Caetano Veloso, Kokopelli, Cannonball Adderley, Satomi Saeki, Bach: Playlist for The Open Window for November 2, 2009

The Open Window airs at 6:30 am Mondays and 8am Thursdays at www.cjly.net (Kootenay Co-op Radio) in Nelson, B.C.

Listen to a podcast of this show

Caetano Veloso: Livros, O Navio Negreiro, and How Beautiful from Livro (Nonesuch)

Brazilian artist, musician, singer, composer, political activist Caetano Veloso is sometimes likened to Bob Dylan for his impact on popular music. He is of the same generation as Dylan, but there is one big difference: the provocative music of Veloso (and Gal Costa and Gilberto Gil) was performed under a military dictatorship. All three spent time in jail for anti-government activity and had their lyrics censored. Their radical music, which was called Tropicalia, contained bossa nova, folk rock, art rock, jazz and poetic spoken word, and they felt the wrath of former fans, again like Dylan. Unlike Dylan though, he has remained relevant. He is now a world superstar without any of the usual trappings of pop stardom, making challenging music.

Kokopelli: Con Que la Lavare from Spirit (Independent)

This inspired and inspiring choir of young people from Edmonton contains four members from Nelson.


Cannonball Adderley: One for Daddy-O from Somethin' Else (Blue Note)

This 1958 album makes lots of greatest jazz album lists. Miles Davis is a sideman, and there is apparently some debate about who the leader actually was. With Cannonball on alto, Miles on trumpet, and Hank Jones and his brother Sam Jones along with Art Blakey on piano, bass and drums respectively, this is classic music that sums up the best of the late fifties. It's relaxed and fluid, but with that challenging Miles Davis directness . Cannonball's ecstatic break that opens his solo on this track is worth the price of the CD.

Satomi Saeki: Haru No Kyuku and Hakumei from Japanese Koto Music (Independent)
Satomi Saeki was classically trained in Japan and now lives in Victoria, B.C., travelling the continent (and sometimes back to Japan) teaching and performing. From the CD notes:
"Saeki's interest in performing koto music on the international stage was inspired by a concert in Hawaii in 1991. As she looked out into the audience, she noticed several Japanese American women were visibly moved while listening to traditional Japanese music. As a Japanese woman living in Canada and raising Japanese Canadian children it was an emotional state Saeki could easily identify with....."

This music in one word? Crystalline.

J.S. Bach: Sonata in G Minor for Flute, Harp and Cello-- Irena Grafenaur (flute), Maria Graf (harp), David Geringas (cello) from The Virtuoso's Bach Vol 4 (Philips)

The combination of harp, flute and cello, think about it. That's why I had to play it, and this piece added a lovely elegance to the show.

Blake Parker, Bach, Bill Frisell, Archie Shepp: playlist for The Open Window for Oct 12 and 15, 2009

The Open Window airs at 6:30 am Mondays and 10:00 am Thursdays at www.cjly.net (Kootenay Co-op Radio)

Listen to a podcast of this show

Blake Parker and Jude Davison: Shadow of the World and Fool from Terminal City Trilogy (Independent)

Blake was a Nelson poet and local cultural hero who died of cancer in 2007. When he was diagnosed, he and Jude Davison decided to put his poems to music, and the result is these three CDs.


Bill Frisell: Disfarmer Theme and Focus from Disfarmer (Nonesuch)

These pieces are impressions of the photographs of a man known as Disfarmer, who lived in Arkansas from 1884 to 1959. He was a portrait photographer whose work is now considered pioneering because of the start, piercing, artistic way he portrayed people in rural areas and small towns Arkansas in the 1930s and 1940s. Most of them were not discovered until the 1970's, and you will now find them on the web and in museums,


Archie Shepp and Horace Parlan: Motherless Child, Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, and My Lord What a Morning from Goin' Home (Steeplechase)

This 1976 album of spirituals surprised a lot of people when it came out because Shepp was usually a fire-breathing avant-gardist. Here, he's reverent and sensitive and subtle, especially when he plays soprano saxophone.


Jean-Jacques Kantarow: J.S. Bach: Sonata #1 in G Minor from J.S. Bach-- 3 Sonatas and 3 Partitas (Denon)

How many times could I listen to this without getting tired of it and thinking I am only scratching the surface of a new universe?

