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Holiday Gift Guide: Under the Radar Music by David Greenberger

While music is a constant in people’s lives, the album era is all but gone and shuffle play has become the intermingled soundtrack to all manner of other activities. Great albums are still being made (or, in some cases, reissued), but they are quite easily missed. Here then are some gift suggestions for your musically inclined friends and family who may have been distracted when these all quietly landed in whatever is left of the marketplace.

At the top of the list is Ry Cooder’s Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down (Nonesuch). Even erstwhile Cooder fans didn’t seem to know about this one. He revitalized and expanded his recording career over the past half-dozen years with a trilogy of albums that found him, for the first time, flexing his muscles as a songwriter. Having been a great interpreter of songs composed over the past century, he learned his lessons well. With this year’s release he’s brought forth a formidable set of protest songs. They’re rich with character; he’s pulling no punches as an armless soldier ponders an empty Christmas, or a high roller wonders how he’ll get by without his maid. Potent stuff, and some richly supple playing with his usual gang of musical cohorts.

With his Yo Miles! Ensemble, Wadada Leo Smith released two double albums (Sky Garden is 2004, Upriver in 2005) devoted to Miles Davis’ ’70s funk-based music. Heart’s Reflections (Cuneiform) is the second with his band Organic. The extended pieces are comprised of far brighter colors than what Davis was creating 40 years ago. It’s a rich tapestry of electric guitars (including the legendary Michael Gregory), keyboards and bass, drums (Pheeroan akLaff), saxophones and a violin on a few, and Smith’s stunning trumpet throughout.

Ray Bonneville’s Bad Man’s Blood (Red House) is a new peak in his 30-year career. Born in Canada and living in Texas, he writes rich vignettes suffused with the stuff of life: love, regret, hope, and loss. One cannot listen to this album’s “River John” and be unmoved. The performances are built around his acoustic guitar, his tapping foot and some judiciously deployed accompaniment by sympathetic players. As with Greg Brown and Chris Smither, Bonneville doesn’t fit easily into categories, being neither folk nor blues, but falling into both those camps, while always delivering with a soulful honesty.

On the reissue front are an important pair by country soul songwriters. Harlan County by Jim Ford (Light in the Attic) was released in 1969. Sly Stone called Ford “the baddest white man on the planet,” and there is quite a tale to read, but suffice to say songs and performances of this caliber were never going to go away. A contemporary reference point of sorts would be the stripped-down approach that Nick Lowe has adopted over the past 20 years of his career. Bobby Charles achieved greater success as a songwriter during his life than did Ford, but he also released a singular classic. Now expanded to a three-disc set, Bobby Charles (Rhino Handmade) contains the perfect original album along with a couple dozen additional numbers, demos and other fully recorded songs. People often already know his songs without knowing his name (“Tennessee Blues,” “Small Town Talk, “Walking to New Orleans,” “See You Later, Alligator”), or may remember his appearance with the Band in their Last Waltz.

Holiday Gift Guide: Classical Music by B.A. Nilsson

If you followed my suggestion last year and purchased the 103-CD Jascha Heifetz box set, your investment is now appreciating. The set is out of print and its price is climbing. All the more reason to consider the forthcoming Arthur Rubinstein: The Complete Album Collection. With 144 CDs, packaged in miniatures of their original LP releases, two DVDs and a hardcover book, it’s selling on Amazon right now for $259, a price that surely will climb by the Jan. 31 release date. Its predecessor, a Complete Rubinstein in jewel boxes, was released for $1,600, and the expense of producing the set pretty much killed the RCA Red Seal division. Evidently the original jackets approach is more economical.

It’s been a good year for great pianist. Martha Argerich turned 70 and was celebrated by EMI with three multi-disc sets: Solos & Duos (6 CDs), Concertos (4 CDs) and Chamber Music (8 CDs), much of it drawn from her Lugano Festival collections—to which was added another excellent installment, Live From Lugano 2010, which includes Chopin’s Concerto No. 1 and a charming quintet by Granados among its three discs.

Gould, Glenn: In Concert 1951-1960 (West Hill) is an elusive six-CD set that features a fascinating array of broadcast recordings, including yet another Goldberg Variations and such other Bach works as the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and the Keyboard Concertos 1 and 5; also works by Beethoven, Schoenberg and others.

You can see Gabriela Montero in concert at the Troy Music Hall in early May in a recital featuring her amazing improvisations. There’s a healthy taste of them, along with a number of neglected Latin works, on Solatino (EMI).

