to be heard -- In Flight Safety in concert on Canada Live Saturday night.
It being the double decade celebration of both Cowboy JunkiesandSkydiggers, tonight's Canada Live double bill makes perfect sense.
Skydiggers aren't as well known (see last post!) as the Junkies, which isn't to say they're less loved. But the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions recording of twenty years ago had a huge impact on the Canadian music scene. The international scene too -- back then Rolling Stone said the album was a great example of when a recording managed to "establish a mood and sustain it so consistently that the entire record seems like one continuously unfolding song."
Last year the Cowboy Junkies went into Massey Hall and recreated that recording, live, playing the songs in the same order as the originally appeared on the album. So tonight you can hear new versions of those songs, Sweet Jane and Walkin After Midnight and the rest, featuring Margo Timmins' intense, hushed vocals.
A recent study said that the average teenager sends 80 text messages a day. You read that right, eighty! One can only wonder what # of texts would have been devoted to the great bands who started the Canadian alt-country scene, had teens had phones back then. (Not to mention the ability to text.) "CU L8R @ Spadina Skydiggers." That kind of thing. But in those days, it was all land lines, much to the irritation of parents everywhere.
Whatever the technology, word spread and parlayed early excitement into a twenty-year career for the Skydiggers, who were in on what was nothing short of an alt-country revolution in this country. Today Radio 2 Drive guest host Kelly Cutara fetes the band as they celebrate their 20th anniversary retrospective release, The Truth About Us, and they play a couple tunes in studio.
Here's a brief excerpt of what you can hear on Drive:
If you haven't seen Dust Films "literal videos," watch this. The horse montage alone is worth the following 3:00 of your life:
And that's your Wednesday night diversion. If you want some less trivial but also fun musical diversion -- tune in to The Signal tonight. Guitarist Bernard Falaise does another kind of re-interpretation of popular music, in this case, the the popular music of Quebec. In his original work you can hear bits of famous Quebecois songs from people like Robert Charlebois and Michel Rivard. (We're still waiting for the video version.)
What would you be if you were a movie? According to one writer Rupa Marya of the group Rupa And The April Fishes would be "Amélie meets Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown meets Latcho Drom meets Do the Right Thing." Let's see, a beautiful young misfit in Paris unravelling to the soundtrack of Roma music in Brooklyn?
It's true that Rupa & The April Fishes are a kind of circus of sound, as you can hear tonight on Canada Live. The band cites influences as "French chanson, Argentinean tango, Gypsy swing, American folk, Latin cumbias, and even Indian ragas." (If you like Lhasa you will find this music particularly interesting.)
Rupa is also something of a philosopher, quoting the likes of Krishnamurti in performance:
On Monday Apple opened it's (sold out) Worldwide Developers Conference with the usual much-anticipated keynote presentation. One of the announcements was that a new version of the iPhone would be available by June 19 2009 (in Canada) along with an update to the iPhone's operating system.
As early as April rumours were flying that Apple would include an FM radio transmitter and/or receiver in an updated iPhone. An FM transmitter would allow a user to easily connect their iPhone to their car stereo. It would "broadcast" the music from the iPhone to the car's FM radio. An FM receiver in an iPhone would mean the user could listen to any FM broadcast.
I doubted that either would show up. There are a number of third party FM transmitters you can hook up to your iPod and they all have a tendency to work rather poorly. Steve Jobs likes elegant solutions and this isn't one. An FM receiver? How 20th Century.
On Monday we found out there would be no FM receiver or transmitter on the new iPhone.
Here's a tough question. Would you like to go to the Montreal Jazz Festival? Even tougher -- would you like to win a trip for two? If you're thinking -- 'you betcha where do I sign up!' here are the details about next week's Tonic contest:
From June 15 to 21, tune into Tonic from 6–8 p.m. and listen for the daily "jazz question." All you'll have to do is send in the correct answer (answers are found on the Montreal Jazz Festival site) to Tonic Contest for your chance to win airfare, accommodations, plus tickets to the John Pizzarelli and George Wein concerts. AND you get to meet weekday Tonic host, Katie Malloch. (She's so nice. You want to meet her.)
It's a pretty major anniversary for the festival this year too -- their 30th.
What a voice -- what a pianist! Daniel Lavoie is a wonderful Francophone songwriter, and in today's Canada Live Podcast you have a rare opportunity to hear him in an intimate concert. It was recorded on his Canadian tour supporting his 19th album, Dr. Tendresse.