Kronos, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Allison Girvan, Luciana Souza, Bach, Glenn Gould: Playlist for The Open Window for August 3 and 9, 2009

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

Kronos Quartet: Wa Habibi, Raga Mishra Bhairavi Alap, Mugyam Beyati Shiraz, and Tew Semagn Hagere from Floodplain (Nonesuch)

This is music from cultures that reside on floodplains
in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe. People living on floodplains are used to violent upheaval, and they are often melting pots, formed from many societies from all over. But we in the west tend to see them as homogeneous.

This music is centuries old and refreshingly new, much of it commissioned from contemporary composers.

There is music from Egypt, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Iraq, among other places. Some was written for the Kronos Quartet by such contemporary artists as the Palestinian electronic / hip hop collective Ramallah Underground and the Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov whose Hold me Neighbour In This Storm is worth the price of this CD which is full of beauty, integrity, and wonderful surprises.

It's fascinating to hear Kronos playing in so many styles; even more so to hear individual members playing as if from another culture: violist Hank Dutt becomes an Indian musician on Raga Mishra, and David Harrington an Azerbaijani on Tew Semagn Hagere.


Isabel Bayrakdarian: Lullaby, from Gomidas Songs (Nonesuch)

The Armenian composer Gomidas Vertabed (1869-1935) is known as the father of Armenian classical music. He took songs and dances of the Armenian peasantry and recreated them in European classical format. He did this because, as a survivor of the Armenian genocide, he thought this the best way to preserve Armenian musical heritage.

Isabel Bayrakdarian is an Armenian-Canadian opera singer. There is a wonderful video on You Tube of her singing this song accompanied by a quartet of Armenian players of the duduk (a Turkish-Armenian wind instrument) in an ancient Armenian ruin, here: http://tinyurl.com/9q7s2w.



Lusiana Souza: Sonnet 49, from Neruda (Sunnyside)

This Brazilian singer has elegantly put some of Neruda's poems to music. I urge you to watch her perform this song, self-accompanied on the kalimba.

Allison Girvan: Bright Morning Star from Resonance (Independent)

Allison Girvan is the cheerfully creative leader of the Corazon Vocal Ensemble in Nelson, B.C. and the bar-raising musical director for the Capitol Theatre summer youth productions as well as being a solo performer and one of Nelson's musical movers, shakers, mentors, and elders even though she's not that old. This song is purity itself.

Bach: Invention # 5, 14, 11, and 10, Glenn Gould, piano, from Bach: The Two and Three Part Inventions (Columbia)

Menuhin plays Beethoven, Gould plays Bach: playlist for The Open Window for July 27, 2009

The Open Window airs at 6:30 am Mondays and 10:00 am Sundays at www.cjly.net, Kootenay Co-op Radio in Nelson, B.C.




Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D, Yehudi Menuhin, violin, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Wilhelm Furtwangler (Seraphim)








Bach: Invention # 2 and 5, Glenn Gould, piano, from Bach: The Two and Three Part Inventions (Columbia)

Abigail Washburn, Curtis Counce, Oistrach: Playlist for The Open Window for July 20 and 26, 2009

The Open Window airs at 6:30 am Mondays and 10 am Sundays at www.cjly.net (Kootenay Cooperative Radio) in Nelson, B.C.

Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet: Great Big Wall, Overture, Fuller Wine, The Journay, Oh Me Oh My from The Sparrow Quartet (Nettwerk)

Abigail Washburn banjo and guitar; Bela Fleck, banjo; Casey Driessen, fiddle; Ben Sollee, cello. This music is a mix of Appalachian and Chinese influences because Abigail Washburn had lived in China and could speak some Chinese before she started her career as a bluegrass musician. She's a beautiful singer, and, if you care to go to her website you will find her to be a charming and intelligent talker about music. Also on the net you will find a couple of fascinating videos of the group travelling in China and jamming with Chinese musicians. This band's music is lovely and original.

Bach: Concerto for Two Violins; Igor and David Oistrach with the London Philharmonic directed by Eugene Goosens, from Bach Violin Concertos (Deutsche Grammophon)

For a touch of the sublime, the slow movement of this one can't be beat.






