Bartok, Toumani Diabate, Amir Koushkani, Sal Ferreras, Francois Houle: Playlist for The Open Window for June 22, 2009

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

Safa: Chahar Mezrab from Alight (Songlines)

This 2002 recording is the only one ever made by this wonderful group consisting of Amir Koushkani, the Iranian-Canadian player of the stringed instruments the tar and the setar, Vancouver percussionist Sal Ferreras and Vancouver classical/jazz/other clarinetist Francois Houle.

I played this for the people of Iran.

Francois Houle is a brilliant musician who has made a career of bringing classical training and sound to free jazz and to world music. It is really a revelation to hear classical clarinet tone quality applied to other kinds of music-- in this CD it lifts everything to a new realm of openness and clarity. Combine that with the performance of Amir Koushkani which "exudes a passionate air that reaches deeply into our souls. His voice speaks a musical language of longing, ecstasy and joy." (Sal Ferreras from the CD notes.)

And Sal Ferreras is world music percussion itself.

Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra; Seiji Ozawa and the Chicago Symphony from Bartok Concerto for Orchestra and Kodaly Dances of Galanta (Angel)

No photo of the album because it is so entirely out of print. This is one of the most colorful and dramatic orchestral pieces anywhere: interesting combinations of instruments combined with harmonies and melodies from the folk life of Bartok's native Hungary create one of Bartok's most "accessible" works. It was written in the U.S. in 1943 shortly before Bartok's death.

Toumani Diabate: El Nabiyouna and Canatelowes from The Mande Variations (Nonesuch)

More sophisticated harp from the desert. See previous post.

Vivaldi, Toumani Diabate, Rachmaninoff: Playlist for The Open Window for June 15, 2009

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

Toumani Diabate: Elyne Road, Ali Farka Toure, Ismael Drame, Cantalowes, from The Mande Variations (Nonesuch)

Toumani Diabate has picked up influences from the music of other countries without making his music sound more like pop or electronica or a world music mashup. It's purely a solo kora CD, and lovely. It's new.

"The Mande Variations breaks new ground for the kora in many ways, establishing this West African harp as one of the world's great solo instruments. It reflects Toumani's extraordinary personal and musical journey over the past two decades, taking on ideas and approaches from styles as diverse as western pop, Indian classical, flamenco, and blues, but all ultimately remaining firmly rooted in the Malian griot music that is his heritage." -- from the CD notes

Antonio Vivaldi, Summer, from the Four Seasons; the English Chamber Orchestra, Nigel Kennedy conductor and solo violinist (EMI)

Well, it's almost summer. Vivaldi's summer has both calm and storms.






Sergei Rachmaninoff: Andante from Sonata for Violoncello Op.19, Serenade in B-flat minor Op.3-5, and Romance in F minor Op.10-6; Arkady Volodos, piano, from Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #3 and Solo Piano Works (Sony)

Some nice short solo piano pieces, skirting around the entirely other planet of the Concerto #3 which is also on this CD-- some other time.

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.

Saluzzi, Lechner, bandoneon, cello, Mozart, flute, harp: Playlist for The Open Window May 25, 2009

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

Dino Saluzzi and Anja Lechner: Tango a mi Padre, Minguito, and Carretas from Ojos Negros (ECM)

"Visitors to Saluzzi's rich landscape of memories, emotions, colours, and atmospheres are warmly welcomed-- on the understanding that
not all secrets will be revealed instantly. So: slow down, take your time, listen....the Saluzzi bandoneon has sung its stories everywhere. It has been heard in the mountain villages and the big city, in the concert hall and the bar, in the church and the bordello, at chamber music recitals, jazz festivals, dances...He has worked with tango players folk musicians, jazz improvisers, classical musicians...." from the excellent and extensive notes by Steve Lake.

