Dji­van Gasparyan

Hos­sein Alizadeh

This quite beau­ti­ful album of slow-paced, deeply roman­tic music com­bines the vir­tu­os­i­ty of Dji­van Gas­paryan, the ven­er­a­ble mas­ter of the Armen­ian duduk, and Hos­sein Alizadeh, the super­star of the Per­sian tar. The duduk is a nine-holed oboe made of apri­cot wood, some­what resem­bling the medieval Euro­pean shawm, and Gas­paryan is its unri­valed mas­ter. Alizadeh is the younger dynamo of the Per­sian lute. How­ev­er, for this amaz­ing per­for­mance record­ed in Tehran in Sep­tem­ber of 2003, Alizadeh employed a vari­ant form of the tar known as the shu­ran­giz. The con­cert alter­nat­ed Armen­ian and Per­sian songs, and includ­ed Alizadeh’s famil­iar orches­tra, and three vocal­ists — one female, some­thing con­sid­ered a bit dar­ing in con­tem­po­rary, mul­lah-infest­ed Iran. Iran and the Unit­ed States share a com­mon afflic­tion: both are nations with a deep and mul­ti­fac­eted musi­cal her­itage, and an innate vital­i­ty of pop­u­lar cul­ture, which have the mis­for­tune of being ruled by wicked, igno­rant, stu­pid old men, and tor­ment­ed by moron­ic reli­gious zealots. Yet the under­ly­ing vital­i­ty and beau­ty always seems to sur­vive. Relax with a book of verse, a cup of wine, and any agree­able thou at your dis­pos­al, and put on this album.

18988. (Hugo Alfvén) Swedish Rhap­sody # 2, Op.24, R58 “Upp­sala”
18989. (Hugo Alfvén) Sym­pho­ny #1 in F minor, Op.7, R 24
18990. (Hugo Alfvén) Dra­pa, Op. 27 “In Memo­ri­am King Oscar II”
18991. (Hugo Alfvén) Uppen­barelsekan­tat “Rev­e­la­tion Can­ta­ta”, Op. 31: Andante religioso
18992. (Hugo Alfvén) Sym­pho­ny #2 in D major, Op.11, R 28
18993. (Pix­ies) Wave of Muti­la­tion: Best of Pixies
18994. (Zap Mama) Sabsylma
18995. (Hugo Alfvén) Swedish Rhap­sody #3, R 120 “Dalarhap­so­di­en”
18996. (Hugo Alfvén) Sym­pho­ny #3 in E major, R 54
18997. (Hugo Alfvén) The Prodi­gal Son [Den foro­lade sonen], bal­let suite, R 214
18998. (Ash­ley McIsaac) Helter’s Celtic
18999. (Arc­tic Mon­keys) What­ev­er Peo­ple Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
18900. (Gavin Taaffe) Sad Songs
19001. (Ornette Cole­man) The Shape of Jazz to Come

Radio dra­ma con­tin­ued longer than peo­ple gen­er­ally imag­ine. Lux Radio Theatre’s last broad­cast was on April Fool’s Day, 1954, and they chose a drama­ti­za­tion of the clas­sic 1951 sci­ence fic­tion film, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Michael Ren­nie reprised his film role as the alien vis­i­tor Klaatu. Jean Peters per­formed the role tak­en by the husky-voiced Patri­cia Neal. From the voice, it sounds to me like Bil­ly Gray also reprised his role from the film, as the curi­ous young boy Bob­by. His per­for­mance was crit­i­cal to the film’s effec­tive­ness, but this is sel­dom acknowl­edged. Gray went on to a sol­id film career as a sup­port­ing play­er, and some suc­cess as a speed­way motor­cy­cle rac­er and the inven­tor of the F‑1 gui­tar pick. The radio adap­ta­tion kept close to the film script, mere­ly tweak­ing the lines when visu­al ele­ments had to be evoked. Ren­nie sound­ed a lit­tle tired, but on the whole, it was a fine trans­la­tion of the film into a dif­fer­ent medium.

It can be awk­ward to review an album when the musi­cian is a per­sonal friend, espe­cially when one of the songs ref­er­ences events one has per­son­ally wit­nessed, but not in this case. The music speaks for itself. This com­pi­la­tion of songs com­posed over the last eight years con­firms Gavin Taaffe’s sta­tus as an upcom­ing singer-song­writer worth com­par­ing to Bruce Cock­burn or Suf­jan Stevens. The lyrics are intel­li­gent, sub­tle, sup­ple… and, yes, sad. You should have a taste for con­cen­trated pes­simism tem­pered by a sense of sur­vival to enjoy them. Inef­fa­ble feel­ings of dis­ap­point­ment, loss, and long­ing are cap­tured in crisp ver­bal images and piquant melod­ic phras­es and gui­tar licks. Rec­om­mended for late-night listening.

