If you like music, and you enjoy sampling cutting-edge tracks by new talent, you need to check out a great new site called SoundCloud. Regular readers may have noticed that I posted some tracks in an earlier message using the high-quality SoundCloud audio player. The player is a very versatile utility, letting you upload a track, edit, scrunch, tweak and manipulate it all over the place. Then playback and store the new creation.
SoundCloud is also a vast community of music creators and fans which offers quick-and-easy, down-and-dirty facility for uploading and sharing sound tracks. In just a few days of poking around, I have found some interesting tracks. Here is one posted by a young man who calls himself T-Cash. He presents it as “inspired by an old church song.” T-Cash has stepped-up the beat and pushed that melody through the electronic instrument window to create a “Funky Piano/Tech/Power-guitar” track that I think is really good. Give a listen to The Golden City RC-2:
Take a look at the Sidebar (over to the right) and you will see a button/link inviting you, or anyone you know, to send me a soundtrack via my personal “drop box” at SoundCloud. I will listen, give the sender/composer/arranger/whoever some feedback and will consider posting the best tracks on this site. Hopefully, some hard-working new talent will get a modicum of exposure. We ain’t the big-time but, heck, we are pushing toward 40,000 hits and we just came online in January of 2009. It took quite a while to get the hang of it and develop enough decent content to invite scrutiny so, actually, we have only really been “out there” about six months.
Norman Brown is another of the newer talents I like to spend a little time with. Quick, smooth and precise, Norman is easy to listen to while reading, driving, cooking, partying, a whole range of activities. Brown does all of his own arrangements and creates some great combinations of talent and instruments.
Guitarist Norman Brown
His 2008 album After the Storm was Jazz Album of the Year on at least two charts. It is one of my favorites and it features a great version of That’s the Way Loves Goes, a composition by James Harris, Terry Lewis and Janet Jackson.
Another great track on this CD is Norman’s shift to the acoustic guitar. Titled Acoustic Time, this is a soft, lovely tune:
Brown is probably best recognized for his version of Ernie Isely’s For the Love of You, which gets tons of play on all smooth jazz radio stations and live streams.
Speaking of live jazz streaming, Norman Brown (like the jazz radio pioneer Dave Koz) broadcasts a great show every weekend on The Smooth Jazz Network. The link is http://smoothjazznetwork.com
Continuing the short series of posts on some of the newer artists and groups that I listen to regularly, I have to give a big shout out to Gota. His full name is Gota Yashiki, but he performs and records under his first name only.
I am listening to this guy all the time. Whether it’s CDs in the car or the big system at home, earbuds stuck into the laptop, or the SanDisk player on an airline flight, a little Gota always perks me up.
Gota Live
Born in Kyoto, Japan, a young Gota learned traditional Japanese Drums. In 1982, at the age of 20, he moved to Tokyo and became a drummer in various reggae groups and started experimenting with electronic dubbing. By 1988 Gota was based in London and heavily involved in studio remixing and working on film soundtracks. He also worked with a number of top recording artists and groups.
Moving beyond just his talent for drumming, Gota became heavily involved in the programming of electronic instruments and remixing. He recorded and toured with Simply Red, and contributed to recordings by Seal, Soul II Soul, Swing Out Sister & Depeche Mode. Alanis Morissette has called him the “Groove Activator” on her brerakout album Jagged Little Pill. He played drums and programmed all the electronic instruments on Sinead O’Connor’s smash hit Nothing Compares 2 U.
Let's Get Started cover
In 1999 came the American release of Gota’s second album, Let’s Get Started, where I first discovered him. Lend an ear to the title track:
The third track on Let’s Get.. became a No. 1 hit on Jazz radio. Listen to In the City Life
In 2001, Gota released day & night, a strong follow-up to Let’s Get..