Saluzzi plays the bandoneon, the concertina-like centre of tango music, but the music is not exactly tango. It's an undefinable and subtle emotional meditation, rubato but with a pulse always there somewhere. He is joined by the cellist Anja Lechner and their collaboration is as inspired as the beautiful photos of them in the CD booklet.

Mozart: Concerto for Flute and Harp-- Jean-Pierre Rampal, Lily Laskine, and the Jean-Francois Paillard Chamber Orchestra (Erato)

When Mozart wrote this at the age of 22 in the early 1700s, music for harp and orchestra was unheard of. In the 19th century, music for flute and harp became quite common. So Mozart started something with this lovely piece.

Boieldieu, Doug Cox, Salil Bhatt, Swing Era: Playlist for the Open Window for May 18, 2009

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

Doug Cox and Salil Bhatt: Blessings from Slide to Freedom (Northern Blues)

The blues and Indian music from Vancouver Island's resonator lap guitar guy Doug Cox. The cross genre improvisations are great; the covers of blues tunes so-so.

Boieldieu: Concerto for Harp--Paul Keuntz Chamber Orchestra of Paris; Marie-Claire Jamet, harp, from Boieldieu: Harp and Piano Concertos

Francois-Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834)was an opera composer I had never heard of. This lovely concerto awakens me to the delicacy precision that is possible on the harp.

Erskine Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Carter, Gene Krupa, various pieces from The Swing Era: 1944-45 (Time-Life)

Swing bands from the time of my parents' youth.

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

Shakuhachi, Zen, Ellington, Kokopelli, Fasch: Playlist for The Open Window for April 27, 2009

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

Katsuya Yokokama: Tamuke and Honshirabe from Zen: Katsuya Yokoyama Plays Classical Shakuhachi Masterworks (Spectrum)

This solo shakuhachi music is genuinely meditative, not fake meditative like most of the new age music played in yoga classes these days.

The album notes say that this is "religious music which does not aim at variation or development but expresses repose, a sense of nature....."

In the moment, as they say, and surprising at every turn.

Duke Ellington: Bluebird of Delhi, Depk, Mount Harissa, and Amad from Far East Suite (Bluebird)

The Ellington orchestra toured the Middle East and Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 1963. The trip was cut short by the news of the assassination of President Kennedy. "World music" was unheard of in those days. No one in North America save a few scholars was familiar with anything but Western music.

"The tour was a great adventure for us on what is indeed the other side of the world," Ellington wrote in the album notes. "Sometimes I felt it was this world upside down. The look of the natural country is so unlike ours and the very contours of the earth seem to be different. The smell, the vastness, the birds, and the exotic beauty of all these countries make a great inspiration."

"I hope much will go into this music," he continued, "but doing a parallel to the East has its problems. ....I don't want to try to copy this rhythm or that scale. It is more valuable to have absorbed while there. You let it roll around, undergo a chemical change, and then seep out on paper in the form that will suit the musicians who are going to play it."

Kokopelli: Con que la Lavare, Christmas Angel, Dubela, and Wanane from Spirit (independent)

This is the 50-voice Edmonton group that has been the big-city sibling to our own Corazon for some years, both ensembles having visited and performed for each other. Kokopelli's singers are a bit older-- most are out of high school, but they're still pretty young. They are coming to Nelson to perform twice next week, and three of their new members this year are my daughter Laura Metcalfe, Malaika Horswill, and Oscar Derkx. They all sang in Corazon for years and then moved to Edmonton to go to university and were welcomed into Kokopelli. I'm very excited to see them perform here, not only because of Laura, but the other two as well: I've known Oscar and Malaika since they, along with Laura, were on theatre and music stages in Nelson as little children.

Maurice Andre and Orchestre de Chambre directed by Jean-Francois Paillard: Johann Friedrich Fasch, Trumpet Concerto from Le Canon de Pachelbel & Le Concerto Pour Trompette de Fasch (Erato)

Following on last weeks Haydn Trumpet Concerto, another one, this time featuring the great Maurice Andre.