I’ve writ­ten else­where of my love for the music of Ali Far­ka Touré, whose every chord calls back mem­o­ries of the Sahara, and whose spir­it hov­ered above Tim­buk­tu like an angel. His was a pro­found and sub­tle art, which turned the “blues” into a clar­i­on of sub­lime affir­ma­tion. His native Mali suf­fered the exploita­tion of dic­ta­tor­ship and the hor­rors of civ­il war, but he remained undaunt­ed in his opti­mism. While oth­er Malian musi­cians fled to Europe and Amer­i­ca to pur­sue their careers, Touré stuck it out at home. The over­throw of dic­ta­tor­ship pro­duced a renais­sance of Malian music. Touré was the very sol­id rock on which that renais­sance was found­ed. True to his char­ac­ter, he spent the last years of his life serv­ing as may­or of a small vil­lage near Tim­buk­tu, spend­ing the mon­ey from his inter­na­tion­al record­ings to pro­vide it with sew­er­age and elec­tric­i­ty. My favourite album of his will always be The Source (1993), but jostling against it for that posi­tion is this won­der­ful 1995 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Amer­i­can gui­tarist Ry Cood­er, Talk­ing Tim­buk­tu. Unlike some of the rather patron­iz­ing duets between African artists and Euro­pean or Amer­i­can super­stars, this one is an easy-going ses­sion between two pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians who have lit­tle patience with stage-egos or man­u­fac­tured images. Cood­er is as Amer­i­can as they come, and Touré as African as they come, and both under­stood how those two places are musi­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly inter­twined. Amer­i­ca could not have become Amer­i­ca with­out Africa. It would just have been one more place where they danced with wood­en clogs in 4/4 time, and played the accor­dion. It could not have brought forth Elling­ton, Gersh­win, Satch­mo, Good­man and Chuck Berry and all that came from them. Lis­ten to the mar­velous per­for­mances of “Ai Du” and “Diara­by” on this album, and you’ll hear that brotherhood.

Since I found a set of scores for Haydn’s first fifty sym­phonies (pub­lished in Ger­many, and appar­ent­ly with­drawn from the Mannes Col­lege of Music in New York City some­time in the 1960s), it behooves me to lis­ten to them with score in hand. I’m not sure why the first two are not num­bered, but labeled “A” and “B”, but I pre­sume it’s because their attri­bu­tion is doubt­ful. “B” cer­tain­ly sounds like Haydn. “A” is plod­ding and mechan­i­cal, and could have been com­posed by any­body. The role of the com­pos­er in the first half of the 18th cen­tu­ry was rather like that of a rave dj. He was expect­ed to “spin” what­ev­er was at hand, and much mate­r­i­al was recy­cled from his own (or oth­ers’) out­put. Nobody kept track of who com­posed what, except as an after-thought. Com­posers where con­stant­ly fired and rehired by patrons, and hop­ping from one prince­ly court to anoth­er cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for pur­loin­ing works, or rehash­ing one’s own. When nec­es­sary, baroque music could be man­u­fac­tured in min­utes, by assem­bling cook­ie-cut­ter pat­terns. Some baroque com­posers, like Giuseppe Torel­li, seem to have “com­posed” more music than could be played end-to-end over their life­times. Some­one used to the mod­ern idea of a “sym­pho­ny” would bare­ly rec­og­nize these pieces as such. Lat­er on, Haydn him­self, and the young Mozart, would cre­ate the com­plex form of that name, by expand­ing the orches­tra­tion and cre­at­ing struc­tur­al uni­ty beyond the mere lump­ing togeth­er of vague­ly sim­i­lar pieces. The sym­phonies of this peri­od were what we would call “suites” today. But that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be intel­li­gent and entertaining.

