No. 1 for May 10, 2020

Band Geek plays Close to the Edge

At the end of an engaging profile by Alex Ross, centered around his recent live-streamed performances from his home, the pianist Igor Levitt says this

“When I started doing these house concerts, I realized that every single problem I had ever had with the performing world suddenly disappeared. I never really cared about acoustics. I never cared that much about the quality of the piano. All I wanted to do was play. The important point about these concerts is not how they sound but the fact that they happened. Everything is getting reduced to the essential thing of being there and playing.”

Ross' essay shows that this attitude applies not just to Levitt's recent lockdown performances to the pianists entire career, his choice of repertoire, and his outlook on life.
 
The truest musical experiences involve performers and audiences engaging with the music as it is presented to them. It's not about the acoustics, or the quality of the piano. The setting and the medium don't really matter. Even compromised or distorted media can create a meaningful musical expression.

Yesterday toward the end of a long day of internet surfing, I came across a group called Band Geek playing a note-for-note recreation of Close to the Edge, the eighteen-or-so minute piece that takes up side one of Yes' 1972 album of the same name. It's kind of a ridiculous piece of music. It's majestic and pretentious and grandiose. The idea that a rock band would supersede its proscribed function and produce a quasi-symphonic monstrosity generated the band and its music both praise and derision since its creation. I, for one, love it. If one wants to play it, one cannot make a trip to the music store to pick up the score as you would to pick up a volume of Beethoven's sonatas. One must transcribe it from the recording and find a bunch of similarly-minded colleagues to pull it off. It's by necessity a labor of love, with the reward of not an arena of adoring fans, like Yes had, but making a video in you basement which gets a surprising (to me, at least) amount of views on YouTube.

What's the point, you may ask. The point is that it happens. They played it and recorded it, and at some later point in time I watched it. At the end, the bass player says "I'm so happy." I was happy, too, and I was happy for him.

No. 1 for April 24,2020

Beethoven's String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59, No. 3

As played by the Budapest String Quartet from Beethoven - The Middle String Quartets, In Concert at the Library of Congress: 1940-1960.

I pulled this set out arbitrarily the other night and this recording from 1946 jumped out at me.

After a crappy day of working from home, and my now regular Friday post-apocalyptic grocery store experience, this was was I went to to ease myself into the evening.

RIP Lee Konitz

Another week, another hero gone, another loss to the pandemic.

I came to Lee Konitz relatively recently. I'd known him since first learning about Birth of the Cool as a teenager, but really only started to dig in over the last decade. A half-dozen or so years younger than Charlie Parker, Konitz had Bird's melodic and rhythmic complexity, but burned at lower flame. "Cool" was the label, but he deliberately displayed a warmth which his mentor Lennie Tristano deliberately lacked. Like Jim Hall, he was always "modern," but never "avant-garde."

Konitz mostly made a career of improvising over the standard standards (Body and Soul, All the Things You Are, and the like) sometimes with his own melodies in the Parker/Tristano tradition (for example Subconcious-Lee is set to the harmonies of What is This Thing Called Love,) often eschewing the melody all together.

Here's a short tribute, an arbitrary selection of favorites spanning 62 years.



I also wrote this when I saw him live back in 2014.

See the playlist after the break...

RIP Hal Willner

The pandemic has taken a number of musicians I've respected and admired, Manu Dibango, Bucky Pizzarelli, Ellis Marsalis among them. The one that's hit me most to the bones is Hal Willner, the brilliant producer and musical thinker, whose cross-genre compilation albums were a bedrock influence on the Unpopular Music webcasts.and on my musical outlook in general.

I posted this about two-and-a-half years ago, and that's the way I feel now.

Here's a small sample of his work. A lot of these tracks have been presented in various Unpopular Music programs, but bear repeating. The first half is the brighter of the two.




See the playlist and notes after the break...

Don't Just Sing

not on sale at ArkivJazz

For not the first time, I received an email promoting ArkivJazz' celebration of Women's History Month which only promotes recordings by singers. Yes, these are some of the finest ever singers, and representatives of the art form (Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Billie Holliday, Nina Simone)¹, but this singular focus overlooks the other roles women have played in jazz over the years. It's like having a women's career day and only featuring nurses and secretaries. And in 2020, this is totally inexcusable.