A couple of young violinists made a splash this year. Ray Chen performed at Union College in the same program as his self-titled debut recording (Sony Classical), featuring sonatas by Franck and Tartini (“Devil’s Trill”). And even without the brooding, GQ-esque cover photos of the handsome fiddler, Charlie Siem should be selling CDs on the basis of talent. His self-titled collection of short pieces (Warner Classics) includes works by virtuoso violinist-composers Wieniawski, Kreisler, Paganini and Sarasate, and features Bazzini’s finger-busting “Round of the Goblins.” His recording of concertos by Bruch (No. 1), Wieniawski (No. 1) and Ole Bull on Warner Classics affirms his place in the realms of interpretive skill.

The incredibly prolific and fascinating Jordi Savall continued to release recordings old and new. Among the latter: The Sublime Port: Voices of Istanbul, a follow-up to last year’s Istanbul, this time exploring the multinational realm of song over the centuries with an appropriately multinational ensemble. Rereleases included Mozart’s Requiem and five discs of the five books of Marin Marais’s Pieces de Viol, reminding us of Savall’s million-selling success with the soundtrack recording of the film Tous les matins du monde (all on AliaVox).

Two of the 20th century’s bad boys of classical music were Conlon Nancarrow and George Antheil. Ensemble Modern tackled Nancarrow with As Fast as Possible (Wergo), collecting a number of transcriptions of his tough, fascinating pieces for player piano, among other works.

Antheil’s horribly neglected one-act opera The Brothers, his version of the story of Cain and Abel, got a good recording in Germany (cpo), while his four fascinating, widely varied violin sonatas (including one for solo violin) were nicely recorded by violinist Mark Fewer and pianist John Novacek (Azica).

What’s the Mahler news this year? Valery Gergiev’s symphonies cycle with the London Symphony finished with the release of Nos. 5 and 9 (LSO Live), as hot-blooded and dynamically rugged as the rest of the set. Meanwhile, Simon Rattle returned to the Symphony No. 2, this time with the Berlin Philharmonic (EMI) and soprano Kate Royal and mezzo Magdalena Kozena. It features a far more expansive reading of the first movement than he’s given before, but Rattle makes it make sense.

Kate Royal put together A Lesson in Love (EMI), a gorgeous, melancholy look at the arc of a love affair threading together songs by Schubert, Wolf, Copland, Brahms, Duparc, Bolcom and others.

In other vocal recommendations, Nikolaus Harnoncourt tackled Brahms’s German Requiem with soprano Genia Kühmeier, baritone Thomas Hampson, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir (Sony Classical) in version that’s deliberate of tempo but filled with excitement in a showcase of what a good recording should sound like.

Another favorite Requiem is that of Gabriel Fauré, newly recorded by Paavo Järvi in his new position of Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris (EMI). With baritone Matthias Goerne and countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, it’s a lovely performance of the full orchestral version, and the disc is filled out with such Fauré rarities as Super Flumina Babylonis and Cantique de Jean Racine.

Fauré’s chamber music also gets its due in a new five-disc Virgin Classics set featuring the Capuçon brothers, Renaud (violin) and Gautier (cello), the Quatour Ebène and others. Here are the two violin sonatas, the two cello sonatas, a piano trio, a string quartet, the two piano quartets and the slightly forbidding piano quintets.

Finally, local favorites the Emerson Quartet are newly arrived on Sony Classical. Their debut there is a revisit of Mozart’s three Prussian Quartets, his last works in this form. Typically with the Emersons, they avoid the sentimentality that can creep into pieces like this, and instead give us music that’s crisp and scintillating and ageless.

Holiday Gift Guide: Jazz by Josh Potter

Jazz has always been a genre for collectors, and as many of its perennial heroes age, we haven’t yet witnessed a wholesale shift away from the physical product. This is good news for both those who like to stack their jewel cases to the ceiling and those who love to wrap jewel cases in fancy paper.

Speaking of aging heroes, it was with sadness that we learned last month of legendary drummer Paul Motian’s death. No less than six new records came out this year that featured Motian’s playing, but the one for the fan and collector was The Windmills of Your Mind, his last recording as a bandleader that came out the day he died. The one that might capture his improvisational chops best, though, is Live at Birdland, a set he recorded with Lee Konitz, Brad Mehldau and Charlie Haden.

