Erik Friedlander, Marjan Mozetich, Grandpa Elliott, Playing for Change: Playlist for The Open Window, June 1, 2009

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

Erik Friedlander: King Rig, Dream Song, Airstream Envy, Rushmore, and Valley of Fire from Block Ice and Propane: Compositions and Improvisations for Solo Cello (Skipstone)

I have played this CD a few times on my music shows and it always elicits someone calling and saying "Who was that?" Cellist Erik Friedlander has played with John Zorn, Laurie Anderson and Courtney Love and he has also recorded 9 CDs as a leader. He's best known as an avant-garde jazz etc. player, but this one is a stunning solo synthesis of various kinds of American roots music, whatever that means, played with friendly virtuosity on bowed and plucked cello plus a bit of electronics occasionally. Just a few notes in to the CD you'll know that this is the real thing and you will have to buy it.

Marjan Mozetich: Affairs of the Heart: Concerto for Violin and Strings Orchestra performed by Juliette Kang, violin, with Mario Bernardi and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra from Affairs of the Heart (CBC)

Bob Olsen, who knows a lot more about classical music than I, hosts Classical Corner on Kootenay Co-op Radio and he loaned me this CD after I heard it on his show. Marjan Mozetich is a Canadian composer who started out as a committed creator and teacher of very avant-garde music. He then underwent a serious about-face in the 1970s, when he started writing music that is part post-modernism (Glass, Reich, Reilly) and part 19th-century Romanticism. It's a fascinating combination. He made this change, he is quoted in the CD notes as saying, because "that world had become sterile: composers were supposed to create a hypothesis and then realize it musically, like a research paper. I thought it was ridiculous."


Playing for Change: Stand by Me, from Songs Around the World (Hear Music)

Head for the internet and look up Playing for Change and watch a great series of music videos performed by dozens of people from around the world, playing their own parts in their own country, mostly outdoors, then edited and united by technology and the impulse to unite us all. Stand by Me is opened by two amazing street singers, Roger Ridley and Grandpa Elliott, but we also see/hear musicians and singers from Holland, South Africa, Congo, Spain, Russia, France, Venezuela, and Italy.

Silk Road, Wynton, Zorn: Playlist for Beethoven's Breakfast April 20, 2009

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

Silk Road Music: Sparkling Dew and Autumn Cloud from Autumn Cloud: A Journey With Her Pipa (Silk Road Music)

At the recent Northwest Guitar Festival in Nelson I was delighted to make the acquaintance of Qiu Xia He from China who plays the pipa, Chinese lute-like instrument, in the duo Silk Road Music. Her partner in the group is Andre Thibault, guitar. They played a lovely set of Chinese music that crossed over into Brazil, India, Morocco, and other places. Qiu Xia played one solo: a classical Chinese piece that was very moving and I think it was the first time I have ever felt that way about Chinese music which has always seemed inaccessible. I was impressed by her gentle charisma, also.

Wynton Marsalis: Haydn, Trumpet Concerto with Raymond Leppard and the National Philharmonic Orchestra (CBS)

Wynton Marsalis was just a kid when he made this record-- 20 years old. He is probably the world's most successful jazz-classical crossover artist. I am not sure how the classical music establishment views this and other classical records Marsalis has made, but to my ears he approaches this music with panache and virtuosity. Do I hear a few more more notes that are slurred, jazz-like, than we would hear from a purely classical trumpeter?

Masada String Trio: Sippur, Taharah and Hoodaah, from The Circle Maker (Tzadik)

The wildly prolific John Zorn never stops changing. This is chamber music for string trio with influences from the worlds of jazz, klezmer, Middle Eastern and classical. It's his attempt to create a new form of Jewish music. The excellent trio members are Greg Cohen, bass; Mark Feldman, violin; and Eric Friedlander, cello. The music walks a lovely line between comfortable, gentle grooves and curious wanderings from the path.