Silvestrov, Mingus, Autorickshaw: Playlist for The Open Window for November 30, 2009

Listen to a podcast of this show

The Open Window airs at 6:30 am Mondays and 10:00 am Thursdays at www.cjly.net (Kootenay Cooperative Radio in Nelson, B.C.) sponsored by Sidewinders Coffee in Nelson.


Valentin Silvestrov: Post Scriptum (Alexei Lubimov, piano and Alexander Trostiansky, violin) from Misterioso (ECM)

This fascinating CD features the music of several composers from the former Soviet Union countries including the Ukrainian pianist and composer Valentin Silvestrov. He is one the many artists who suffered at the hands of the Soviet government. When he came under fire for his modernist style, he chose to withdraw from public performance of his work rather than change. He wrote a piece called Silent Songs, intended to be played in private. But that is not what we heard on this show. This piece, Post Scriptum, Silvestrov has referred to as "a postscript to Mozart, and in a broader sense, to the classical period."


Charles Mingus: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, Stop Boogie Shuffle, Jelly Roll, Self-Portrait in Three Colours, Pussy-Cat Dues from Mingus Ah Um (Columbia)
Mingus, who died in 1979, was a big, mysterious, cantankerous task-master who was not interested in what other people, including his audiences, thought of him. When I was in the high school band at North Kamloops Secondary in the 1960's, there was a very good trumpet player named Dennis Mulligan. One day he brought this album to school and played it. It was exotically modern and mysterious. He loved it, the teacher hated it, and I was very intrigued. It may have been the first real jazz record I had ever heard. Recorded in 1959, Mingus Ah Um is considered one of Mingus' finest records, and it is also one of his most relatively sedate. In some ways it is a tribute to Ellington and other forbears. It has incredible musicians on it like Booker Ervin and Jimmy Knepper.


Autorickshaw: Purvi Tillana, Tigra Tani, and Ganamurthy from Four Higher (Tala-Wallah)

I also played this great band on October 26-- check out that post.

Autorickshaw, Gotan Project, Dave Brubeck, and Baroque Recorder: Playlist for The Open Window for October 26, 2009

The Open Window airs Mondays at 6:30 am and Thursdays at 10 am at www.cjly.net (Kootenay Cooperative Radio)

Listen to a podcast of this show here

Autorickshaw: Ragam and Saraswati from Four Higher (Tala-Wallah)

Vocalist Suba Sankaran leads this Toronto group that plays a mix of Indian classical, jazz, and funk. Always a big fan of Indian music and its cross-over with Western music, I find the funky electric bass lines really interesting here, and I like Suba Sankaran's vocals. In December Autorickshaw will perform a concert in Toronto to mark the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, the worst industrial disaster in history. The concert is a benefit for the Sambhavna Clinic which treats the thousands of people still affected.

Gotan Project: Gotan Project Meets Chet Baker from Inspiracion-Espiracion (Pioneer)
This piece samples Chet Baker playing Round Midnight accompanied by accordion with a tango-like section as well. The Paris-based Gotan Project likes tango but they are into beats and samples too, and they throw them together every which way, with surprising results. This Chet Baker piece has the feel of a live performance in a relaxed club in some mysterious part of a big city-- somewhere like Rio or Buenos Aires.


Bernard Krainis and the London Strings directed by Neville Mariner: Concerto in A (Vivaldi) and Concerto in C (Handel) from Concertos for Recorder (Mercury)

It's such a treat to hear virtuoso recorder in the baroque style. That was the recorder's heyday before it was supplanted by the transverse flute. In the 1700's there were recorder virtuosos and composers writing for it. Bernard Krainis, who died in the late 1990s, once said that the recorder is harder to play than a reed or flute because you can't control the sound with your embouchure, it has to come from your diaphragm like a singer. This is a piece of vinyl from the 1960s, out of print now.

Dave Brubeck: Strange Meadowlark and Three to Get Ready from Take Five (Columbia)

When this record came out in the early 1960s, the Brubeck Quartet was popular with the masses but not with us really hip people, except that we had to admit a grudging respect for alto saxophonist Paul Desmond whose brand of dry, fluent lyricism is still unparalleled. Part of our problem was that tendency of youth to dismiss any artist once they are known to more than a dozen people. (I have a friend who wears a t-shirt that boasts: I listen to bands that don't even exist yet!) Anyway to me now Brubeck was an interesting and engaging experimenter but not one of the great jazz pianists, but Paul Desmond gets more wonderful with time (even though he's been gone a couple of decades now). And this is a much better record than I and my friends were prepared to admit back then.