Jazz Connexion 4/25

Here's the playlist from this evening's program:

1. Stanton Moore - Groove Alchemy - Keep on Gwine
2. The Nels Cline Singers - Initiate - Floored
3. Preservation Hall Jazz Band - Benefit Album - La vie en rose feat. Angelique Kidjo and Terence Blanchard
4. Darcy James Argue's Secret Society - Infernal Machines - Transit feat. Ingrid Jensen
5. Speak - Speak - Amalgam In The Middle
6. Wellstone Conspiracy - Motives - Turbulator
7. Anat Cohen - Clarinetworks: Live at the Village Vanguard - St. James Infirmary
8. Bobby Previte and Bump - Counterclockwise - And The Wind Cries... Mademoiselle Katherine

As always, thank you for tuning into the Jazz Connexion. The next two weeks will be relatively normal in their programming, building up to the final show on May 16th which will feature my top picks in jazz from the past 4 years (the span of time that I've been on the air on KWLC). See you next week.

Jazz Connexion 4/18/2010 - Esperanza Spalding

Tonight's episode of the Jazz Connexion featured a profile on the prodigious, 25 year-old Esperanza Spalding. Her claim to fame is playing her bass and singing simultaneously. Since her debut at 15 with Portland group Noise for Pretend, she has created a spectacular, and still blossoming, solo career that shows why she is seen as her generation's most electrifying jazz star. This has resulted in pairings with legends Mike Stern, Francisco Mela, Lionel Loueke, Joe Lovano, and many others, right alongside fellow up-and-comers Christian Scott and Aaron Parks. Bass in hand, Esperanza infuses Afro-Caribbean grooves with Prince songs and manages to marry the driving sounds of Loud Rock with the lightest most delicate bass lines. Hers is a name to watch for, and certainly someone to be listening to whether you're an experienced connoisseur or you're trying to take your first steps into the world of jazz.

The following is tonight's playlist. All songs feature Esperanza Spalding on the vocals and/or bass.

1. Noise for Pretend - Happy You Near - Pants With His Halfway Down
2. Esperanza Spalding - Junjo - The Peacocks (this track was my first exposure to her sound as a freshman jazz DJ at KWLC)
3. Esperanza Spalding - Junjo - Loro
4. Lionel Loueke - Mwaliko - Twins
5. Lionel Loueke - Mwaliko - Flying
6. Mike Stern - Big Neighborhood - Bird Blue
7. Christian Scott - Anthem - Litany Against Fear
8. Esperanza Spalding - Esperanza - Mela
9. Esperanza Spalding - Esperanza - Espera

Jazz Connexion 4/11/10

With Spring Break and Easter Break falling so close to each other, it has been over a month since the Jazz Connexion has been aired at its normal time. This was an exciting and progressive show. Thanks for listening.

1. Ilhan Ersahin - Ilhan Ersahin's Istanbul Sessions with Erik Truffaz - Freedom
2. Vijay Iyer Trio - Historicity - Smoke Stack (Andrew Hill)
3. Tigran Hamasyan - Red Hail (Aratta Rebirth) - Falling
4. Christian McBride - Kind of Brown - Used 'Ta Could
5. Christina Watson - A Flower Truly Blue - A Thousand Kisses Deep (Leonard Cohen)
6. Brad Mehldau - Highway Rider - Highway Rider
7. Matthew Shipp Quartet - Pastoral Composure - Frere Jacques
Notes from the album's Executive Producer Peter Gordon - "Regardless of genre, music trends are showing a growing complacency to challenge convention. Feeling frustrated by this stagnancy, I realized that by creating a series fo records marrying jazz's many languages, perhaps a new form could arise. The Blue Series (of which this album is a part) attempts to do this in a way that will, hopefully, challenge, probe, excite, and perhaps even anger listeners as we try to strip away conventions with a new convention."
8. Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath - Eclipse at Dawn - Nick Tete

Alas, this evening we ran out of minutes. If only time were on my side. In the coming weeks expect to hear Bobby Previte & Bump from their album Counterclockwise.

Coming up next weekend (4/17-19), the KWLC Jazz Staff is going to provide you with 9 hours of edutainment via Artist Profiles. Each DJ will pick an artist and show their work in every context that it exists (i.e. solo works, composition, as a sideman). Tune in to hear profiles of pianist Matthew Shipp Saturday 8-9am, saxophonist John Coltrane right afterward from 9-10am. On Sunday, pianist Bill Anschell from 530-630p, drummer Stanton Moore from 630-730p, bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding on the Jazz Connexion from 730-830p, drummer/composer Dave King from 830-930p and then reed-master Anat Cohen 10p-11p on Monday night, followed by guitarist Lionel Loueke from 11p-12a, and Thelonious Monk from 12-1a.

