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onstage Hopkinson Smith at Taplin Auditorium, Princeton, April 2005
04/28/05
Once upon a time, when the world was much quieter, the lute was the premier, princely instrumental voice -- intimate, complex and expressive, ideal for accompanying songs and dances or for playing solo. Not long after Bach and Vivaldi's day, though, the lute was overwhelmed by the noise of incipient modernity. Playing the lute today requires the soul of a poet and the curiosity of a scientist. It seemed apt that Hopkinson Smith, one of the world's rare masters of the lute, would perform at Fine Hall's Taplin Auditorium on the Princeton University Campus. Walking the Fine corridors at intermission, one could see blackboards filled with the equations of higher mathematics, as Greek to most people as the antique manuscripts Smith pores through for his repertoire. Cultured and confident in his way but shyly soft-spoken, the 58-year-old Smith seems every inch the poet-scientist. The New York-born, Harvard-trained sage of many archaic plucked instruments now resides in Switzerland, where he teaches at Basel's Schola Cantorum, a hallowed academy for early music. Smith's more than 20 solo recordings -- of Milan, Gallot, Weiss, Bach -- are like an illuminated manuscript in sound, articulating a whole world of ancient scores, abstruse techniques and deep, timeless emotions.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 04:34:42 am
onstage Robert Plant at Irving Plaza, New York City, March 2005
04/28/05
Beyond good genes, aging gracefully in rock'n'roll entails imagination, the ability to look beyond the usual grist for fresh inspiration and context. As far as the solo careers of legendary rock front men go, former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant's path has never been more admirable in that respect. Plant's solo stage has lasted far longer than that of his original band by this point, and while he has never commanded the same sort of profile on his own, he has never succumbed to becoming an oldies act or a trend chaser. His appreciation for a wider world of music and flair for gathering younger musicians around him has lately yielded Strange Sensation, which played a rare club show at Manhattan's Irving Plaza.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 04:33:07 am
artifact Elvis Costello, "King of America" (Rhino, 1986/2005) and "Club Date: Live in Memphis" (Eagle Vision, 2005)
04/28/05
As a Liverpudlian, Elvis Costello grew up on the banks of the Mersey, not the Mississippi. But his ear has long been attuned to the river-deep strains of the American South. Costello and his Attractions sought to inject the sound of Southern soul into such albums as Get Happy, and they collided with country on Almost Blue. Costello crowned his early Americana fixation with 1986's King of America, produced by T-Bone Burnett and featuring such players as ex-Elvis Presley guitarist James Burton. The album now comes remastered and refurbished with a 21-track bonus disc as the latest in Rhino's Costello reissue series. As usual, the deluxe package includes a revealing booklet essay by the artist himself.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 04:12:09 am
onstage Elvis Costello at Avery Fisher Hall, New York, July 2004
04/28/05
For pop musicians, there is a fine line between artistic ambitions and pretension. What enables one to earn the tag of intrepid, while another is labeled a poser? A long litany of rock artists have sought to mature gracefully by composing "classical" music, whether or not they could actually orchestrate or even read music on paper. Unlike some of his illustrious peers, Elvis Costello took the trouble to learn skills that he could easily have done without as a successful singer/songwriter. Costello's first orchestral work, the ballet score Il Sogno ("The Dream"), garnered its North American premiere as the final panel in the 2004 Lincoln Center Festival's triptych devoted to his versatile muse and marking his 50th birthday. (On previous nights, he sang in front of a jazz orchestra and with his rock combo, the Imposters.) The piece brims with color and charm of a kind wholly distinct from Costello's pop music or even his classically oriented song cycle, The Juliet Letters.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 04:10:49 am
artifact The Balanescu Quartet, "Maria T" (Mute, 2005) and The Brodsky Quartet, "Moodswings" (Brodsky Records, 2005)
04/28/05
From Beethoven to Shostakovich, the string quartet has often been the medium for composers to channel their most personal and forward-looking creations. Such groups as the Kronos Quartet reinvented the string quartet's status as an ultra-contemporary, multicultural vehicle. Based in the U.K., the Balanescu Quartet and Brodsky Quartet have expanded notions of the string quartet in their own, often pop-accented directions.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 04:03:56 am
featurewell Pat Metheny, March 2005
04/28/05
One might not think that something as seemingly abstract as an hour-plus instrumental jazz composition would be the stuff of a manifesto. But guitarist Pat Metheny's ambitious new work is rooted in a political, or at least philosophical, statement. The Pat Metheny Group's album The Way Up consists of a through-composed, many-hued suite, composed by Metheny with longtime keyboard partner Lyle Mays and performed with a fresh incarnation of his electric, multicultural six-piece group. Metheny says the suite's expansive character stems "from a rejection of all the scaling back in our culture, where so much is reduced to sound bites and nuance goes out the window. We strove to offer an alternative in size and detail, in the spirit of challenge." The challenge goes beyond scale, though. "There has always been a political component to jazz -- just look at the ramifications of free jazz behind the Iron Curtain," Metheny says. "We're living in a politically and culturally polarized time in our country, even in terms of jazz; and we declare a proud allegiance to a liberal, inclusive, contemporary aesthetic. In a blue/red, left/right world, we are as blue and as left as you could be."
