17809. (Chris­tos Hatzis) Constantinople
17810. (DJ Assas­sin) The Stalk­er EP
17811. (Out­Kast) Big Boi and Dre Present….OutKast
17812. (Souad Mas­si) Mesk elil
17813. (Asia) Asia
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I’ve just acquired Zim­babwe: Tra­di­tions of the Shona Peo­ple ― The Soul of Mbi­ra. Most eth­no­log­i­cal record­ings are of lim­ited inter­est to non-spe­cial­ists, but the sound of the African instru­ment known as the mbi­ra or kalim­ba is so delight­ful that a broad audi­ence can enjoy this album. The album con­sists of record­ings made in Zim­babwe by eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist Paul F. Berlin­er. Berlin­er is the acknowl­edged author­ity on mbi­ra music, and author of The Soul of Mbi­ra, pub­lished in 1993 by Uni­ver­sity of Chica­go Press. The mbi­ra con­sists of a wood­en sound­ing board, on which tuned iron keys are mount­ed. The keys are played by the thumbs. The music of the mbi­ra, as it is played by the Shona peo­ple of Zim­babwe, is com­plex and polyrhyth­mic, often giv­ing the impres­sion of sev­eral instru­ments played at once. The form of mbi­ra pieces, usu­ally accom­pa­nied by a drum called the hosho, vague­ly resem­bles the works of Philip Glass, in that com­plex repeat­ing pat­terns slow­ly mutate over a long time. The mbi­ra is doc­u­mented in African cul­ture as ear­ly as 1589, and is prob­a­bly much old­er. It may be close­ly asso­ci­ated with the tech­nol­ogy of iron smelt­ing, which in turn is asso­ci­ated with the expan­sion of the Ban­tu-speak­ing peo­ples of Africa. There was very good qual­ity iron smelt­ing in the Muta­pa Empire of the 13th to 17th centuries.

While the mbi­ra has not spread out of Africa in the same way that the ban­jul (ban­jo) did, it has some affi­ciana­dos in the rest of the world. Earth, Wind and Fire, the eclec­tic Chica­go-based band of the 1970s, fea­tured the kalim­ba. This is a vari­ant of the mbi­ra, tuned dia­ton­i­cally in the key of G, with the keys placed in a non-tra­di­tion­al man­ner (adja­cent notes on the scale sit­ting on oppo­site sides). It was invent­ed in the 1950’s and was an “export” ver­sion of the instru­ment, orig­i­nally mar­keted by a New Jer­sey firm as a toy! Earth, Wind and Fire’s band­leader, Mau­rice White, became quite pro­fi­cient on the instru­ment, and his per­for­mances helped res­cue the instru­ment from its “toy” status.

For my eigh­teen-thou­sandth first lis­ten­ing, I want­ed to pick some­thing at least a lit­tle spe­cial, so I chose Chris­tos Hatzis’ 90-minute work for sopra­no, mid­dle-east­ern vocal­ist, piano trio, and dig­i­tal audio. When I lis­tened to it, my reac­tion was “wow” ― not a word that comes up very often, con­sid­er­ing my jad­ed lis­ten­ing experience.

About five (maybe six) years ago, I heard a frag­ment of music over the radio that struck me as very beau­ti­ful. It was clear­ly a mod­ern piece, but unlike most of the mild­ly inter­est­ing, but blood­less items ground out by the con­ser­va­to­ry crowd, it was suf­fused with intense emo­tion. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it could have been by any of the eclec­tic com­posers of today, but emo­tion­al­ly, it could have been by Rach­mani­nov! What­ev­er it was, it was pro­found­ly mov­ing. But I was inter­rupt­ed, and didn’t learn what it was or who com­posed it. Two years ago, I heard anoth­er piece, very sim­i­lar, per­formed by the Gryphon Trio. It was labeled “Old Pho­tographs”, by the Toron­to com­pos­er Chris­tos Hatzis. I liked this almost as much as the first, and it was clear­ly con­nect­ed to the mys­tery piece I had heard before, part of a suite or some­thing. I sub­se­quent­ly found a num­ber of his choral pieces, all of them enjoy­able. Read more »

