On Demand
New Sounds
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Henry TaussigAmerican 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.comVarious 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.
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An exclusive presentation of New Sounds Live and WNYC Live performances for the website, featuring performances from inside and outside the WNYC studios from over three decades.
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Twitchy Renaissance-Infused Minimalism
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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
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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.
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