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New Sounds

Wednesday, September 29, 2004
  • large ensemble big band

    T. Monk Goes to the Circus Drunk

    There’s music for large ensembles on this edition of New Sounds, with tunes from The Industrial Jazz Group. Their recent CDs, which some listeners have tried to put into words as, “Thelonious Monk goes to the circus drunk,” put bebop alongside the avant-garde, with melody-driven stuff that wouldn’t be out of place in the “downtown” or “west coast jazz” scenes, yet the music is fun, multiple-metered and sometimes even includes theremin. Also, hear the prog-jazz of Either/Orchestra, who stir the soup of old-timey ballads and swing madly while doing so. Then there’s Edward Ratliff’s jazzy-snakey-smokey-Latin blend, hopefully from the CD, “Barcelona in 48 Hours.” Plus, listen to Brian Woodbury’s foray into worlds beyond jazz, with Latin percussion, big band horns, pedal steel guitar, banjo, fiddles, accordion & then some. On his most recent release,”Variety Orchestra,” Woodbury seems to draw from nearly everything - Zappa, Mexican bands, Spike Jones, Charles Ives, you name it.

PROGRAM #2327 Large bands (Wed. 9-29-04)

ARTIST(S)

RECORDING

CUT(S)

SOURCE

The Beat Circus

Ringleaders Revolt

Contortionist Tango [7:00]

Innova #623**
www.innova.mu

The Industrial Jazz Group

City Of Angles

Interlude In Krupa [3:00]

Innova #571
www.innova.mu

The Beat Circus

Ringleaders Revolt

The Mack [4:30]

See above.

Either/Orchestra

The Half-Life Of Desire

Red [11:30]

Accurate #3242** www.accuraterecords.com

Edward Ratliff

Barcelona In 48 Hours

Sintuba [7:00]

Strudelmedia #008 www.strudel.net

Brian Woodbury

Variety Orchestra

Venice, Italy [8:30]

ReR #BW1 www.somephil.com or www.rerusa.com

Revolutionary Snake Ensemble

Year of the Snake

Parade [5:30]

Innova #599
www.innova.mu

*, ** - Find the recordings you've heard - go to the New Sounds Recordings Information page

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Twitchy Renaissance-Infused Minimalism

New Sounds

From the New Sounds Live concerts at Merkin Hall, Nico Muhly presents a series of new electroacoustic ensemble works, combining “twitchy Minimalism” and Renaissance polyphony. Hear brand-new works from "Mothertongue," along with other works, recorded live.

In Robert Moran's Kitchen

New Sounds

From October 30, 1989, the infamous "cooking show" with composer/raconteur Robert Moran. Recorded while cooking an Indian dinner in John Schaefer's kitchen, for reasons still not entirely clear. Along the way, we hear an "acoustic" version of Cage's 0:00 - for amplification of chopping vegetables and blender. And don't miss the teary conversation as onions are chopped. View the the recipes.

Michael Hedges and Michael Manring

New Sounds

The incredibly gifted and astonishingly original guitarist Michael Hedges left the planet much too soon in 1997. Avant-folk and ever-entertaining, Hedges made brilliant music with alternate tunings, harmonics and was known for striking the guitar’s body and strings with his fingers, palms and knuckles. His close friend and sometime collaborator, electric bass virtuoso Michael Manring, was a genre-bender, before music writers ever discovered that hyphenated term. He started out in the New Age bins, but moved all over with various projects, including the very first New Age-death-metal-jazz-funk-fusion record, among other things, with his “hyperbass”, (a fretless instrument which makes re-tuning mid-piece a little easier). On this October 10, 1987 edition of New Sounds, the two artists visited and played at the WNYC performance studios.

Caravan Variations

New Sounds

Like camels slogging through the sand, the exotic strains of “Caravan,” by Duke Ellington and his sometime trombonist Juan Tizol (with rarely heard lyrics by Irving Mills), have been played loose, fast, swinging, and/or slow by just about everyone. For this New Sounds program, it’s another of the occasional series of programs of Theme and Variations, where the premise is simple: take a single piece of music and explore what a number of musicians have done with it, through arrangements, deconstructions, and revisions of the original theme. This time around, it’s Duke Ellington’s “Caravan.” Listen to arrangements by Romania’s Fanfare Ciocarlia, Hungary’s Kalman Balogh & The Gipsy Cimbalom Band, the California Guitar Trio, the ska group Hepcat, banjoman Bela Fleck, Lebanese composer Rabih Abou-Khalil, and trumpeter/composer Jon Hassell, among others.