[Having now clicked through to the larger offer after writing what follows, I see that there are some non-singers included in the promotion, but only slightly less than one out of three, including a few of those listed below, but my main argument still stands.] 

The first two obvious choices are Mary Lou Williams and Carla Bley (who even has an excellent new release out.) Pianist Kris Davis, guitarist Mary Halvorsen, and clarinetist Anat Cohen are all widely considered current top players on their respective instruments, and fine composers as well. Other women non-singers I've featured on the webcast are Alice Coltrane, Allison Miller, Geri Allen, Co Streiff, Irène Schweizer, Dorothy Ashby, Eve Risser, Ingrid Laubrock, Jane Ira Bloom, Marilyn Crispell, Myra Melford, Linda May Han Oh, Tomeka Reed. and Sharon Freeman. Others who don't just sing are Annette Peacock, Karin Krog, and, of course, Nina Simone. While my tastes skew away from the conventional, other more mainstream artists include the pianist Helen Sung, saxophonists Grace Kelley and Mindy Abair, and the composer-bandleader Maria Schneider. I'm leaving out many deserving others. (For more on this, on Mixcloud, Magda Brand has an excellent nine part series featuring female jazz composers. (Start here, for example)

Unpopular Music - For McCoy Tyner

Also, you must watch this. This version has better audio however -

https://tv.nrk.no/se?v=FBUA07003275&t=2038s

The jazz world has lost one of its giants. McCoy Tyner, perhaps best known as the pianist from John Coltrane's “Classic Quartet,” also had a formidable solo career as well, becoming one of the most influential pianists is jazz history. Much has been said elsewhere (for example) about his powerful technique, his distinctive chord voicings and the way he could power a band while also providing its gravity that I won't go on. As a composer, he could bring those qualities to a variety of settings, from traditional African musics to big band, choral, and rhythm-and-blues.

What follows is an arbitrary, but varied selection. No apologies for putting in the hits, as they are some of the greatest hits, but there are some lesser known tracks here as well (from, unfortunately, some of my scratchier records, I do apologize for that.) As powerful as he could be, he was also a wonderful ballad player.

See the playlist after the break...

Number 1 for February 26, 2020 - Bill Frisell's Harmony at the Regattabar

Bill Frisell was in quiet, beautiful mode which is always a good thing. But the key functions of this group were turned over to the vocalizing of Petra Haden, Hank Roberts (also on cello) and Luke Bergman (also playing guitar.) Soloing was at a minimum. Roberts took one or two, I don't believe Frisell took one at all, mostly laying down lush accompaniment via his Telecaster and his array of magic boxes, leaning towards his country and folk influences, along with his taste or 60's pop songs.

Not to discount her own considerable talents, but in this context, Haden is not only channeling the legacy of her jazz legend father, but also that of her grandparents who led a popular family singing group (including young Charlie) in the early days of radio with songs like Red River Valley, done here a cappella.

This was applied to a first rate selection of songs – among them Stephen Foster's Hard Times, Lush Life by Billy Strayhorn, the Skeeter Davis hit The End of the World, On the Street Where You Live from My Fair Lady, David Bowie's Space Oddity (you know that any show that segues from Red River Valley into Space Oddity is right on in my book,) and the encore of Shenandoah, not only a folk standard, but a favorite of Frisell's idol and teacher Johnny Smith.

And despite living in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts for more than thirty years now, I believe this is the first time I've been led in a sing-along of We Shall Overcome.

Unpopular Music - February 16, 2020

Greetings!

Today I offer up a program of music I've been putting aside for a new playlist. When I stopped doing the weekly program, I've been trying to pick up the pace of putting all this music I've got lying around onto the old hard drive, and intended to make new playlists out of that material. That effort has not been entirely successful, but I think we've got enough freshness to make it worthwhile. It did come out a bit subdued, though perhaps right for a winter's afternoon or evening. (I took it out for a walk this afternoon to give it a quality assurance listen, and it worked out fine.)

I decided not to play DJ on this one, if only to shape the program rather than to hear my own voice. The program is divided into three sets, marked by somewhat longer pauses, the first ending around the 39 minute mark, the second around 1:19:00. In lieu of announcing, I did write some program notes below.

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See the playlist and the notes after the break...