17668. (Albert Rous­sel) Sym­pho­ny #2, Op.23
17669. (Albert Rous­sel) Sym­pho­ny #4, Op.53
Rough Guide to the Music of Thailand:
. . . . 17670. (Man Motor­gai) “Hae Nang Maew”
. . . . 17671. (Namoiy Tham­malang­ka) “Lam Yai Lam Poon”
. . . . 17672. (Surasak Don­chai) “Phin Solo ‘Tran­scen­den­tal Technique’ ”
. . . . 17673. (Mike Piromporn) “Lerk Dai Lerm Bor Dai”
. . . . 17674. (Siri­porn Aumpiapong) “Rang Jai Rai Wan”
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It took me a long time to get into Oscar Peter­son. His com­po­si­tions seem, at first, to be casu­al lit­tle puffs, dashed off effort­lessly. This is an illu­sion. As you let them sink in, you real­ize what incred­i­ble pre­ci­sion, con­trol, and sub­tlety they have. Peter­son is as cool as a plate of sliced cucum­bers served on a bed of fresh­ly fall­en snow, but there is an emo­tional pow­er behind it. The pre­ci­sion itself becomes an emo­tional state­ment: this is exact­ly how things should be, this is where this note belongs, this is the pre­cise one hun­dredth of a sec­ond it should be struck.… see! Not for every­one, but for those who feel it, it’s ambrosia.

Peter­son is with­out con­test Canada’s jazz giant, the man who speaks for us. Duke Elling­ton is just as deeply Amer­i­can. Their jazz pan­theon is so huge that he can’t claim unchal­lenged pri­macy, but sure­ly he’s among the great­est Amer­i­can jazzmen. Like Peter­son, Elling­ton was a per­fec­tion­ist, a man who planned every note, a clas­si­cist at heart. He didn’t much resem­ble the trou­bled, errat­ic genius­es that peo­ple asso­ciate with jazz. His bril­liance was so obvi­ous that noth­ing could keep his com­po­si­tions out of the sym­phonic reper­toire, even in the 1920s. Elling­ton had a stronger, loud­er voice than you hear in Peterson’s del­i­cate, con­tem­pla­tive com­po­si­tions. So is there a con­flict? Hard­ly. Play­ing Elling­ton seems to have allowed Peter­son to cut loose. You hear anoth­er Peter­son, sassier than when he played his own stuff. I love this record.

Tanya Gillis Tagak is a young singer from Ikaluk­tuu­tiak (Cam­bridge Bay), in Nunavut. She learned tra­di­tional Innu­it throat singing at the age of fif­teen, but quick­ly moved to devel­op an “avant-guarde” style of solo throat singing. Com­ments that she is the Björk of the Arc­tic are well deserved. She col­lab­o­rated with Björk on the 2004 album Medúl­la, and toured with her. The duet from that album, “Ances­tors”, appears on Sinaa (2005), her first com­plete stu­dio album. It had a tremen­dous impact in Canada’s abo­rig­i­nal cirl­ces. She has per­formed with the Kro­nos Quar­tet and the eclec­tic Scot­tish band Shooglenifty. Like Björk, Tagaq is relent­lessly exper­i­men­tal. The casu­al lis­tener, how­ever, who hasn’t been raised with Innu­it throat singing may not be able to dis­tin­guish what is tra­di­tional from what is innovation.