Though he is a star in Quebec and France, Lavoie is actually originally from Manitoba, and part of his education with the Jesuits in Saint Boniface in Winnipeg was that he studied piano with the nuns. Apparently his mother wanted him to be a priest.
His fans are very glad he took the musical path instead. One of them, watching the following video recently said: "He's too terribly beautiful! He's killing me!" She must have been talking about that voice, sure, that was it -- and it's true his voice could have the power to slay you...
Understatement of the day: It's difficult keeping up with new releases. In any genre, let alone if you happen to be a fan of many. That's one reason why Monday nights Laurie likes to play tracks from new releases on The Signal. Tonight's new new sounds come from musicians who are not strangers to Signal-land, including Hanne Hukkelberg, Jon Hopkins, Grizzly Bear, and A Broken Consort.
Admittedly these musicians don't have what you'd call "household name recognition." (With the exception, maybe, of Grizzly Bear, pictured here.) So if they're new to you, here are a few reasons you might want to tune into The Signal to hear the latest.
We'll start with the near-households: Grizzly Bear. (They were just in Canada, and Feist joined them on stage in Toronto, which you can view at Stereogum in all its hand-held glory.) Best line from another source about Grizzly Bear and their new recording: "Grizzly Bear, favourite band of Fleet Foxes, are riding high on the folk-harmony wave." Quite an image, that.
Jon Hopkins only had two recordings to his name until this new one -- but musicians from Herbie Hancock to Coldplay have already worked with him.
What's the farthest you've ever travelled for a concert? Maybe Edmonton from Calgary? Gananoque from Kingston? Dartmouth from Halifax?
Try Liverpool to Vancouver -- that's serious fandom. Kevin Jamieson, the fan in question, made the journey to hear Diana Krall -- the concert Radio 2 broadcast last week, now streaming online at Concerts On Demand -- Diana Krall At The Orpheum.
Kevin wrote a mini review on the CoD site, saying he he really wanted to see Krall perform on her "home turf." He has no regrets:
"Well, it was definitely worth the trip, she was just fantastic. My only wish would have been that it had not been over quite so soon, so thank you CBC Radio for giving me the opportunity to be able to close my eyes while listening here and visualize her brilliant performance again. Thank you so much."
You are so welcome, Kevin. (And thank you too, it's great hearing from listeners via the Concert On Demand reviews.) On a related note -- there are a bunch of other new concerts recently uploaded to Concerts On Demand -- so if you like hearing live music, have a listen:
You may be thinking, "a great agent," or "a great grand," and both these things may be true. But there are other unsung heroes in any pianist's life. Like, say, piano tuners and page turners. Today you can hear from some of "the little people" of the piano world, on Sunday Afternoon In Concert.
But the trade secrets of page turners are just one part of today's piano extravaganza. There's also a passel of great concerts. First, from someone who has been called "the greatest pianist you’ve never heard of."
Arnaldo Cohen is from Brazil (his parents were Persian and Russian immigrants). Maybe part of the reason you may not have heard of him is because to date he's also taught physics, maths, played professional violin and cocktail piano. And oh yeah, he was also the first-prize winner of the 1972 Busoni International Piano Competition in Italy. Now he lives in the States, but today's recital comes to you from Canada -- Salle Louis-Frechette in Quebec City, where he was a guest of Le Club Musical De Québec.
If you're single and need a slogan you could do worse than the motto some ascribe to Brahms -- "Frei Aber Froh," "Free but Happy." The story goes that Brahms used the musical spelling of this personal motto in his third symphony -- with the recurring theme of the notes F-A-F. Supposedly this was in response to his friend, Hungarian composer Joseph Joachim, who'd come up with the idea of using F-A-E, 'Frei Aber Einsam' (Free But Lonely) in another work.
Let's go with Brahms. Much more positive. But what does Peter Oundjian think? It will be interesting to get his take today when he explores Brahms' Symphony No. 3 in Peter And The Symphony.
It's an 11-part series which takes you through some of the greatest symphonies ever written -- and what guides we have in Maestro Oundjian, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's Musical Director, and veteran broadcaster Friesen. To hear it on your radio, tune into Inside The Music, and to hear it again -- tune in online after the broadcast at Peter And The Symphony.
And one last word about the third. (At least, from The Blog -- there will be plenty more words about the third on the broadcast.)
Carmen is one of the (seemingly many) operas that had a rocky start, but went on to become hugely popular. The main issue was Carmen's overt sexuality, not to mention her apparent ease at going through men like cigarettes. Speaking of -- women in the chorus smoking (and fighting) on stage also posed an issue for some delicate, late 19th century sensibilities. And then there's the murder.