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:51:04 am
featurewell Jordi Savall, March 2005
04/28/05
History is littered with wonderful things discarded on the march of progress. Globalization today has merely sped up this process exponentially, "so that thousands of cultural nuances are lost by the year," Jordi Savall says. "But nuance isn't decorative -- it is essential to communication, in art as in life." Recovering lost nuance is Savall's raison d'etre. He is the world's foremost master of the viola da gamba, the fretted, seven-string instrument superseded by the cello in the late Baroque era. The simpler, more sonorous cello took its place in a future of larger ensembles in bigger halls. Yet the complex, intimate sound of the viola da gamba, or viol -- which "mimics the human voice in all its modulations, even in its profoundest accents of sadness and joy," according to a 17th-century treatise -- was lost for ages. For all of Savall's immersion in ancient manuscripts and archaic modes, the Catalan artist is no Luddite. He allies his reverence of the past to entrepreneurial forward-thinking. While most companies have bewailed the end of recorded classical music, his boutique label Alia Vox has sold more than 1 million copies of 40 titles in six years -- figures that his competitors, corporate and independent alike, envy. Moreover, Alia Vox recordings aren't just shiny silver widgets sheathed in anonymous plastic; they are individual, gorgeous objets d'art, with not only audiophile sound but serious annotation and lavish packaging that bespeak passion more than profit.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:47:51 am
encounter David Bowie in Atlantic City, May 2004
04/28/05
David Bowie, who has balked before at replicating his hits on tour like a human juke-box, feels no compunction about trying to please himself as he entertains others. "I'm not going to trot out the old chestnuts just for the sake of it," says Bowie, 57. "I don't think I owe my audience anything but a good, interesting time. That said, I think we do show them a really good, really interesting time. People can tell when we're having fun up there challenging ourselves, and it's infectious. "So, although we dropped `Let's Dance' from the set early on, we play `Rebel Rebel' -- but in a new version," Bowie adds. "And we just added a couple more obscure numbers, `Diamond Dogs' and `The Bewlay Brothers,' which should be great to play. That makes 59 in the well of songs we have on tap, from a few radio hits to deep album tracks." In an interview just before his 2004 Memorial Day weekend stand at Atlantic City's Borgata Ballroom, Bowie was characteristically candid and hyper-articulate, as well as enthusiastic despite the constant tour rigmarole. The Borgata shows were numbers 99 and 100 on his Reality Tour, with the trek scheduled through early August. "I never enjoyed touring much before, to be truthful," Bowie says. "The pressure of mounting those theatrically oriented shows in the past was a lot of work and worry. These days, it's about interpreting the songs in a loose, informal, direct way, and the more we've done it over the past few years, the more we've gotten into a groove. And I have to tell you, this band is just so damn good that I actually enjoy the hell out of it. "The challenge with my catalog for both the audience and musicians is that it's very eclectic," Bowie adds. "We'll be doing something in an ambient trip-hop vein one song, then something ultra-pop or really hard the next. The band, though, is super-compatible in all these styles and without sounding like a simulacrum. They're 100% in the idiom of each song."
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:45:54 am
artifact Marianne Faithfull, "Before the Poison" (Naïve/Anti, 2004)
04/28/05
Since her days as the fallen angel of swinging '60s London, Marianne Faithfull's iconic status has been that of survivor. The lyricist of the Rolling Stones' "Sister Morphine" is more than a survivor, though. She has endured as a searching, evolving recording artist in a way that her former paramour Mick Jagger has not. Faithfull's knowing ways and vocal rasp have given rise to such fondly expressed descriptions as, "She's the aunt offering you a cigarette when you're 11" from Tom Waits (in whose devilish operetta The Black Rider Faithfull has starred). Moreover, her worldliness and deep, haunted voice have made her the ideal vessel of a fatalistic, cabaret romanticism. Although exceptional, the new album Before the Poison -- featuring Faithfull in league with kindred souls P.J. Harvey and Nick Cave, among others -- is the latest in a series of projects revealing the singer's inspired taste and work ethic. And Faithfull's singing, for all the stains from nicotine and worse, has never sounded more beautifully expressive than here.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:42:21 am
onstage Marianne Faithfull at Town Hall, New York City, March 2005
04/28/05
"I'm doing what I'm doing," growled Marianne Faithfull, looking up from under her reading glasses at the Town Hall audience shouting requests for old tunes right off. She added with a good-natured smirk, "The only time in my life when I'm in control is when I'm up here -- and I like it." What Faithfull was doing was limbering up her act in the second of five U.S. shows supporting her recent album, Before the Poison. She needed her glasses to eye crib sheets to the new songs, but Faithfull knew what she wanted, waving her arms to step up the band's tempo and cuing ace trumpeter Lew Soloff with winks and nods. Cutting a figure partway between old-school theater icon and bordello madam, the 58-year-old Faithfull had come to the stage dramatically, stepping slowly and brushing her hair back with exaggerated gestures. The bluesy opener "Trouble in Mind" was sultry rock cabaret, and if the singer is a bit ungainly these days -- moving as if the spotlight were a patch of ice -- she was in good voice, throaty as ever but strong.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:39:19 am