If I were to pick one band to illus­trate the con­vo­luted rock trends of the 1980’s, it would be The Cult. This noto­ri­ously frac­tious, unpre­dictable, and peri­patetic band usu­ally hov­ered some­where in between the Doors and AC/DC in its over­all sound, but ven­tured into all sorts of oth­er moods. Despite their noto­ri­ous inter­nal bick­er­ing and tem­po­rary split-ups, they have man­aged to remain a force in rock for a quar­ter cen­tury. Any­one with a seri­ous rock col­lec­tion is like­ly to own copies of Love (my own favourite) and Son­ic Tem­ple. Their Cana­dian tour last year still pulled in huge crowds, espe­cially here in Toron­to. Dur­ing one of their tem­po­rary split-ups, lead singer Ian Ast­bury start­ed up a garage band called Holy Bar­bar­ians, which record­ed only this one album, in 1999. Cream is a decent album, worth play­ing now and then, but it illus­trates how much The Cult ben­e­fit­ed from the fine gui­tar play­ing of Bil­ly Duffy. With­out him to bal­ance Ast­bury, the singer often comes across too heavy-hand­ed. Some of the songs seem stagy and melo­dra­matic. But “Opi­um” is first rate, and “Broth­er Fights” is quite good, too. If you are a Cult fan, pick up this album, not only for the sake of com­plete­ness, but to show, by con­trast, just how the com­bi­na­tion of Duffy and Ast­bury worked.

17575. The Music of Islam: Vol­ume 1 — Al Qahi­rah [Music of Cairo]
17576. (Mau­rice Rav­el) Séré­nade grotesque
17577. (Mau­rice Rav­el) Valses nobles et sentimentales
17578. (Thelo­nius Monk) Thelo­nius Monk with John Coltrane — The Com­plete April-July 1957
. . . . . Recordings
17579. (Cow­boy Junkies) The Cau­tion Horses
17580. (Wil­helm Sten­ham­mar) Snöfrid, Op.5
17581. (Wil­helm Sten­ham­mar) Mel­lanspel ur kan­tat­en “Sån­gen”, Op.44
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Marie-Élaine Thib­ert is a Mon­treal singer with a strong voice, which is reminis­cent of Bar­bara Streisand’s. She first came to pub­lic atten­tion when she belt­ed out Jacques Brel’s tech­ni­cally dif­fi­cult song “La quête”, on Quebec’s major tal­ent show, Star Académie. The sta­di­um-show-tunes kind of stuff is not real­ly my kind of music, but I can appre­ci­ate the tal­ent here. Que­bec seems to grow high­ly pro­fes­sional main­stream singers as eas­ily as British Colum­bia grows mar­i­juana. There seems to be an end­less sup­ply. But only a few of them, such as Céline Dion, break out into the rest of the world. On the strength of this album, which has con­fi­dent show­man­ship, I would guess that she will make it out, prob­a­bly first in Europe. I haven’t heard all her sec­ond album, Comme ça, but it has a hit in a cov­er of Monique Leyrac’s old stan­dard “Pour cet amour”, a duet with Chris deBurgh (a trans­la­tion of “Lone­ly Sky”), and a very fine, sub­tle song I’ve heard online, “Les herbes hautes”.

Lucian­not Pavarot­ti and James Brown

Well, there’s not much I can say about Pavarot­ti that oth­ers aren’t bet­ter qual­i­fied to say. He is one of those fig­ures that steps out of a genre. Peo­ple who hard­ly ever lis­ten to jazz know Louis Arm­strong, peo­ple who hard­ly ever lis­ten to opera know Pavarot­ti, who suc­cess­fully stepped into the shoes of Caru­so as the ambas­sador of opera to the broad pub­lic. He ful­filled the role bril­liantly, using his com­i­cal, un-threat­en­ing appear­ance to advan­tage. It was as if your favourite jol­ly uncle had super-pow­ers, which he only used after din­ner. On hear­ing of his death, I played his won­der­ful duet with James Brown, and his rather pecu­liar one with Lou Reed. Then I went through Pavarotti’s Great­est Hits, with his famed arias from Rigo­letto and L’élisir d’Amore, among oth­ers. Then I played his album of Neapoli­tan folk songs, O Sole Mio, and his album of Christ­mas car­ols, O Holy Night. Over the course of the next two days, I played a few entire operas in which he starred: Bellini’s Beat­rice di Ten­da, and I Puri­tani, where he sang with Joan Suther­land, one of the few women with the stature and lung pow­er to stand up to him in the ring; as well as an ear­ly per­for­mance of Puccini’s La Bohème, with Freni, direct­ed by von Karajan.