wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

New Sounds

Friday, May 20, 2005
  • Hungry March Band
    Members of Hungry March Band surround host John Schaefer (WNYC/Irene Trudel)

    Klezmer-Core, Balkan Bangers and More

    It’s New Sounds party music on this program with high-energy Balkan and Slavic big band music played by Americans. Members of the Hungry March Band, a Brooklyn-based collective with lots of horns and drums, perform crazy speed Balkan boogie along with groovy parade music live in the studio, and it’s powerful fun. Also, hear music from the Luminescent Orchestrii, who have cornered the market on Appalachian gypsy music with a little nod to the seminal punk band Dead Kennedys. Plus, listen to the Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band, and selections from the brand-new Slavic Soul Party record. All this to celebrate the King Gypsy Rocker Massive III party, a gypsy punk-ass Balkan brass band dance extravaganza landing at the Knitting Factory this Sunday, May 22.

PROGRAM # 2415, Balkan Party Music – American Style (First aired 5/20/05)

ARTIST(S) RECORDING CUT(S) SOURCE
Taraf de Haidouks Band Of Gypsies Bride In A Red Dress, excerpt, [2:00] Nonesuch #79641** www.nonesuch.com
Luminescent Orchestrii Live recordings Taraf Hijacked [3:30] Privately-issued CD www.lumii.org
Slavic Soul Party Bigger Into The Night [5:00] Barbes Records due in June 2005 Info at www.mattmoran.com, OR purchase in Brooklyn at the club, Barbes (376 9th st, open after 5pm)
Hungry March Band Live Jupanese Juju [3:00]
Montserrat Serrat [3:00]
Bella ciao/Moliendo Café [5:00]
Vjerin Coèek [2:30]
Bubamara [2:30]
Most of the pieces are on the CD, “Critical Brass,” available at www.hungrymarchband.com
Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band In The Center of The Village Lipe Cvatu [4:30] Azalea #9903** www.azaleacityrecordings.com
Trio Mopmu Torta Bulgarska Nedelya [4:00] Odd Shaped Case #1010 www.oddshapedcase.com

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

Leave a Comment

Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. WNYC reserves the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the WNYC.org Comment Guidelines before posting.

Your comment


* required
The information entered into this form will not be used to send unsolicited email and will not be sold to a third party.
 

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.