Keith Jarrett has always been at his best at a piano and without a net. Fans could spend hours of their lives on his live solo improvised recordings alone, but that doesn’t make his new one Rio superfluous. Critics are calling it the new standard for his work in this mode. Following in a similar vein is pianist Matthew Shipp, who released four records this year exploring the outer limits of improvisation. The ones worth looking into are Night Logic, with Sun Ra’s Marshall Allen and Art of the Improvisor featuring legendary bassist William Parker.

There was plenty of good funky stuff that came out under the jazz banner this year. For True has been earning Trombone Shorty a lot of attention lately, and for good cause. The high-energy, trombone-playing bandleader has become one of the day’s great ambassadors of New Orleans music. Trumpeter Steven Bernstein has always been a shape-shifter, building and dissolving ensembles to do his bidding. The Millenial Territory Orchestra has always been one of his most exciting, and this year they put out one of their most distinctive records. MTO Plays Sly  is just what it says: a record of Sly and the Family Stone covers. It’s one fun surprise.

With lots of jazz musicians adopting the rock band ethos to record and release group records, it was only a matter of time before Joshua Redman got in on the action. James Farm is the name of the group he co-leads with Aaron Parks, Matt Penman and Eric Harland. And James Farm is the name of their first release, a record that trades solo showboating for collective improvisation.

Albany High grad and celebrated vibraphonist Stefon Harris has a new record with a trio including David Sanchez and Christian Scott. Ninety Miles is an exploration of Cuban rhythms recorded in Havana with a number of different backing quartets.

Holiday Gift Guide: Indie/Pop Music by Josh Potter

Simmer down, Fox News. If anyone’s waging a war on Christmas, it’s Spotify. Ever since the Swedish music-streaming service set up shop on American soil earlier this year and started offering its degenerate, pagan, gay agenda of bottomless free music with limited commercial interruption, it’s made it even harder to justify giving Target that $15 for the new Ke$ha record. Just as the pop/indie genre designation becomes less meaningful, the act of purchasing digital records becomes more and more abstract. And yet, Santa’s elves continue to cobble ones and zeros together in some icy workshop north of Björk’s recording studio for the listening pleasure of the good little boys and girls.

Speaking of Björk, the Icelandic nymph recently released Biophilia, a hugely ambitious science-oriented record complete with an iPad app for every track. The interactive nature of this package is one new way in which recorded music is beginning to transcend its easy disposability and return to the level of durability that could make for a great gift—that is, if you’re a Björk fan. The project has been panned by critics, but then this isn’t a list of year-end critical picks. Look out for those in a couple weeks.

Looking at my list here, the most economical, if discriminatory, way of breaking down my suggestions in the pop/indie umbrella category is by gender. Let’s start with the ladies.

Annie Clark just might be all things to all people. Performing as St. Vincent, Clark has managed to craft songs that highlight both her sweet, seductive vocals and absolutely menacing electric guitar playing. Strange Mercy is destined to top year-end lists and is a safe bet for both conventional and experimental musical tastes. It’s something to dance, rock and swoon to. On the vocal end of things, Clark owes a debt to Leslie Feist, who also has a new record. The former Broken Social Scene singer is virtually the archetype of the contemporary indie songstress, as powerful in her vocal approach as she is innocent at times. Adding to the physical appeal of the CD, fans were asked to vote on the cover art for Metals. Julianna Barwick’s debut album The Magic Place was originally filed under the new-age and ambient genres when it first came out, but don’t let that prevent you from checking it out. The singer is a one-woman choir, using loops and effects to stack her crystalline vocals into gorgeous, pastoral blankets of sound.

On the male end of the vocal spectrum, James Blake (the British musician, not the American tennis player) has crafted one of the most distinctive records of the year with James Blake. The former dubstep artist rebranded himself as a singer-songwriter, drawing on a toolbox of electronic effects—namely, vocal delay and window-rattling bass—to complement his icy, atmospheric songwriting. On his debut as Bon Iver, Justin Vernon also went the cold, lonely route, but with Bon Iver things took a turn for warmer climates. With detours into ’80s production values, the record goes for a big, swallow-you-whole sound, padding Vernon’s gorgeous falsetto with plenty of horns and guitar. Robin Pecknold completes the triad of distinctive male voices. Fleet Foxes’ debut absolutely bulldozed the industry a few years back, and this year’s Helplessness Blues was one of the year’s most anticipated. It was worth the wait. Here’s a record you can get for the 20-something indie rocker and 60-something classic rocker in your life. Just make sure it’s on vinyl.

But, wait: Tom Waits has a new record too. Most Waits fans would be content to listen to him sing the Betty Crocker cookbook (which I’m sometimes convinced he’s doing on certain tunes) and Bad as Me doesn’t disappoint. There’s as much jukebox growl on this record as on anything he’s ever put out.