Curtis Counce: Sarah, from Landslide (Contemporary)

This is plain-spoken, unadorned, simple-but-sophisticated, honest, late-night west coast blues from 1957. The bassist Curtis Counce was the leader, with Jack Sheldon (trumpet), Harold Land (tenor saxophone), Frank Butler (drums) and the sweet piano of Carl Perkins (no, not that one).

Abdullah Ibrahim, Jon Hassell, Stephen Fearing, Bach: Playlist for The Open Window for July 6, 2009

The Open Window airs at www.cjly.net (Kootenay Cooperative Radio in Nelson, B.C.) on Sundays at 10am and Mondays at 6:30am.

Abdullah Ibrahim: Water From An Ancient Well, Soweto, The Mountain, The Wedding, and The Blessing from Capetown Revisited (Enja)

Abdullah Ibrahim: The Mountain and The Blessing from Water From An Ancient Well (Enja)

The first of these recordings by the venerable South African pianist and bandleader is mostly a trio date, live, with the occasional appearance by trumpeter Faya Faku, recorded in 2000. The second is a studio recording from 1987 with a sextet. The Mountain and The Wedding are great examples of Abdullah's stately intermingling of South African folk forms and Duke Ellington-like jazz.

But his jazz was not always Duke Ellington: check out some of his CD's from the 1970s and 80s and you will find collaborations with avant-garde types like trumpeter Donald Cherry. Abdullah has covered a lot of ground and styles in the last few decades, always with a soulful beauty and integrity that is all his own and which I have always loved. He played at Nelson Mandela's presidential inauguration ceremony.


Jon Hassell: Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street from Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street (ECM)

From Jon Hassell's website:
"A childhood in Memphis, a classical conservatory education, composition and electronic music study with Stockhausen in Cologne; a passage through the New York minimalist sphere with Terry Riley, Reich, Glass; having a window opened onto the world's music and a new approach to the trumpet via vocal master Pandit Pran Nath; a questioning and deconstruction of the European dichotomy between classical and popular, sacred and sensual; a pioneer of digital transformation and sampling—all of this led to Fourth World—the unique blend described as "worldly music" to underline a more subtle equation at work and discourage the simplistic labeling of "world," "jazz," "classical," "minimal," or "ambient.""

Bach: Partita for Solo Flute in A Minor; Jean-Pierre Rampal, flute, from Johann Sebastian Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Flute

"For me, the flute is really the sound of humanity, the sound of man flowing, completely free from his body almost without an intermediary. . . . Playing the flute is not as direct as singing, but it's nearly the same."-- Jean-Pierre Rampal

Stephen Fearing: Goodnight Moon from Yellowjacket (Northern Blues)

Stephen Fearing is coming to the Keep the Beat event at Lakeside Park in Nelson this summer, much to the delight of my daughters Rosie and Laura who are among the organizers of the event and also his nieces (he's their Mom's brother).
He can sing in a very high range and this lovely song is proof of that.

Shankar & Ali Akbar Khan, Szeryng Plays Bach: Playlist for The Open Window, May 4, 2009

The Open Window airs at www.cjly.net Mondays at 6:30 am and Sundays at 10 am.

Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan: Hem Bihag, from In Concert 1972 (Apple)

Henryk Szeryng: Partita #2 in D Minor, from Bach: The Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas

Corazón and Allison Girvan: Playlist for Beethoven's Breakfast for April 6, 2009

Beethoven's Breakfast airs at 6:30 am Mondays PDT at www.cjly.net

Corazón Vocal Ensemble (Allison Girvan, Director): Living in a Holy City, Naked as we Came, U Mandela, MLK, Lonesome Road, Turot Eszik A Cigny, One Voice, Nella Fantasia, Di Ni Siphonono and Tiregere from Voice to Voice (Independent)

Corazón was recently recognized as the Cultural Ambassador for the City of Nelson, and you can read about that in my Waking Before Dawn blog. That post also contains a bit of a tribute to Corazón from one parent speaking for many parents of teenage girls in this town.

This CD was recorded in May, 2008, at the Capitol Theatre. My daughters Laura and Rosie were two of the 50 voices in the group at that time, and had been for several years, so I am fondly familiar with all these songs in many languages and from everywhere: Namibia, Romania, Quebec, The Wailin' Jennys, James Taylor, Ennio Morricone, U2.

