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New Sounds

Wednesday, January 09, 2008
  • Host/Senior Producer John Schaefer, photo by WNYC

    The 2007 New Sounds Top 10

    On this special episode of New Sounds, John Schaefer presents his annual, highly subjective, completely opinionated list of the ten best new-music releases of 2007. Listen to what made the cut this year: traditional music rescued from fading cultures, desert blues guitar, jazz-prog-rock, multi-faith choral music and so much more.

PROGRAM #2753, A Completely Opinionated Look at the best new music of 2007 (First aired on Wednesday, 1/9/08)

ARTIST(S)

RECORDING

CUT(S)

SOURCE

10. Andy Palacio & the Garifuna Collective

Watina

Baba [3:30]

Cumbancha #3 www.stonetreerecords.com

9. Frank London

A Night In The Old Marketplace

The Bottom of the Well [3:00]

Soundbrush #1010 www.soundbrush.com *

8. Nico Muhly

Speaks Volumes

Honest Music, excerpt [3:30]

Bedroom Community #HVALBR1 www.nicomuhly.com *

7. Chanticleer

And On Earth Peace: A Chanticleer Mass

I. Moody: Ravenna Sanctus, excerpt [4:00]

Warner Classics #79984 www.warnerclassicsandjazz.com Info at www.chanticleer.org

6. Osvaldo Golijov

Oceana

Night of the Flying Horses, excerpt [3:30]

Deutsche Grammophone #4776426 ** www.deutschegrammophon.com *

5. Tinariwen

Aman Iman

Cler Achel [4:00]

World Village #468067 **
www.worldvillagemusic.com *

4. The Bad Plus

Prog

Tom Sawyer [4:30]

Heads Up #3125 www.headsup.com *

3. James Blackshaw

The Cloud of Unknowing

Running To The Ghost [5:00]

Tompkins Square #1967 www.tompkinssquare.com

2. Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians

Pulses [5:00]

Innova #678
www.innova.mu

1. Kitka & Mariana Sadovska

The Rusalka Cycle

Sirens [4:30]

Diaphonica #20071 www.kitka.org *

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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.