onstage the Twilight Singers at Irving Plaza, New York, June 2004
04/28/05
As the Twilight Singers show climaxed just before 3 a.m. on a Sunday at Irving Plaza, an especially enthused fan remarked, "My reward in heaven would be this band playing all the time." A nice thought, but Greg Dulli's rock outfit would no doubt feel more comfortable as the house entertainment in that other, hotter place. Dulli's customized mike stand said much for his lifestyle priorities, with a dual-vice caddy of ashtray on one side, drink holder on the other. Fully suited to a post-midnight tee-off, the ex-Afghan Whigs leader's voice was husky and emotive as his band leaned into the wide-screen nocturnal adventure of "Teenage Wristband." The song represents Dulli's Twilight vision at its most potent, as a gradual intro of silvery electric piano and seething guitar detonate into an ever-escalating crescendo on that evergreen theme of night time is the right time. It seemed -- Dulli noted, referencing the Whigs' triumphs in this venue -- like 1996 all over again, as the crowd bellowed the singer's lyrics back at him.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:32:51 am
artifact the Twilight Singers, "She Loves You" (One Little Indian, 2004)
04/28/05
Unlike jazz or classical, pop music lacks a broadly inspired art of interpretation. When a rock singer sings another artist's song, it usually seems like rote karaoke or a cynical play to audience nostalgia, or both. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. David Bowie and Elvis Costello have always covered classics and contemporaries, paying homage by investing the songs with their own imagination. Country-rocker Dwight Yoakam not only tips his hat to other artists as a matter of course but inhabits their music to an almost defiantly definitive degree. Another in the exclusive set of rock artists with exceptional taste and interpretive vision is Greg Dulli, former leader of the sadly defunct Afghan Whigs. Live, that Ohio band would veer from its own dramatically literate, slide-guitar-stoked hard rock to string together counterintuitive complements from the Stones to Isaac Hayes to TLC's "Creep." Although covers spiced the Whigs' b-side and soundtrack efforts, the band's 1992 Sub Pop EP Uptown Avondale provided an extended showcase for Dulli's retooling of soul classics. Motown habitually set downbeat lyrics to upbeat grooves; indicative of his art, Dulli recast "Come See About Me" into a dark minor key to match the desperately plaintive lyrics. Now working with a rotating crew as the Twilight Singers, Dulli has revisited reinterpretations for She Loves You, his third post-Whigs album. Casting a wide net, he re-envisions music by or associated with George Gershwin, Skip James, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Fleetwood Mac, Hope Sandoval, Mary J. Blige, Bjork and U.K. trip-hop chanteuse Martina Topley-Bird.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:29:39 am
artifact Mogwai, "Government Commissions, BBC Sessions: 1996-2003" (BBC/PIAS/Matador, 2005) and Doves, "Some Cities" (Heavenly/Capitol, 2005)
04/28/05
Although Mogwai has a reputation for uncompromising attitude and scalding volume, the Scottish guitar band trades far more often on ambient lyricism. For every metallic edifice Mogwai builds and then tears down, it crafts three or four white-picket tone poems. That said, even when shimmering, the band's songs have an undercurrent of tension, often backed up with such titles as "Stop Coming to My House." The voice of widely mourned BBC taste-maker John Peel introduces Government Commissions, with his sonorous "Ladies and gentlemen, Mogwai. . ." hinting at his long-standing support of the band. Fittingly, the album -- its title a nod to the British public-broadcasting network's patronage -- serves as the Glaswegians' best testament. As with BBC session releases from Jimi Hendrix to the Smiths, the live-in-the-studio settings suit Mogwai's truest instincts. The group trades its erratic efforts at extended gesture (i.e., noodling) for direct impact, with highlights drawn from such discs as 2003's Happy Songs for Happy People and 1997's Young Team.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:27:35 am
artifact Nigel Kennedy & the Kroke Band, "East Meets East" (EMI Classics, 2003)
04/28/05
Being more hedonist than humanitarian, violinist Nigel Kennedy has hardly been seen as following in the footsteps of his mentor Yehudi Menuhin. Yet the English violinist has in fact tread a similarly inspired path in the realm of music; even more than Menuhin -- who famously, and bravely, shook off his classical fetters to collaborate with the likes of Stephane Grappelli and Ravi Shankar -- Kennedy recognizes few musical borders. Teaming with a Klezmer band from Krakow might seem like a bridge too far, but Kennedy has followed his muse to make a gorgeous, gutsy album.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:24:25 am
artifact Chris Whitley, "War Crime Blues" (Messenger Records, 2004)
04/28/05
An anti-war protest album may seem like a quaint, hippie notion to some. Yet the title of singer/guitarist Chris Whitley's War Crime Blues now seems sadly prescient -- just as its driving emotions of frustration and anger, sorrow and pity, threaten to feel like fresh wounds for the foreseeable future.
Posted by bradley bambarger
at 03:19:35 am
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