Weekly Music Roundup: Robert Glasper's Miles Davis and Layered Estonian Folk Fiddle
Week of March 28. Our roundup of music news, videos, and songs just might help you get through the rest of the week. This week, a walk in the woods (of Estonia), a new song from Gregory Porter, and the extraordinary tale of a violin passing through our studio.
PREMIERE: A Mesmerizing Video From Estonia’s Maarja Nuut
Singer and fiddler (and digital delay/looping enthusiast) Maarja Nuut made an impressive debut with Soolo, in 2013, built around the layered sounds of her voice and violin. It was music that seemed to visit the lands of classical, Minimalist, indie, and Estonian folk music, without inhabiting any of them. Now we are premiering her new song and video called “Õdangule,” or “to the evening.” Nuut tells us that it summons memories of “late summer walks through forest after the sun had set, and the eyes sometimes saw more than there actually was.” The video offers a layered series of views, each revealed as if a veil has been gradually lifted – or as Nuut puts it, “as if dipping into the hidden corners of the forest where the imagination rules over those cobwebs of the mind.” It’s somewhat analagous to the way Nuut layers her instruments, although in this song it’s all layers of voice. The result is an eerie, lilting piece that could pass for a lullaby from some distant, alien land. Like Estonia. Her album, In The Hold of a Dream, is out on June 3.
Gregory Porter Visits Barbershop, Doesn’t Get Haircut
His Grammy Award says he’s a jazz singer, but Gregory Porter’s album sales are those of a top notch soul singer. Porter’s canny blend of soul, jazz, and R&B sounds like it could’ve come from 1968 – which just happens to be where/when his new video for the song “Don’t Lose Your Steam” is situated. Wearing his trademark cap and balaclava, Porter does not look like a man with much use for a barbershop, but the video plays on the traditional communal role of the barbershop in African-American neighborhoods. Best of all, there’s more where this came from: Porter’s new album, Take Me To The Alley, comes out on May 6.
A Violin’s Extraordinary Journey Passes Through Our Studios And Ends Up On Screen
Back in 2014 my colleagues down the hall at WQXR, our classical music station, began their first ever Instrument Drive. The idea was to collect 1000 musical instruments – that flute you haven’t played since getting a real job, the old clarinet from when you were in high school band, the cello your grandpa left you but that you never knew what to do with – and to fix them up and distribute them to music programs in the public schools. Well, we got more than 3000 instruments – and a lot of wonderful stories. One of those stories involved a violin we got from a 91 year old Holocaust survivor. Joe’s Violin is a documentary short film that follows that instrument as it makes its way into the hands of a young girl in Harlem, and even the trailer can leave you with a lump in your throat.
The full film gets its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival; screening schedule is here.
And finally, be part of the second WQXR Instrument Drive. Because we’re not fooling around – 1000 instruments? Kid stuff. The goal this time is, at minimum, 6000 “gently used” instruments. (The 3000 from the first drive helped around 10,000 kids learn to play an instrument.) The drive kicks off with an event at Lincoln Center on Friday, April 8 from 12:45-1:30 PM. Other special events will take place all through the drive, which ends on April 17. For details on the drive, click here.
Robert Glasper Reimagines Miles Davis
The late trumpeter Miles Davis disliked the word “jazz,” and no wonder – his own career included elements of classical music (Sketches of Spain), jazz-rock fusion (Bitches Brew), pop music (You’re Under Arrest), and spoken-word political commentary (also You’re Under Arrest). You could forgive pianist Robert Glasper for having a similar disdain for the term, since he does so much more than jazz. His own records reflect his love of hip hop and soul music, and he has worked with Kanye West, Erykah Badu, and a host of other A-listers from both worlds. Lately, he’s been spending a lot of time in Miles’ world. First, he worked on Don Cheadle’s film Miles Ahead, leading an all-star cast and composing much of the film’s evocative score. Now, he’s announced his “collaboration” with Miles – an album called Everything’s Beautiful, which uses Miles Davis riffs, outtakes, and even some studio chatter as seed material for Glasper’s songs. A lot of familiar names will be on the album, due on May 27, including the soul singer and frequent collaborator Bilal, who lends his voice to this first single, “Ghetto Walkin’.”
As for the film, watch this space for the next episode of the Soundcheck podcast, on Thursday, when Don Cheadle discusses the film and “being Miles Davis.”
New Label Marries Contemporary Classical And Electronics
Spanish composer Roger Goula is the first artist to release music on the new Cognitive Shift label in the UK. A collaboration with One Little Indian Records (best known as Björk’s label), Cognitive Shift aims to showcase composers like Goula who combine the more cinematic end of the classical music spectrum with electronics. It’s the kind of thing where, if you added a drumkit and electric guitar, you’d call it post-rock; it’s also the kind of music that begs to be remixed… and apparently remixes will be coming.
Goula caught my ear with his score for the documentary Next Goal Wins back in 2014. (Here I need to tell you to stop reading this and go watch that movie right now. Doesn’t matter if you love soccer or hate it. The trailer only gives the barest idea of how funny and moving it is, and sadly has none of Goula’s score in it.) His full-length album won’t be out until September, but an EP of his music drops at the end of April, and will include this slow-burning, dramatic piece called “Awe.”
Sturgill Simpson’s Nirvana Cover Is A Stunner
The country singer Sturgill Simpson (for whom the “country” moniker as is ill-fitting as “jazz” was for Miles Davis) has just released his version of Nirvana’s incendiary “In Bloom,” and Simpson has completely recast it, both in his affecting acoustic arrangement and in this beautiful and haunting video. Getting help from the horn section of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, he joins a long list of musicians (including Ezra Furman and the Boyfriends, who played the song for us recently) who’ve been drawn to "In Bloom," and its oblique tale of a troubled outsider who “likes all the pretty songs” but “knows not what it means.” Simpson’s version, though, is quietly redemptive.
