Month: August 2013

When you hear a great symphonic recording, if you feel it you know it: easy. Trying to figure out why it’s so great may take some time. In Eugen Jochum’s 1964 recording of Anton Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic—which leads off this week’s Updoc, Friday at 9PM, noon next Tuesday, NY Philharmonic time—what struck me first of all was Jochum’s absolute conviction in the music, the sense that he knows what every note in the hourlong piece is doing there, then his grasp of such a potentially sprawling piece—left unfinished at the composer’s death in 1896—in all its deep continuity. Arguably, and pace Wilhelm Furtwängler, this is the greatest Bruckner recording ever made. Emotions are pitched to their extremes in the first movement, and you can hear a few things Mahler lifted: he was writing his Third at the time and had access to Bruckner’s score, begun in 1888. Played with two minds, or a bit of embarrassment, the pounding triple meter of the following scherzo can sound like a hundred elephants jumping up and down in unison, but Jochum takes it on without blinking or flinching, and puts it over. The last, radiant slow movement, from which Mahler clearly lifted elements in his Third and Ninth . . . well, Bruckner dedicated this symphony “To God the Beloved,” and there it is. (You can also hear where Leonard Bernstein got a piece of “Tonight.”) Its last measures are as poignant a farewell to life as Mahler ever penned, though shorter and without wringing of hands. It’s such a gobsmacking finish that a concluding fourth movement, honestly, would be redundant. The rest of the show? Well, it’s even got something by the Kinks, and for sheer beauty and bliss Charpentier’s Litanies de la Vierge. You could do worse than tune in, but why?

This week Howling’s pleading not guilty to visiting ladies of the night but does admit to being in a hot bed! What with that,TV cop shows and moving continents it all adds up to another wonderful hour of blues and roots from Dicks porch!

Tennessee Ernie Ford – Weighed in at 16 Tons!

Christian McBride’s new trio record with Christian Sands and Ulysses Owens Jr. is so good it relieves me of all worry about the contemporary jazz scene, and I’d already programmed it to lead the show—Friday at 8PM, noon next Tuesday, East Side Bagel time—and had put a Dexter Gordon set featuring Cedar Walton in the middle when the news of Walton’s passing came in. I reversed the order—Cedar is fantastic on the album, Generation, with Freddie, Buster and Billy too—and put his classics Mosaic and Ugetsu at the end. I heard Cedar Walton a lot growing up, close up in Al Heath’s trio at the Five Spot and then with Art Blakey and the Messengers, and have long been a grateful fan of his artistry and person. Playing him on the show’s not much payback but at least I can do it. Also in the middle, Seven Early Songs by Alban Berg—night and death and love and such—which Barbara Bonney sings the heaven and hell out of—and what I think is Einojuhani Rautavaara’s finest symphony, Angel of Light. I wish Cedar Walton no less than that, and in fact even better.

This week, Howling’s porch hosts jazz singers, cowboy poets, prison choirs and a certain Captain all joining in on the usual shenanigans of classic and contemporary blues and roots.

Dizzy Gillespie – Who said this was a blues show????

On their new record, That’s It!, New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Band has moved on from the replication of traditional New Orleans jazz standards and practices to original compositions and styles of play that make them into a more total New Orleans heritage band. This week’s Updoc—Friday at 8PM and noon next Tuesday, Eastern Seaboard Time—starts off with the roarimg freight train of the title tune in a set that also inclues, let’s see, Christian McBride along with Hank Jones and also on his fine new trio album, something from the Goat Rodeo sessions, some Roma music, more Pres Hall, and ends with a stunning song in Yiddish sung by Lucette Van Den Berg you will just have to hear to believe. Then Wittold Lutoslawski and Krystian Zimmerman ask and answer in the affirmative the question: is it possible to compose a high modernist masterpiece piano concerto in the 1980s? There’s a Coltranish set, some of it from Chick Corea’s news CD with Ravi Coltrane in his father’s role, and some of it actually featuring his fatherl and finally Benjamin Britten’s orchestral Opus One, which shows what you can do if you’re a young genius stepping out in the sunlight and taking a breath.

Howling reveals family secrets, finds some new friends in Arkansas  and ends up where he began.

Yes folks, yet another surreal hour on the porch with your old friend Dick playing great blues ‘n roots.

Chester Burnett – Great singer – stupid nickname