So, I’m tempted to weigh in on the hip-hop side of the equation, but be careful here. You don’t want to go giving an Odd Future fan that Jay-Z/Kanye West collaboration. They’ll be, like, “swag?” Watch the Throne was rivaled only by Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV and Drake’s Take Care this year in the realm of larger-than-life mainstream rap. It’s no wonder, then, that so much independent stuff spilled out from under the radar. There were about six dozen Odd Future releases, but the single strongest freestyle-oriented record came from A$ap Rocky in LIVELOVEA$AP. However, if you like your beats with a strong dose of weird, Shabazz Palaces’ Black Up is a ranking record-of-the-year regardless of genre.

Holiday Gift Guide: Folk, Blues, Bluegrass, and Celtic Music by Glenn Weiser

As the number of CDs on retail racks dwindles as inexorably as the daylight hours at this time of year, it’s ever more difficult to find the right gift disc for the roots-music fan. That’s why I’ve been prowling around the electronic ethers of the Web, scoping out prime releases in the folk, blues, bluegrass and Celtic music genres for you. Here’s my hot list. 

The earliest blues song we know of is “Joe Turner’s Blues,” heard in New Orleans in 1890. That and other traditional Crescent City tunes are performed on Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues (Warner Bros.). This pairing of the Nawlins trumpet virtuoso and the British guitar god represents the origins and evolution of the blues, respectively. Here they’re backed by a Dixieland combo consisting of clarinet, trombone, piano, banjo, bass, drums, keyboards, and second trumpet. Taj Mahal guests on two sweet tracks.

Along with the late William Clarke, harmonica ace Rod Piazza was a protégé of Kansas City bluesman George Smith, and subsequently an architect of the West Coast swing sound. Another fine CD to consider is Piazza’s latest, Almighty Dollar (Delta Groove Productions). For this outing, Piazza, hailed by Downbeat magazine as “a superior diatonic and chromatic harmonica player with style,” is joined by guitarist Rusty Zinn, fellow harp player Johnny Dyer, bassists Norm Gonzalez on electric and Hank Van Sickle on upright, and sax man Jonny Viau.

For bluegrassers, Grammy winner Alison Krauss and Union Station have Paper Airplane, their first record together since 2004. Krauss’ mellifluous vocals, rather than her fiddle playing, are center-stage here, and while the album breaks no new ground, the picking is flawless and the song choice satisfying. Dan Tyminski sings lead on three tracks, and Dobro king Jerry Douglas contributes peerless twanging. For more hillbilly jazz, local heroes the Gibson Brothers live up to their laurels as 2010 IMBA winners with their new disc, Help My Brother (Compass Records). Framed by their masterful close harmony singing, the songs look at family, lives gone wrong, and the need for love. The brothers also serve up fine covers of Jim and Jesse and the Louvin Brothers.

How many Celtic bands can draw a crowd of a quarter-million? The Irish group Dervish did at the Rock in Rio festival. Originally formed to record the richly ornamented traditional music of their native County Sligo, they pushed on to earn supergroup status. Live at Johnny Fox’s (Emtee Music) is taken from a 1996 show at Glencullen, near Dublin, where the sextet fire off swirling dance tunes and sing Ireland’s mournful songs, here often performed in Gaelic. Ireland alone has a musical instrument for a national symbol. Masters of the Irish Harp, an anthology of leading Irish harpers, includes the playing of Grammy winners and Riverdance troupe members who have entertained U.S. presidents. The music here spans up to five centuries; harp tunes by the Baroque-era bard Turlough O’Carolan are mingled with jigs and reels and even a 21^st-century composition for harp, flute and trumpet. This one’s a delight.

Next year marks the centennial of Woody Guthrie’s birth. Note of Hope—A Celebration of Woody Guthrie (429 Records) offers unpublished lyrics by the Dustbowl balladeer set to music by Jackson Browne, Ani DiFranco, Lou Reed, Madeline Peyroux, Pete Seeger, Tony Triscka, and others. Readings of Guthrie’s critically acclaimed prose are included, most notably by Studs Terkel. While it’s unlikely to be the occasion’s sole tribute to Guthrie, it will nonetheless be hard to beat.

Gillian Welch and longtime musical partner David Rawlings ended an eight-year songwriting hiatus this summer with The Harrow and the Harvest (Acony Records). The two reportedly spent considerable time tweaking their old-time-flavored material, and critics have lauded the 10-track, sparely textured album as some of their best work. With its dark Appalachian themes of heartbreak and tragedy, this is must-have Welch.