Be sure to tune in for a weekend of wonderful music. Click here to view the entire KWLC Schedule.

Comebacks: Pat Metheny's One Man Band

The following article was printed in the "View From Old Main" section in the March 17th issue of The Gadfly at Luther College.

We live in a truly advanced age. Our lives are all driven by constantly surging technological advances that are continually progressing. Their impact has never felt more present than when listening to much of our current musical trends. Auto-tuners have replaced human voices, beat creating software has all but replaced the drummer, and digital samples have replaced the need to be creative when writing songs. Like it or not, this is the artistic world that most of us are living in. What this has caused is a movement crying out for the old-fashioned, even for a regression, when attempting to reclaim the musical art form from the automated future that it has fallen into (see Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, Daptone Gold, even the raw sound of Fleet Foxes, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Bon Iver).

Nonchalantly straddling this border is a jazz guitarist named Pat Metheny. Hailing originally from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, Metheny has been one of the most innovative and important musical pioneers of the last 30 years. Widely known as jazz’s greatest modern guitarist, Metheny’s signature tone and style has characterized his work since his outbreak album, Bright Size Life, back in 1976. Since then, his band mates have represented the best musicians known to the fusion and post-fusion jazz worlds, including Jaco Pastorious and Bob Moses (each of whom were featured on Bright Size Life), Gary Burton, Charlie Haden, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau, Antonio Sanchez, Christian McBride, Lyle Mays, Danny Gottlieb, and Chick Corea. Among others, these players have been part of the revolving door that is Pat’s complex musical life. So where do we go from here? The answer is simple: Orchestrion.

Metheny’s most recent album, Orchestrion (Nonesuch Records), features himself on guitar and Orchestrionics, which is a team of automated guitars, basses, pianos, and percussion, all of which are controlled either through his guitar, or by using a series of foot pedals (there is a fantastic video of the “band” on patmetheny.com). Officially inspired by his grandfather’s century old player piano, Metheny’s “reinvention of the one-man band” has brought an entirely new concept to the solo album. In a video promoting the album on his website, Metheny stares wide-eyed at his room full of mechanized instruments and marvels at how wonderful it is that every single sound on the album has been “something I created.” Metheny, who has achieved fame as a solo artist and as a collaborator, has now egotistically found a way toassume both roles simultaneously.

Orchestrion was created by Metheny, Mark Herbert, Eric Singer, and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) after new solenoid technology was developed allowing Pat Metheny to “play [his] guitar with his feet.” Cool right? Naturally, when you’ve reached this point, the next step is to tour around the world with a band of robots that obey your every command. The technology used on the album, which is a mix of solenoids and pneumatic switches that combines a mix of prerecorded loops and simultaneous doubling of Metheny’s guitar riffs that create a color that is equivalent to those provided by his previous bands. The color is a sweeping, sprawling whirlwind of sound that can only be provided by six 12-string guitars being played with robotic arms and transplanted piano hammers, unless, of course, you used real people.

No matter how incredible a feat this album is, all of those fans with a critical ear will notice that it lacks a very important element. While embodying a certain progressive, fusion sound that can drive many Django purists to retreat to their boxes of old 35’s, Pat Metheny has been able to do something that many other artists in his genre have been unable to accomplish. Up until this point, Metheny has done nothing to jazz but introduce new colors (guitar effects, stylistic elements) and new feels (lots of mixed meter compositions that add to the weightless driving sound he is known for). Unlike his archenemy Kenny G, he has managed to play an un-bastardized form of jazz that has remained both pedagogically intelligent, yet progressively approachable to both jazz fans and non-jazz fans alike. Like several of his predecessors, for example Louis Armstrong, Metheny’s music is incredibly appealing to the lay listener, all the while allowing you space to dive into the immense world of jazz theory and trace an artist’s stylistic influences back to their roots. This results in an impact that is nothing less than mind blowing and often becomes the stuff of legend

With this in mind, it is essential to point out that, like all talented artists, athletes and celebrities, it is often those people surrounding them that make them great. Louis Armstrong was a great trumpeter, but his Hot 5’s and Hot 7’s - the two groups that helped him to record his first album – made him better. Pat Metheny is great, but playing without the Lyle Mays’, or Antonio Sanchez’s of the world, his music loses the powerful soul that it once possessed.