But people got over it. Carmen opened in 1875, and despite some furor in both the press and the audience, it ran for 45 performances. Sadly Bizet died after the 33rd performance -- well before it became a staple of the repertoire.
For full details on cast and the plot synopsis, please keep reading.
Admittedly the subject heading is a ploy to make you think "Wonderin' Where The Lions Are," and then by process of association, Bruce Cockburn. Did it work? Anyway, it is true that you were meant to think of Cockburn, since he is the guest in the third of a series of feature conversations between Jian Ghomeshi and great Canadian musicians, broadcast today on Inside The Music.
Today's interview is a bit of a retrospective, both in terms of Cockburn's career and his personal life. It's a very nice interview -- thoughtful, intelligent, full of humour -- just like you'd expect from Cockburn.
The interview took place the day Cockburn released his new, live solo recording, Slice O Life. (Twenty-nine recordings to date -- but the first live solo album!) And that's the starting point for the interview.
If you are a Cockburn fan you may also want to have a look at this extensive interview posted at All About Jazz, some quite interesting stuff there.
It's not easy being a living legend, but Pete Seeger seems to manage. The folk-singer, environmental activist, and all around good guy turned 90 on May 3rd, and there were many tributes, gracefully acknowledged by Seeger.
One tribute, hosted by Jerry Gray of The Travellers fame, is broadcast tonight on Canada Live. Way back when Seeger suggested The Travellers do a Canadian version of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land. They did -- and it was a hit. (And why we sing from Bonavista to Vancouver Island instead of from California to the New York Island.)
On his actual birthday Seeger was at a massive tribute held in Madison Square Garden. (Canadian trivia note -- Bruce Cockburn was one of the invited performers.) At it Seeger said:
"If I didn't think music could help save the human race, I wouldn't be making music."
Sometimes music doesn't fall into neat, tidy categories. Actually, a lot of the time. Maybe that's why Michael Jerome Browne, who drops by the Drive studio this afternoon, calls his last recording This Beautiful Mess. He's a little bit country, a little bit blues, a little bit soul, a little bit folk. (Or as his own bio says: "Uptown, Down Home.")
More to the mess -- Browne is a multi-instrumentalist, a composer and a teacher, and likes to play both acoustic and electric. Today you can hear an intimate solo performance from Browne -- and he and Rich will do a little chin wagging as well.
Maybe Rich will dig a little deeper into the whole mess. If he does, best guess is that he'll discover the common thread in MJB's music is the blues. No wonder, he's been playing the blues since he was in his teens, back in 1970s Montreal, performing at legendary places like the Yellow Door. And he was a member of the Stephen Barry Blues band for over a decade.
Charity Chan calls her piano style 'non-invasive.' In other words -- no prepared piano (a Wikip-link -- oddly enough there is no "preparedpiano.com").
But the piano still sounds like a whole different beast when it's played by Chan. This evening The Signal features music from her latest recording, Somewhere The Sea And Salt.
Chan thinks the music on this recording is a kind of "aural map" of the techniques she uses to coax unexpected sounds from the piano. Here's how she sees (or hears) it:
"I was often fascinated by the minute details of and subtle characteristics of these unconventional sounds. So often, the magic of what enthralls a performer is hidden or inaccessible to the audience. This recording is a way of allowing those sounds to be heard."
"Quiet nights of quiet stars..." even before hearing Diana Krall singing that lyric, you can imagine it: hushed, sensuous, elegant.
Tonight you can hear how your imagination matches with reality when Ms. Krall is in concert on Canada Live, singing songs from her latest recording, named after that beautiful Jobim tune, Quiet Nights. It's also the name of her tour, presented by CBC Radio 2 -- you can still watch a lovely little video with Diana on our website.
Tonight's concert was recorded at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre, and along with her quartet are members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Expect to hear a mix of swingin' jazz from the quartet and subtle orchestral arrangements by two jazz arranging heavyweights, Claus Ogerman and Johnny Mandel.
Here's one more image for your mind's eye -- from someone who was at the Orpheum:
Some unkind reviewer once said that Erich Korngold, a composer famed for his Hollywood scores, was "more corn than gold." Har har. But plenty of people love Korngold's music. In fact in recent years his music has had a bit of a renaissance.
