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New Sounds

Sunday, February 26, 2006
  • frasca_lg.gif

    Innovative Deviations

    On this edition of New Sounds, there's a load of new music for guitar. Classically trained, but just as likely to give a nod to Prince and/or Black Sabbath, Dominic Frasca is a guitarist who makes his own instruments so as not to be confined to just 6 strings. Hear "Dark Age Machinery," and the title track from his latest CD release, "Deviations." Then there's also music by Forastiere, who, like Michael Hedges, uses tapping, muting, and alternate tunings to great effect. Plus, hear selections from the most recent John Fahey collection and a tune by Michael Hedges as well.

PROGRAM # 2272, Music for Guitar (Tues. 4-13-04)

ARTIST(S)

RECORDING

CUT(S)

SOURCE

Dominic Frasca

Deviations

Marc Mellits (arr. Frasca): Dark Age Machinery [2:30]

Quicksilver, no #. www.dominicfrasca.com

Michael Hedges

Live ON the Double Planet

Because It's There [3:00]

Windham Hill #1066** www.windham.com

Forastiere

Rag Tap Boom

Non Sense [3:30]
RagTapBoom [3:30]
Hidden7 [3:30]

S3L #003
www.s3l.com

John Fahey

The Best of John Fahey, Vol 2, 1964-1983

Frisco Leaving Birmingham [3:30]
Oneonta [2:30]

Takoma #8916** www.fantasyjazz.com*

Dominic Frasca

Deviations

Deviations, excerpt [12:30]

See above.

Curtis High School Guitar Ensemble

Scenes from Ellis Island by Benjamin Verdery conducted by Lou Mannarino

Scenes from Ellis Island [12:00]

Private CD release. Info and other CDs at www.gamisim.com

*, ** 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.