There were some superstar singers in the group then, but they've gone now, graduated and moved on, including Eden Richmond, Malaika Horswill, Laura Metcalfe, Oscar Derkx, Anneke McGivern, Hila Silver, and more. This is a welcome record of their inspired work. Since then, a new set of soloists and leaders has stepped forward.

The CD was produced in Nelson by Don MacDonald and Rylen Kewen.

Janos Starker: Cello Suite #2 from J.S. Bach Suites for Solo Cello (RCA)

"I was often asked why, at age 70, I am recording Bach's Suites for the fifth time when previous statements have been received with praise....Playing Bach is a never-ending quest for beauty, as well as in some sense, the truth. One only hopes to get near to it..." That's Janos Starker quoted from the notes of this 1992 recording.

Cello: Playlist for Beethoven's Breakfast March 16, 2009

www.cjly.net Mondays at 6:30 am PST

Wendy Sutter: Songs 1, 2, 3, and 4, from Philip Glass: Songs and Poems for Solo Cello (Orange Mountain)

This music was written by Philip Glass and Wendy Sutter collaboratively in 2007. In addition to the six songs/poems, we have a series of four pieces called Tissues, for cello, piano, and/or percussion. I find the pieces with just cello and percussion especially wonderful.

"Glass has remarked frequently on the comparison of the range of the cello to that of the human voice. While thoroughly composed for the voice of the cello, a certain singing quality pervades his solo writing. The work itself, at once introspective, pensive and self-analyzing flows with timelessness and unrepentant musicality ..." (from the notes by Richard Guerin)

Maria Schneider Orchestra: Sky Blue from Sky Blue (ArtistShare)
Gil Evans: Where Flamingos Fly from Out of the Cool (Impulse)

Two pieces from teacher (Evans) and student (Schneider, who studied with him). She carries on his tradition of careful, complex, and stately compositions and arrangements for large jazz group. Gil Evans is the man who did the orchestrations for Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. These two pieces are vehicles for two beautiful soloists: Steve Wilson, soprano saxophone on Sky Blue, and the late and under-appreciated Jimmy Knepper, trombone, on Flamingos. Watch Maria Schneider conducting on You Tube.

Janos Starker: Cello Suite #1 from J.S. Bach Suites for Solo Cello (RCA)

"I was often asked why, at age 70, I am recording Bach's Suites for the fifth time when previous statements have been received with praise....Playing Bach is a never-ending quest for beauty, as well as in some sense, the truth. One only hopes to get near to it..." That's Janos Starker quoted from the notes of this 1992 recording.

Shankar, Glass, Gould: Playlist for Beethoven's Breakfast for February 23, 2009

www.cjly.net Mondays at 6:30 am

Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass: Prashanti and Offering from Passages (Private Music Inc.)

What a discovery! They made this CD in 1990, and I just found out about it. It's a true collaboration: some tracks are based on a Glass theme with a Shankar arrangement built around it, and some are the other way around. There are two ensembles, one led by Shankar and one by Glass. Sometimes they play separately and sometimes together. On Offering, for example, the melody is from a Shankar raga but it's played by a saxophone and there is not an Indian instrument in sight.

The notes quote Shankar remembering Paris in 1965 when the very young Glass was a student doing transcription work for a film score that Shankar was recording. Ravi recalls: From the very first moment I saw such interest from him-- he was a young man then-- and he started asking me questions about ragas and talas and started writing down the whole score....and seeing how interested he was I told him everything I could in that short time."

And Glass wrote, "It was possible to graduate from a major Western conservatory...without exposure to music from outside the Western tradition. World music was completely unknown in the mid-60's."

Glenn Gould: Partita No. 4 from Bach: Partitas No. 4, 5, and 6 (Sony)

The notes quote a writer from Bach's time exclaiming that any young pianist could easily make a name for himself by playing this new music by Bach. And some did just that, including, more than 200 years later in the 1950's and 60's, Glenn Gould, Canada's greatest musician.

Gypsy Clarinet in Turkey, A Polish Refugee in Mexico, An Exuberant Trumpet, Man on Wire: Playlist for Beethoven's Breakfast, February 2, 2009

www.cjly.net, Mondays at 6:30 am PST

Anouar Brahem: Aube Rouge à Grozny, Astara, Karakoum, and Blue Jewels from Astrakan Café (ECM)

When I travelled to Greece as a young man I occasionally heard, in recorded music in cafes and in the street, an otherworldly kind of clarinet playing, very enticing, not like the usual Greek bouzouki music, and nothing like the clarinet technique or style I had learned in school. Then I travelled to Turkey and got a glimpse of the other world those clarinets were calling out from.