It is no surprise that with Orchestrion, however technologically innovative it may be, has lost the emotional, human connection that former Metheny albums have been triumphed for. The colors are brilliant, but they somehow sound shallow and flat. The drumming is technically perfect, but lacks the drive and the fortitude of a living, breathing drummer. The guitars are perfect in time, rhythm and pitch, but they lack the minor, virtually un-noticeable inconsistencies that somehow make good albumsgreat. So why do it? Metheny draws inspiration from Ray Kurzweil, “one of the most visionary thinkers in the world” who also often works in the musical side of artificial intelligence. When asked this question, “why do you do this,” Kurzweil responded, to “extend our reach.” Metheny goes on to point out that “good notes, once revealed, seem to carry their own intrinsic value with them forward, however they came to be.” Simply put, Metheny doesn’t care where the music comes from. If it’s good, it’s good, thus expressing a surprisingly Midwestern attitude from the international superstar.

Pat Metheny’s Orchestion has successfully reinvented the player piano, and significantly added to the oeuvre of mechanical and robotic instruments, but it neglects one simple fact that we learned over a hundred years ago: player pianos never sound nearly as good as the real thing. When criticizing certain modern movements of jazz (Kenny G), Metheny is quoted saying, “just like in rock and roll, we have to remember that 95% of jazz music is really bad.” Unfortunately for him, this album leans toward the majority category simply due to its lack of the human expressive element. This is a band of machines, and it plays like one.

Pat Metheny is currently with his Orchestrionics touring throughout Europe. The group will perform live at the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul on May 9th.

Big In Europe

Un américain dans la ville...

Radio Article in The Gadfly

Here is an article I wrote for for The Gadfly at Luther called "The Age of Pandora, Sirius, and Muzak: An Argument for Traditional Radio." Copy the link into a new window to read the pdf.

Favorites from the Past Few Weeks

So I've been doing a lot of radio in the past few weeks and it was too much to keep up with on these updates. In lieu of actually playlists, I've decided to throw some of my favorites from the past 20 hours or so that I've spent on the air on Luther College Radio.

• Betty Smith - For My Friends of Song - Softly Came the Gypsy, Gentle Maiden, Little Liza Jane (Harpsichord and Appalachian Dulcimer)
• From "A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody and Leadbelly" => Willy Nelson's version of Philadelphia Lawyer; Emmylou Harris's version of Hobo's Lullaby; also Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska-esque "I Ain't Got No Home"
• The Freedom Singers - Woke Up This Morning recorded live at the 1964 Newport Folk Fest
• The New "Preservation Hall Jazz Band" benefit album => all of it, especially the Tom Waits appearances and the Louis Armstrong re-record
• John Ellis and Double Wide - Puppet Mischief - Dublinland Carnival and This Too Shall Pass
• Clifford Brown - The Quintet - Parisian Thoroughfare
• Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra - A Love Supreme
• Peter Beets Trio's songs from the Jazz @ The Concertgebouw 3
• Tineke Postma - The Traveller - Song For F
• Zoot Sims and Bucky Pizzarelli - What Is This Thing Called Love
• Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Boogie Woogie String Along For Real - In A Mellow Tone
• Eric LeLann - C'est la nuit Lola
• EEA - The Dark - Palhaço
• Charlie Hunter - Gentlemen I Neglect to Inform You That You Will Not Be Getting Paid
• Joanna Newsome - Have One On Me - Soft As Chalk, and also Good Intentions Paving Company
• The Wapsipinicon - San Geronimo - Vans On DuPont
• Spoon - Transference - Trouble Comes Running and Is Love Forever
• Retribution Gospel Choir - 2 - Hide It Away => I've also returned to the S/t album, mostly for the updated version of Breaker
• The new Black Rebel Motorcycle Club album, Beat The Devil's Tattoo
• Johnny Cash - Ain't No Grave
• Anaïs Mitchell's Hadestown Folk Opera
• Lay Low - Farewell Goodnight's Sleep - On My Own
• Corinne Bailey Rae - The Sea - The Blackest Lily
• Roy Hargrove's RH Factor
• The White Stripes - Under Great White Northern Lights
• Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars - Rise and Shine
• Daptone Gold's label compilation of old style funk
• Galactic's new album Ya-Ka-May
• Yukon Blonde - Wind Blows
• Liars' song Scissor
• Seven Saturday's song Secret Things
• Beach Houses new record
• Pete Seeger singing "Little Boxes" live
• Robert Francis - Before Nightfall
• The Magnetic Fields' Realism record, in particular "Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree"
• Eels' End Time
• Certain really cool songs off the New Moon sound track, despite my objections
• The Philadelphia Experiment record from 2001
• Carolina Chocolate Drops' album Genuine Negro Jig, especially the track "Why Don't Do Right?"
• George Adams' "Sound Suggestions
• Ulf Wakenius - Notes From The Heart - Mon Coeur est Rouge (Jarrett)

Thanks so much for those of your who listen(ed). It is always appreciated. Tune into kwlc.luther.edu anywhere in the world for the best music Northeastern Iowa has to offer.