Month: October 2014

When Jack Bruce died at the age of 71 the other day, the grief and praise were equilateral—I didn’t hear sectarian sniffing about rock thisaway and jazz thataway from anyone anywhere: seems he was loved in all departments for his rock heldentenor, his bravura bassplaying in any number of idioms; and that indicates general recognition of the power of music pouring out of the man. Next week Kip Hanrahan, who worked with Jack on a number of projects over a thirty-year span, will clock in with a show more deeply felt and informed than anything I can provide, but I thought I’d get a memorial set in anyway—Friday at 8PM and noon next Tuesday, off-Broadway time. There’s some Cream and Lifetime but more than half of it scattershots Jack’s work with Hanrahan. There was not much precedent for the singing Kip asked Jack to do—unrhymed poetry of extreme intelligence, powerfully sexual, political and confessional while also lifting the lid on minds and souls all over the modern world, plus Latin percussion as not heard before, plus advanced jazz musicians finding their freedom in the mix—but Jack absolutely nailed it, then lifted it skyward. Sorry Kip but I have to say it: overall it’s one of the major accomplishments of modern American music. (And for my Mistake of the Week I kept saying Belfast instead of Glasgow.) Then it’s okay to present the brilliant young pianist Igor Levit taking leave of late Beethoven for Bach’s Partitas; he was Schnabelescent with LvB and I hear Lipatti this time out; but the cat can play and it’s a pleasure to hear a Bach pianist who doesn’t try to sound like Gould. Then two more from Branford at Grace Cathedral, chased though not chastened by Trane, and last another Mozart piano concerto, in which apparent thematic simplicity yields a dialogue of beauty and grace that is balm from Gilead and if you tilt your head just right will tell you everything you need to know.

This week on Taint Howling’s having happy accidents, promoting the mandolin and admiring an ageing troubadour. Whats this got to do with anything? Well, he doesn’t know either! But don’t worry, Dick’s porch is always the right place to be for an hour of the finest blues ‘n roots on the net.

 Ike Turner – “No poster boy for womens lib”

I have the feeling I’m behind the curve on this one, and that a lot of my listeners have heard Flying Lotus, aka Steven Ellison, before I did; but at least once I heard his new album, some kind of funky tour of the Bardos called You’re Dead, I put a bunch of it on the first available Updoc—8PM Friday and noon next Tuesday. It’s his sixth record, he’s 31 years old and is related to the Coltrane family, and he composes, plays, assembles, mixes, and yes, raps, gets Herbie Hancock to collaborate, and doesn’t sound much like anyone else out there. I know, doesn’t sound like Updoc’s usual fare, and that’s good, even if after it we get onto Christopher Rouse’s pull-no-punches Concerto Per Corde, a 1990 an orchestral recomposition of his 2^nd String Quartet, and then there’s a mostly ballad jazz set featuring Branford Marsalis live and unaccompanied at SF’s Grace Cathedral, more Haden-Hall and Barron-Holland duets, and before Carl Nielsen’s imposing 5^th Symphony rattles the rafters with echoes of war—it premiered in 1920, when the echoes hadn’t faded—and sounds the prayerful longing for peace that drew many composers at the time, darkly though not entirely without hope. After that Sonny Rollins and Philly Joe Jones trade witticisms that provide a smile at the exit.

This week Howling’s drowning on the porch, relenting on previous decisions and revealing whats wrong with the world. In between all this monesense he plays some of the best blues ‘n roots you’ll hear on the net.

Lonesome Shack – Blues “down to the bone”

When the temperature outside cools down, the body may seek escape southward but the soul, it seems to me, orients itself to the north and begins to contemplate the areas of human experience corresponding to the cold and hard; at least that’s what happens to my listening habits, and this week I got as far as Finland, that nation of a mere 5.3 million souls contributing a disproportionate wealth of sound to first-rate modern ‘classical’ music. First Finn up on this week’s show—8PM on Friday and noon next Tuesday, NY Rangers icetime—is Kajia Saariaho’s Oltra Mar (Across the Sea) with its ice-crystal textures wrought in orchestra and chorus. Later on there’s Magnus Lindberg’s Violin Concerto, which proceeds from icy altitudes toward melodic shelter, and in between the two youngsters the Papadaddy of Finnish music: Jean Sibelius represented by a towering performance of his tone poem The Oceanides. But that’s not all, folks: there’s jazz and more: newly released tracks of duet performances by Charlie Haden and Jim Hall in concert and by Kenny Barron and Dave Holland in the studio begin and end the show, with interstitial stuffing from Jason Moran’s newish tribute album to Fats Waller, the haunting though unhaunted voice of Aoife O’Donovan has me in its spell, twice, and then there’s some new Prince with his shadowband 3rdEyeGirl. You can’t ask for more than that, and if you can, I’d need more than two hours to answer you, so please set yourself down and take what you can get, with the blessing.