Still working in the style of electronic, fusion Jazz, day & night is another strong collection of tunes and one of those rare albums that are great to play just straight through. Track 1, Cruisin’ Your Way is absolutely one of my favorite up-tempo Jazz pieces. Give it a listen:
I hope these samples of this terrifically creative artist motivate you to buy his CDs. I am believer in artists getting paid and the music I put up here is meant only to whet your appetite and turn you into a paying customer.
When I am looking to get groovy, get funky. When I am in one of those moods where I want my shoulders shaking and my head bobbing, I put on a little Down To The Bone. I call them a non-band because DTTB is essentially the genius of Stuart Wade – DJ, mixer, producer – pushed through a varying mixture of musicians.
Stuart Wade
Wade never studied music, nor does he play any instrument. He is not a composer, in the traditional sense. Rather, he “creates music” by humming tunes and grooves into a Dictaphone, or face-to-face with musicians in the recording studio. Over several years he has collaborated with a sizable group of musicians in producing three very successful albums with a new one about to be released. If this sounds kind of bush-league to you, take a few minutes and listen to the two sample tracks below.
My favorite is From Manhattan To Staten, released in 1997 by nuGroove Records. This is a collection of funky beats and cool Jazz. Take a sample of the opening track, Staten Island Groove:
My favorite DTTB track, without a doubt, is Brooklyn Heights. In fact, it is one of my favorite Jazz tracks of all time. I defy you to keep still with this track going at a decent volume. I love to listen to this one through my Sennheiser headphones, getting every note from every instrument. My grandson, Evan, when he was just a wee tot, became a groovy dancer when I would put on a little Brooklyn Heights. Cutest thing ever. If you’re holding a beverage, put it down before you listen to this tune:
I have been writing a lot about the Big Band & Swing eras and, consequently, featuring a lot of performers who did their best work many, many years ago. I have been pushing Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust, Swing bands like those led by Larry Elgart and Walt Levinsky. I do love the old stuff, and play a lot of Dizzy, Brubeck, Benny Goodman and Satchmo.
But I have been asked a few times, recently, if I don’t listen to any “new stuff,” anybody young who is writing arranging and recording now. I do. I definitely do. So, over the next few days, or weeks, I am going to try to feature some of the newer stuff I like to listen to. In no particular order of preference, just beginning with what is closest at hand today, I like:
LEE RITENOUR
I have been listening to Jazz guitarist Lee Ritenour for several years. I first knew about him as one of the founding members, along with pianist Bob James, bassist Nathan East and drummer Harvey Mason, of the top Jazz group Fourplay. But, in truth, I had been hearing Ritenour play long before I knew his name. he worked as a key session guitarist with talents as diverse as Pink Floyd, Steely Dan (on Aja, which has been a recent topic), Dizzy Gillespie, B.B. King, Peggy lee, and Herbie Hancock. How good do you have to be on the guitar to be requested by B.B. King?
Lee Ritenour
I have several Fourplay CDs, my favorite being Between the Sheets. Of Lee’s solo CDs, I like This Is Love, from which the song Ooh-Yeah has continued to get major play on jazz radio.
My favorite Ritenour effort, however, is his collaboration with Dave Grusin on the CD Two Worlds. These two have done a good bit of work together, producing several albums. Two Worlds is a thing apart because of the musical selections AND the involvement other talented collaborators, like soprano Renee Fleming, violinist Gil Shaham and cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. The album opens with J.S. Bach’s Concerto in A Minor for Four Keyboards and Strings:
Concerto in A Minor
Dave Grusin
Track 3 – Sonatina is, according to the Album Notes, “an homage to the genius of Andres Segovia (1893-1987) the Spanish guitarist whose artistry was almost single-handedly responsible for the 20th Century revival of the guitar as a ‘classical’ instrument.” Segovia’s legacy is well-served here. Listen up:
Sonatina
Track 11 _ Siciliana has cellist Julian Lloyd Webber joining ‘our boys’ for another Bach piece, as transcribed by Dave Grusin. This is nice:
The Internet is just a wonderful, and powerful thing. Did you know that you can tour most of the great art galleries in the world right from your easy chair? Several of them include an option that lets you save your own personal collection of your favorites, so you can come back and view them any time you like without having to go through searches or numerous page views.
