J.D. Salinger is gone. Yeah sure, he’s been ‘gone’ for a long time, in his own way. But Catcher In The Rye is still some powerful stuff after all of these years.
I had a sort of different experience with that novel, not reading it until I was in my thirties. By then, I was up to my eyeballs in ‘phonies.’
Read the full Friday Morning Listen at Blogcritics magazine.
With all of the snarky & ugly sentiments flying around our modern society, it is sometimes necessary to step back and soak in a little uplift. Poet & singer provides the source material, presented with a bunch of grooves that are just too snazzy to ignore.
Read the full review of The Poetry of Groove at Blogcritics magazine.
The ObliqSound label is on a roll, there’s no doubt about it.
Abyss is Jacques Schwarz-Bart’s tribute to his parents and it is a beautiful thing, drawing in all of huge musical influences to produce music that’s tough to categorize. Funny, I say that about nearly everything coming out of that label.
Read the full review of Abyss at Blogcritics magazine.
OK, here’s a quick lesson in free jazz: there’s ‘out’ and then there’s ‘out‘.
Got that? Yeah, right.
Matthew Shipp is one of my favorite piano players. He one of those musicians who manage to pack so many ideas into a small space.
Read the full review of 4D at Blogcritics magazine.
Longtime readers won’t be surprised to see me singing the praises of my favorite jazz guitar player here. OK, Pat Metheny is my favorite guitar player, period.
Orchestrion is no ordinary Metheny project. This one involves engineers, scientists, modern technology, and old technology. All of this is combined to create something new and very cool. The “modern orchestrion”. Think of it as the player piano brought into the present. Or something.
Whatever you call it, the music is indeed beautiful.
Read the full review of Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion at Blogcritics magazine.
I don’t think about song lyrics very often, which might strike you as kind of odd since I listen to music nearly constantly.
Well yeah, I suppose it is sort of odd. But there’s a reason.
Read the full Friday Morning Listen at Blogcritics magazine.
Bill Frisell. Marc Ribot. Are they jazz guitar players? Avant-garde? Roots? Country? Rock?
I love it when these questions have to be asked.
The same question needs to be asked about Juozas Milasius.
Music can tell a story. No words are necessary. Still, this idea is sort of hard to explain.
Maybe the best way to get there is by example.
Read my review of Those Moments Before at Blogcritics magazine.
The devastation in Haiti is so awful that it’s hard to get your head wrapped around it.
Apparently though, some people have better things to do than to help out. Yeah, it’s the usual suspects, but a whole bunch of other people.
Read the full Friday Morning Listen at Blogcritics magazine.
This record made my best of ‘09 list for a bunch of reasons, the most basic of which is that the disc spent a ton of time in my CD player.
Improvised music like this can be a challenge to describe. I don’t see it as a challenge so much as an opportunity.
Read the full review of Koan at Blogcritics magazine.