18962. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny “A” in B‑flat [1762]
18963. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny “B” in B‑flat [1765]
(Ruth Gold­en, sopra­no) Silent Noon: Songs of Ralph Vaugh­an Williams
. . . . 18964. (Ralph Vaugh­an Williams) House of Life, Six Songs to Poems of Dante Gabriel 
. . . . . . . . Ros­set­ti for Bari­tone and Piano [arr. for sopra­no and piano] [see orig­i­nal at 16063] 
. . . . 18965. (Ralph Vaugh­an Williams) Four Last Songs to Poems of Ursu­la Vaugh­an Williams
. . . . 18966. (Ralph Vaugh­an Williams) “Lin­den Lea”, song for voice & orches­tra (“In Lin­den Lea”;
. . . . . . . . “A Dorset Song”) [arr. voice & piano]
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When it comes to for­mal com­po­si­tion in Cana­da, before 1860, I know of noth­ing that was com­posed out­side of Québec, the only part of the coun­try with any­thing resem­bling an urban cul­ture. There was, of course, plen­ty of folk fid­dling, folk singing, tav­ern bal­lads, and hymn singing going on in Ontario, the West, and Atlantic Cana­da, but only Mon­tréal and Québec City could sup­port pro­fes­sional com­posers. Most of their work is unob­tain­able, but a sam­pling has been put togeth­er by l’Ensemble du Nou­veau Québec under the title Antholo­gie de la musique his­torique du Québec, vol.1 ― l’époque de Julie Pap­ineau, 1795–1862. As you might guess, it is pret­ty tame, provin­cial stuff, polkas, mazurkas and art songs of mod­est ambi­tion. The most ambi­tious piece seems to have been Joseph Quesnel’s com­ic opera Lucas et Cécile (c. 1808), of which only the vocal parts sur­vive. The two excerpts on the album dis­play some panache, but they would have been old-fash­ioned in style at the time of their com­po­si­tion. All the works, by Ques­nel, Frédéric Glack­e­meyer, Théodore Molt, Charles Sabati­er, Ernest Gagnon, Célestin Lav­igueur, and Antoine Dessane have the charm of small draw­ing-room com­po­si­tions in a back­woods envi­ron­ment. They are most vig­or­ous when they draw on folk mate­r­ial and local themes. How­ever, the envi­ron­ment wasn’t entire­ly unso­phis­ti­cated: Dessane made a set­ting of Alphonse Lamar­tine, at the time an avant-guarde poet. Noth­ing on the album, how­ever, comes close to the impact of its best track: Antoine Gérin-Lajoie’s “Un Cana­dien Errant”. Strict­ly speak­ing, Gérin-Lajoie mere­ly wrote evoca­tive (and, at the time, polit­i­cally charged) lyrics for a tra­di­tional folk song, but these lyrics are so per­fect ― an exiled patri­ot, after the Rebel­lion of 1837, wan­ders the world, shed­ding tears of home­sick­ness ― that ear­li­er folk ver­sions were entire­ly sup­plant­ed. The song has been per­formed by an aston­ish­ing vari­ety of artists, rang­ing from Nana Mousk­ouri to Paul Robe­son, as well as vir­tu­al­ly every Cana­di­an folksinger.

18926. (Nic­colò Pagani­ni) 24 Caprices for Solo Vio­lin, Op.1
(Toron­to Con­sort) Las­so: Chan­sons & Madrigals:
. . . . 18927. (Orlan­do di Las­so) Un jour l’ament
. . . . 18928. (Orlan­do di Las­so) Gal­lans qui par terre
. . . . 18929. (Orlan­do di Las­so) Ardant amour à 4
. . . . 18930. (Orlan­do di Las­so) Ardant amour à 5
. . . . 18931. (Orlan­do di Las­so) J’ay de vous voir
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If you’re going to own one plains pow-wow cd, this is the one you should choose. Over the last decade, Young­bird, a pow­er­house Pawnee band from Okla­homa, has loomed large in the pow-wow cir­cuit in both the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, with its South­ern Style songs. But even more ven­er­a­ble are Canada’s North­ern Cree Singers, from Sad­dle Lake, Alber­ta. They’ve been per­form­ing since 1980, and have 23 albums under their belts. North­ern Cree are known for the sheer pow­er of their singing, as well as well-craft­ed song­writ­ing. They’ve long been the favourite among com­pet­i­tive dancers, since they par­tic­u­lar­ly excel at “sec­ond songs”, the ones with vari­able rhythm and sud­den, short stops, which show off a dancer’s moves. Well ground­ed in the North­ern Style, they skill­ful­ly play off the South­ern Style Young­birds in this dyna­mite album record­ed live at the annu­al Ermine Skin Band Pow-Wow, Hobbe­ma, Alber­ta. Out­sand­ing songs include Young­bird’s “Deal With It” and “Baby Dolls II”, and North­ern Cree’s “Free Fly­in’ ” and “Nike Town”.