Holiday Gift Guide: Christmas Music by Shawn Stone

Ho ho ho! What new holiday music does Santa have in his bag?

At the top of the list there’s the duo She & Him with the appropriately titled A Very She & Him Christmas (Merge). Zooey Deschanel’s blank-sounding, 3 AM-and-the-bar’s-closing vocals prove perfectly suited to traditional seasonal tunes. “The Christmas Waltz” will make you wistful; “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” will make you sad; and “Baby It’s Cold Outside” will make you laugh, because Deschanel and M. Ward switch gender roles on what has become known among the younger set as “the date-rape song.”

The weirdest holiday release, by far, is Scott Weiland’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Atlantic). Weiland’s singing has always had an appealingly mannered side, but it’s hard to know how to take the STP and Velvet Revolver dude as a flat-out crooner. Some of the songs work well, including a reggae arrangement of “O Holy Night,” but on others, Weiland sounds, well, distracted. (And heavily auto-tuned, of course.) But since that’s part of his MO, this is a good bet if you know someone who likes Christmas music and whacked-out frontmen.

In a more traditional mode is sometime fiddler, sometime violinist (see what I did there?) Mark O’Connor’s An Appalachian Christmas (OMAC Records). O’Connor has a lot of cool friends, and a bunch of them show up to sing and play on this lovely album: Renée Fleming, Jane Monheit, Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor and Alison Krauss. The various genres they represent should give you a good idea of the album’s musical range.

If you know someone who likes old-school Nashville-style singers (and if you don’t, why not?), then Mandy Barnett’s Winter Wonderland (Rounder) has a classic honky-tonk sound that pleases. Really, she’s terrific—and she’s the only person other than Brenda Lee you’ll ever want to hear sing “Jingle Bell Rock.”

Lyle Lovett just released Songs for the Season (Lost Highway), a three-song EP that’s available via download only. There’s one wry original, “The Girl With the Holiday Smile,” and two covers, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmastime Is Here.” Lovett is joined on the covers by the very fine Texas-based jazz singer Kat Edmonson.

It wouldn’t be Christmas without a couple of worthwhile reissues. Tony Bennett’s The Classic Christmas Album (Columbia Legacy) is a “greatest hits” culled from his many holiday records recorded for Columbia over the last six or seven decades. All the usual holiday suspects are included; his version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is one of the most beautiful.

Finally, the 1960s were a golden age of slightly nutty, overarranged instrumental music and a golden age of Christmas records. A prime example of both is Sony Classical’s reissue of Andre Kostelanetz’ 1963 album Wonderland of Christmas. Swirling strings, eccentric solos and a devotion to melody: It’s all there is this very tasty, rum-soaked musical fruitcake.

Phantogram at RPI

This one seemed to slip through this week without making the paper, so I figured I'd post a quick note about Phantogram at RPI this Saturday. It's a UPAC show that's free to students and rumor has it there will be tickets available to the community--not certain how many are left.

Readers Poll ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Best Movie Theater

1. Spectrum 8 Theaters

2. Regal Colonie Center Stadium 13

3. Bow Tie Cinemas Movieland

 

Best Museum

1. New York State Museum

2. Albany Institute of History & Art

3. MASS MoCA

 

Best Art Gallery

1. Marketplace Gallery

2. Upstate Artists Guild

3. Albany Institute of History & Art

 

Tonight: The Loom, Sgt. Dunbar at Valentine's

Looks like the B3nson Family’s perpetual game of pass-the-guitar just got bigger. Brooklyn sextet the Loom (pictured) are the spitting image of hometown troubadours Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned, building sweet indie folk from a motley collection of guitars, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, trumpet, French horn and group vocals. It’s a formula that’s as old as the hills, so this duel bill with Sgt Dunbar should be something akin to a good old-fashioned potluck with Valentine’s serving as a, er, humble living room.

The Loom have been racking up plenty of superlatives lately, earning a “Best of What’s Next” from Paste Magazine while The New York Times called them “the next big thing”—not to, like, put them under any pressure. Meanwhile, Sgt. Dunbar has been quietly crafting a ton of new music, floating rumors of a new full-length record and readying for a right-proper national tour this spring. Rounding out the bill will be Wailing Wall and Life Among the Trees.

The Loom and Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned will play Valentine’s (17 New Scotland Ave., Albany) on Sunday (Feb. 20) at 7 PM. Call 432-6572 for more info, including price.

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