National Gallery - west wing
One of my favorites is the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., partly because it has a huge collection of Rembrandts. The building is an architectural stunner and the art is wonderfully displayed. The collection also includes a very small work by Leonardo da Vinci, painted on a block of wood and painted on both front and rear. It is displayed, out on the floor in a special case that gives a 360-degree view as you can walk behind the painting. The scene on the rear is exactly what a viewer would have seen in real life if standing behind the subject. Incredible! What a mind that guy had.
The Tate Gallery, in London offers a virtual map of the gallery. As you mouse-over the various rooms you get a note of the period or artists displayed within. Click on the room and you can see the works within and can save them to your virtual collection. It is a great way to plan your visit and make sure you don’t miss a favorite while there.
The Guggenheim site lets you tour the collections in New York City, Venice, Berlin and the new Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. Once your are in your chosen collection, click on any piece and a wealth of information pops up. It is a new, and very enlightening, way to experience these great works. Very educational!
Reubens Wife & Child
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City has a terrific site with all sorts of capabilities. There is database feature that lets you set your search criteria and then look through all the works that meet those data-points. They also have what are, in effect, virtual lectures, organized around interesting topics like “Art of the First Cities,” or “How van Gogh Made His Mark.” You can save a personal collection of art from The Met, too.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City has one of the coolest of all the sites. The collection is displayed, onscreen, as artwork only. No text. Mouse-over an artwork and the Name, Artist and Date pop up. Again, you can save your own personal art gallery to revisit.
My favorite gallery of all, at least for a live visit, is The Frick Collection in New York City. Not only is it a stunning collection of art, but it is presented in the actual Frick Mansion on 5th Avenue, just across the street from Central Park. You get to see the art just as old Henry Clay Frick, one of America’s industrial giants, enjoyed it as he walked around his splendid home. Major rooms have a virtual tour video that lets you scan 360 degrees, zoom in and out and see the room and its art almost as if you were walking around inside. On my visit there, I delighted browsing his personal library, with works like J. H. Jesse’s English Histories, History of the U.S., and Book of Wealth by George Bancroft.
My advice is to spend a little time with these great resources. The links are scatttered throughout this post, but here is a recap to make it easy for you:
A funny & unexpected pop cult reference to Metheny was heard tonight on NPR’s “Fresh Aire.” Check it out at npr.com/programs. It was a clip from a comedy by producer Mike Judge, the interviewee. A pair of overeager music store salesmen were pitching a Gibson guitar to a fetching and flirtatious young beauty.
“It’s just like Metheny plays,” said one. “He’s the greatest fusion guitar player.”
“I… don’t know ho you’re talking about. But it’s a beautiful guitar. Do you have it in another color?”
Both guys rush to the back room to fetch the instrument, while she picks up the first guitar and walks out the door.
That’s the first joke, the one most folks get. But a true Pathead knows he stopped playing the Gibson ES-175 ten years ago, and that he hates being called a fusion guitar player. “My stuff was a reaction against that,” he writes. His music is built from melodies, not riffs. Compared with McLaughlin, Coryell and Di Meola, Pat slowed the music down to my speed of listening. And he takes most of his inspiration and style from horn players, not guitarists.
But if he’s not a fusion guitarist, he’s certainly created a wide assortment of fusion music, leaping continents to seek new musical material. Brazilian grooves mix with Asian instruments, classical orchestras with synth guitars, all seasoned with steely broad-strummed textures from country music.
So he’s an anti-fusion guitarist creating fusion music. That’s like the other paradox he’s often posed: All the members of his band must be familiar and expert in bebop, although they’ll hardly ever come right out and play it.
