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New Sounds

Saturday, September 13, 2008
  • Henry Taussig
    Henry Taussig

    American Primitive

    “American Primitive,” the guitar-style associated with the late John Fahey, blends folk, blues, classical and Eastern music. We’ll hear a few examples on this New Sounds from Fahey’s Takoma label-mates, with new reissues from Robbie Basho and Harry Taussig, and music by guitarist and storyteller Leo Kottke as well. Also, we’ll tap into a new generation of pickers, like Shawn David McMillen, Jack Rose, and Kaki King, among others.

    PROGRAM # 2591, American Primitive Guitar (First aired on Thurs. 10/05/06)

    ARTIST(S)

    RECORDING

    CUT(S)

    SOURCE

    John Fahey

    The Voice of the Turtle

    A Raga Called Pat, Part III [9:00]

    Takoma #6501 ** Available at Amazon.com*

    Various Artists: Peter Walker

    A Raga for Peter Walker

    Hot Fusion [3:30]

    Tompkins Square #1622 ** www.tompkinssquare.com

    Various Artists: Greg Davis

    A Raga for Peter Walker

    Truly We Dwell In Happiness [4:00]

    See above.

    Robbie Basho

    Venus In Cancer

    Cathedral et Fleur de Lis [8:00]

    Tompkins Square #1820**
    www.tompkinssquare.com

    Various Artists: James Blackshaw

    A Raga for Peter Walker

    Spiralling[sic] Skeleton Memorial [6:30]

    See above.

    Leo Kottke

    Live

    Peg Leg [2:30]

    On The Spot #0100582132 Try Amazon.com*

    Shawn David McMillen

    Catfish

    The Lawn [4:00]

    Tompkins Square #1721 ** www.tompkinssquare.com

Special Podcast: Guitar Marathon 2006 (originally aired Feb. 23, 2006)

For this New Sounds program, there’s new music from the biannual New York Guitar Festival Marathon at the 92nd Street Y - this edition was "450 Years of Spanish Guitar." Listen to three newly commissioned world-premiere compositions — all inspired by Spanish themes: "Los Cambios Quedan Igual," by Gyan Riley for classical guitar; Variations on "La Follia" by Dominic Frasca, for guitar and laptop; and "Memorial" by Bryce Dessner, for guitar, viola, and percussion. There’s a Flamenco impression left by Riley’s work coupled with bluesy bends, while Dessner's piece is inspired by the traditions of ornamentation and improvisation in Spanish and Italian Renaissance lute music. And listen to Frasca’s untitled piece, for 10-string guitar and computer, is a set of variations on La Follia, a well-known theme (based on a Spanish folk melody) that has been used in Western music since the Renaissance.

New Sounds 2515

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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.