Proof is on The Signal this evening when the Art of Time Ensemble, with accomplices Danny Michel, Martin Tielli and John Southworth, interpret Korngold's Suite For Piano, Two Violins And Cello.
Korngold's life story is pretty dramatic, almost like a musical itself, and no surprise there is one, Farewell, Vienna. But if you don't know anything about the guy, here's a very brief snapshot:
Well no. It's two pieces of technology which most people have barely heard of joining forces to … well, in hopes that you will not only hear of them but go out and buy them.
Last week Microsoft announced that its new version of Zune will include an HD Radio. That headline caught my eye because I've been rather pessimistic about HD Radio. Could this be a lifeline?
Regular readers of Tech Q will know by now what HD Radio is but for the rest of you, it's a digital radio broadcast system which has gotten off to a very slow start ("Wither HD Radio?") and which is available only in the United States.
Zune, in case you haven't heard, is Microsoft's answer to the iPod. The new version – Zune HD – isn't due to ship until the autumn. But this hasn't stopped columnists from talking about how Zune HD might do as a product.
Once they were called bards and troubadours. Then folk musicians. Now, singer-songwriters. And Canada has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the genre.
Tonight Canada Live celebrates the Canadian songwriter with three concerts, two coming to you from the Ironwood Stage in Calgary, known for its singer-songwriter showcases (and its beer, cheddar and bacon dip). Sadly can't share the latter on the radio, but the former -- here's what you can expect:
The headliner is east coast songwriter Dave Gunning, who the Toronto Star called the "next big thing in the True North of Song." In this concert he's joined by another excellent songwriter (and guitar player) Stephen Fearing.
Is it here? Or isn't it? Sure the trees are green, but some chilly mornings you half expect frost on the doorstep. But here's some musical certainty about spring at least -- a great duo performance of Clifford Brown's Joy Spring, played by Billy Taylor and Monty Alexander, side by side at the grands.
Monty Alexander is an amazing live performer, as you can also hear tonight on Tonic -- this is just a warm up:
There's nothing like the sound of someone finger picking on an acoustic guitar. It's like a beautiful summer day when you don't have anything more pressing to do than decide whether you want to lie in the hammock or on the dock.
At least, that's the mood Thom Swift's finger pickin' evokes in some of us. He's one of the featured artists in today's Canada Live Podcast, along with a singer with one of the best handles around, Coco Love Alcorn.
Swift doesn't just finger pick though, the New Brunswick based musician also sings in a deep, soulful voice, and writes too -- influences range from Mississippi John Hurt to Tom Waits to Emmy Lou Harris and Charlie Haden.
Fortunately he's far from going unrecognized. He won the Canadian Maple Blues Award for New Artist of the Year, the CBC Galaxie Rising Star Award, the East Coast Music Award for blues recording of the year AND two Music Nova Scotia awards -- ALL in 2008.
The Thom Swift concert in today's podcast comes from a recent concert Radio 2 picked up at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax.
The Henrys are back! They're one of Canada's best-loved-under-recognized-usually-instrumental bands and their first new recording in seven years comes out this month.
Tonight on The Signal you can hear some preview tracks from the CD, Is This Tomorrow. (Fans of the legendary Mary Margaret O'Hara, who has performed with The Henrys before -- note that she is a guest on this recording too.)
As for the Hens themselves, armed with a kona and other slide guitars (plus instruments like the conch shell, quarter-tone trumpets, who knows what else) this group goes where no band has gone before -- at least not in that inimitable Henrys way.
You know what they are. Good or bad. (At least, if Duke Ellington is to be believed.)
But what makes music good or bad? DK Ibomeka, who you can hear in concert tonight on Canada Live, has this take: "Obviously perspective plays a big role in distinguishing the two." Absolutely true. But what's good music to DK?
"Music with attitude, audacity and opinion." What's not so good? "I am not moved by music that is trying too hard to be something and seems unnatural or forced."
While you're debating what you think makes music good or bad, here's a little more about Ibomeka.
On Monday you'll begin hearing some changes to the Radio 2 schedule, and also to the Radio 2 website. On air you'll hear a new show hosted by Mr. Tom Allen each weekday at 2 p.m., called Shift. And there are a number of tweaks to when shows start and end (as you'll see if you click through that last link). 
Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony was first performed in 1943, with Vaughan Williams conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Proms. No wonder 
The other day, finally catching up with PVR'd episodes of Elvis Costello's TV show, 
Two years ago a young graffiti artist named Sophie Backhouse 
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It's not easy being a living legend, but 
Is this the new math?
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