Unpopular Christmas 2019

Here we a Christmas offering for you. It comes in four sections - A kind of straight-up jazz set, then a few medieval through baroque choral pieces, which leads us to some "derangements" of some overly familiar songs, and finally some small-scale, intimate, perhaps introverted even, renderings of some more staples. This exercise of hearing these familiar songs on unfamiliar, even irreverent settings can perhaps help us appreciate the original musical intentions of the songs.



Rest ye merry! (and remember, the comma comes after "merry," not "ye.")

See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for December 21, 2019

 And so here we are - the last weekly webcast on Boston Free Radio. Created under the same conditions that have convinced me that I need to take a break. (I was digging through boxes at 7:30 or so this morning, the McCoy Tyner track was ripped around 8:15, I still came in about ten minutes short and was digging through the BFR library throughout the show, I played off You Tube something that I forgot to add to the playlist before I left the house. But, two hours of this and that that I think can be enjoyed.

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And, to be clear, it's see you later, not goodbye. 

See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for December 14, 2019

A variety show for a rainy Saturday, at least here in Somerville. We have a jazzy first set with some overlapping personnel.The second set is the quiet set, which also features the obscure Hungarian instrument the taragato. The second hour begins with a few miniatures, before presenting two twentieth-century classical works dense with musical references. There's also a longish bit of "jazz composition" that I've been meaning to play for a while, before we end with some odd upbeatness and some college nostalgia (for me at least.)

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See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for December 7, 2019

A bit of a variety show for you this week. The first typically jazzy hour has many flavors of jazz, some current, some historical, some in between. There's an unintended grouping of tracks led by Miles Davis rhythm section alumni. The second hour wanders around. Some jazz, some modernism, something from the classical side of the third stream, a 70's obscure classic/classic obscurity I've been meaning to play for a while, and a fifty-year-old song ripped from today's headlines. Also, an announcement regarding the future of the live webcast.

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See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for November 23, 2019

The first hour is typically jazzy. As for the second, well...

I kind of fell down an prog rock rabbit hold on YouTube last weekend, poking around a genre which I've been intermittently interested, but never as much as I was in high school, in the years before I discovered jazz. And sure, it's occasionally shown up in the webcast, but not like today. So strap yourself in, turn on your black-light, practice counting seven, five and thirteen, and enjoy.

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See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for November 16, 2019

For reasons we don't need to go into, we were again late to organizing today's program. The folder where I park candidates for upcoming programs was full of what's usually second hour material, so some of that has crept into the first hour. After a jazzy (if maybe long-winded) first set leads to a contemporary classical set is bookended with some some aspirational jazz, followed by an eight minute pop song. The second hour is obviously more typical, with some electronics, and things that sound electronic, and other somewhat pretentious stuff. Enjoy!



See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for November 9, 2019

A mostly jazzy show today with the second hour consisting of a tribute to the recently departed legendary ECM Records sound engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug.



See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for November 2, 2019

A jazz-centric program for you today, including a small batch of new releases from groups led by bass players.


See the playlist after the break...

Celebrate Somerville Media Center's Community Media Week

This week Somerville Media Center, home to Boston Free Radio and the Unpopular Music webcast is presenting Community Media week. Although this is a tradition going back several years now, this is year it  is being tied in to SMC's fundraising efforts, which have become more urgent as the the sources of funding, particularly what we get from cable TV companies has changed in recent years, and will likely change in the near future. See the schedule below and find out more here.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for October 19, 2019

A variety show today with some film music, Burmese chamber music jams, Messiaen shouting about birds, artificial folk music, and the usual jazz offerings presented today in two long sets, but with some extra jabbering from me about the Somerville Media Center's upcoming Community Media Week fundraiser.

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See the playlist after the break...

Webcast info for October 12, 2019

This week I'm away celebrating the holiday by setting off to a faraway location, ending up somewhere else entirely, claiming that place for myself regardless of the people already living there. (actually, I'm just visiting my mom.)

In my stead, we will be re-broadcasting the episode from October 13, 2018, which was an unboxing of sorts of a recent record store binge in Portland ME, along with an RIP to baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett.

Also, please enjoy the holiday pageant presented above.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for October 5, 2019

Yet another last minute creation, which I do think came out rather well. We have a few new jazz releases, plus the usual variety show. I'm not using the late start as an excuse for playing a twenty-six minute track (not that it didn't help), but when I heard this piece yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I thought "this is the sort of thing I wanted to have a radio show in order to play." So, there is is.

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See the playlist after the break...