I am breaking this out into a new post because it brings up the whole debate about genre purity. Kevin Kneistedt had a good discussion going recently over on his “Groove Notes” page on the issue of Jazz purity. Check out Where Is the Fine Line In Jazz? and stay to read more of Kevin’s stuff. His post came out of a complaint he received from a listener to his regular live-stream broadcast on Jazz24Live. Kevin had played Steely Dan’s Aja, and the listener complained bitterly that the track was Rock, not Jazz and did not belong on the show.
I, along with a few others, responded about the general idiocy of labeling styles and genres, especially when it leads, as it typically does, to a kind of huffiness about who “belongs” and who doesn’t.
For the sake of research, here is the “offending track” in live performance:
While the Pat Metheny incident is, instead, a question of self-labeling (or, more precisely label-denial) I think it grows out of the same tendency, when it comes to musicians, for us to seek pigeonholes. You correctly point out that one of the notable things that Pat has done, over the years, is to tap into, blend, yea fuse many disparate styles into his music. And yet, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the word fusion. His marked avoidance emphasizes the power he accords the label.
So where does the tendency for genre labeling come from?
Does this come from the marketing side of the business?
Is it inherent in fan-dom?
Are musicians, themselves, prone to sort out into categories, like religious denominations?
She had asked me for ideas on where to go for some good music one evening. After checking around on what was happening (thanks New Yorkermagazine) I recommended they consider seeing Steve Tyrell, who was performing atThe Blue Note.
Steve Tyrell at The Blue Note
They went, and they really enjoyed it. The Blue Note is a terrific, intimate venue for this kind of act. The performance was built largely around Steve’s Back to Bacharachalbum, but included some tunes from the Great American Songbook. At the very beginning of his music career, Steve worked as an assistant producer for Burt Bacharach, and he has a special feel for all the Bacharach/Hal David material.
Back to Bacharach album
On most tunes, Tyrell’s voice has certain rough, growly quality. I think of it as “a little taste of Louie.” This makes for an interesting interpretation of some of the classics on hisStandard Timealbum, which includes several of my all-time favorites like Stardust. Probably my favorite track on the album is Fats Waller’s Ain’t Misbehavin’ from way back in 1929.
Tyrell followed up Standard Time withA New Standard offering more of the great old stuff. This time we get Cheek to Cheek, I Can’t Get Started and Smile. Where you really hear “a little taste of Louie” is on A Kiss To Build A Dream On. It’s not Louie, but it’s close.
Any of you who saw my post on the Denise Brigham recording sessions for Hotel Lafayette knows that I am always intrigued by the process behind the final track. While not quite the same as the ‘live look” at the recording process we saw there, the following video has Steve talking about what it was like working with, and learning from, Burt Bacharach, as well as some of the production work and strategy that has gone into some of his best tracks.
Steve Tyrell will take over at The Carlyle Hotel for a run fro November 10- December 30, plus a special performance on New Year’s Eve. We recommend it. Keep reading →
I think that Wynton Marsalis is one of the most intellectual, informative musicians active today. His knowledge and appreciation of ALL styles of music is a resource not to be missed. Wynton posts something most days and they are very enlightening and entertaining. Peeking in on the workings of this unique musical talent is a major treat.
He has posted live, streaming video during rehearsals and sound-checks. These are great fun. You not only get to hear some great music, but you are sitting in on the discussions and exchanges that result in the final performance piece.
Watch him try out the new horn, and watch Monette try to contain his joy at hearing the instrument taken for a test-drive by the master. This is great, insider stuff that enriches the jazz experience for me.