One of the highlights of this CD for me is the presence of Barbaros Erkose, a gypsy clarinetist from Istanbul. Even though I stopped playing the clarinet decades ago, I still understand its language. Listening to this CD and I am thrilled by the wildness and sophistication of Erkose's playing. The tone he gets on his clarinet is like nothing I have ever heard: the ones we are used to are jazz and classical and maybe klezmer, and this is none of those.

Anouar Brahem, the leader of the trio on this CD, likens his inspiration to "the tree which, while rising above the ground and taking up more space, continues to develop and dig its roots deeper into the ground," an image appropriate to his home city of Tunis, a multifaceted place with Arabic-Moslem roots and African and Mediterranean influences.

Anouar Brahem is a celebrated player of the oud, which is an Arabic version of the lute. He was born in 1957 in Tunisia and by the age of 10 had entered the Tunisia Conservatory of Music and by 15 was playing with local orchestras. Since then he has reinvigorated traditional Tunisian music and has experimented with other Arabic traditions as well, with the result today being a body of work that spans the entire Arabic and European worlds. In addition to being a solo performer with small and large groups, he has worked as an orchestra director and teacher, and has written music for film, theatre, and dance. The third musician in this trio is percussionist Lassad Hosni.

Henryk Szeryng: Partita No.3 E Major BVW 1006, from Bach: The Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas (Odyssey)

The Polish violinist Henryk Szeryng became a citizen of Mexico part way through this life for some fascinating reasons.

In World War II, Szeryng, already a prominent violin soloist in Poland and a scholar who spoke eight languages, became chief liaison officer for the Polish government in exile in London. At the same time, he gave hundreds of concerts for Allied troops all over the world. In 1942 he went to Mexico where the Polish president in exile was searching for a home for thousands of Polish refugees displaced by the war. Mexico accepted them, and Henryk Szeryng was so moved by this humanitarian gesture that he returned to Mexico in 1943, where he was offered the post of director of the string department at the National University of Mexico. In recognition of his musical and cultural contribution, he was granted Mexican citizenship in 1948.

He regularly gave concerts all over Latin America until his friend the pianist Arthur Rubenstein persuaded him to extend his solo career further afield, and this began several decades of concerts, recordings, and acclaim worldwide.

Szeryng was appointed Mexican Roving Ambassador for Culture in 1956 and Special Music Advisor to the Mexican Permanent Delegation to UNESCO. He was the first artist ever to travel on a diplomatic passport.

Henryk Szeryng died in September, 2008. His memorial website is here: http://www.henrykszeryng.net/

His recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin is one of the highlights of his career, and of this radio show. About Bach, Szeryng said, "Johann Sebastian Bach's work is a Bible. Bach is the ultimate goal, this is where everything starts and everything ends. His music brings you closer to your own spirit, even to analyzing your own spirit and soul. It has an incredible serenity. If people think that a choral or an Adagio, a Cantilena produces this miracle, I would say that even fast movements, a Presto or a quick Allegro, can make you feel more cheerful, more secure, more optimistic."

Herbie Hancock: Maiden Voyage from Maiden Voyage (Blue Note)

This is part two of my tribute to jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who died recently at age 70. This classic recording from 1965 captures the essence of a certain spirit of adventure that produced effortless flight at Blue Note records in the 1960's, and it is one of Hubbard's finest performances. On this track you can hear his thoughtfulness, his exuberance, and his complete focus within the open harmonies of Hancock's new direction. George Coleman, Tony Williams, and Ron Carter shared the date.

The vinyl LP my listeners heard here is the very one I bought when Maiden Voyage was first released. I realized in the radio studio that the record doesn't sound so great any more. It's worn out. I need to buy the CD.

Aldo Ciccolini: Trois Gymnopédies from Piano Music of Eric Satie Volume 1 (Angel)

A few months ago I went to see the film Man on Wire, and last night watched it again with my daughter, and I was struck both times by how perfect this piece was for the final scenes when Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between the tops of the twin towers in New York. http://manonwire.com/