This is the first posting from bluetwango, “Our Man in Colorado”
Do I like Big Band, Jazz and Swing? That’s a simple question that calls for a complicated answer. I’ll try to riff on this awhile…
Not so much in its original form. I enjoy watching an old clip of a nattily tailored band playing to elegant dancers in a sleek Art Deco ballroom, caught on some classic movie on TCM. It truly was a time — but not the only time — when popular music achieved excellence, and excellence found an audience. That said, I don’t listen to any classic Big Band, at all.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, about a year ago when I dropped by a humble tavern in my neighborhood that had started booking jazz. I stepped inside and found myself face-to-face with an 11-piece Big Band in full thunder. What I took for the front door turned out o be a side door, so I was literally fronting the band, a yard in front of the rhythm section. If there had been a mike and a song I knew, I might have tried to sing it– the experience was that immediate and involving. Instead, I found a seat among a crowd that barely outnumbered the players. It was bigger the next week, though.
I probably spent five hours in there, coming back with my little family, and again as the cast of players shifted from week to week. They always were some of Denver’s best players, many of them are teachers at a local college’s jazz program. I realized I”d been hearing their names on the local jazz radio station (one of the few 24-hour jazz spots on any dial). We’ve quietly been developing a cadre of notables, most notably trumpeter Ron Miles. Bill Frisell, who knocks me out with his Hendrix-influenced Americana, was a Denver native who comes by often.
GuitaristBbill Frisell
How was the music? Oh, the music. Melodic, dynamic, intensely emotional. Cheerful, in a way jazz often isn’t, but that’s in tune with the bandleader’s debut title, “Unfailing Kindness.” The composer and conductor was Chie Imazumi, a Berklee grad who’s set up shop in Denver for now. She paints with the usual big-band’s broad palette of instruments, along with a prominent lead guitarist who sometimes cranks it into overdrive. (It’s my generation, cuz- without a little feedback and distortion now and them, something’s just missing for me.) I’d be happy to send you a copy, or suggest you buy one– she’s still small enough to need the income.
That was only one of the incidents that periodically remind me that I like Big Band, though I don’t… much…
Another was my first after-show chat with my musical idol, Pat Metheny. When I asked him why he never stretched or altered compositions or arrangements when performing with the Pat Metheny Group, he replied, “They’re the big band. They play the charts.” (Later when he cut my favorite movements out of two of his songs played live, I was deeply irritated and sorry I’d suggested anything!) It was easy to see the Group as a modern Big Band. Its core quartet are augmented by between three and five second-line musicians who multiply their own efforts with a battery of wind instruments, arrays of mallets and percussion oddities, plus guitars and vocals. It’s something to see live, as deliberate and intricate as a watching a team of top chefs working up dinner in the diner of a speeding train, to stretch a metaphor. The Group’s last effort, “The Way Up,” involved nine musicians playing over an hour with a composition that fills a 300-page music book. So yes, I like complexity, which is one thing Big Bands were good at, and something that got lost in the bebop age of minimalist bands. Pat’s next act, which should push complexity to a new level, is too compose and tour with a modern Orchestration. Check his site for details- any attempt at description of this would keep me up even later, and it’s too late now.
Guitarist Pat Metheny
I’d recommend you look up “The Music of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays” by Bob Curnow and the LA Big Band. It’s a small label, hard to find, but a great project. It’s a note-for-note rearrangement into the language of a big Big Band, with over two dozen players, IIRC. These compositions are deeply grooved into my brain now, but hearing them with oboes and clarinets taking the leads was a whole new experience. It removed all the distance between me and the Big Band era, all those pencil-thin mustaches and zoot suits and dry cocktails. But I have pretty big ears. Driving through Kansas City once, I was treated to an hour’s program on Lounge music. Sandy Denny and the like. Wow, what a forgotten genre of music! I found myself digging some of it. Lots of emphasis on orchestration; not just what notes are played, but what voices play them. A good bit of world music influence, too, like I hear in Metheny’s music, who also grew up in KC, listening to this stuff, perhaps?
So, Big Band strikes me when I’m out looking for something else. As for Swing, I hear that in all good jazz. If I had to find some on my shelf, I’d dig for my disc of David Grisman with Stephane Grappelli. Anything by Grisman swings like Chipper Jones at a high fast one, right?
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