One of the finest singers in West­ern Cana­da, Sandy Scofield glides effort­lessly from her Métis and Cree musi­cal roots into a high-lev­el syn­the­sis of jazz, blues, rock and pop. Long known in abo­rig­i­nal music cir­cles, she deserves to break out into the glob­al music scene. Her music is orig­i­nal, refined, and intel­li­gent. I pos­sess three of her four albums, Dirty Riv­er (1994), Riel’s Road (2000), and Ket­wam (2002). I have yet to hear all of this year’s release, Nikawiy Askiy, but I’ve heard three songs from it, and they clear­ly indi­cate that her musi­cal evo­lu­tion is con­tin­u­ing with­out hin­drance. Riel’s Road is prob­a­bly the best intro­duc­tion to her work, open­ing with the stun­ning “Beat the Drum (Gath­er­ing Song)”, and going on to explore emo­tion­ally the after­math and con­se­quences of the most dra­matic events in post-Con­fed­er­a­tion Canada’s his­tory, the Métis upris­ing and death of Louis Riel. How­ever, most of the songs on this album have a folk-jazz feel­ing. On Ket­wam, which focus­es on much more tra­di­tional abo­rig­i­nal-métis mate­r­ial, she col­lab­o­rates with the vocal trio Nit­si­wakun, of which she is one mem­ber (the oth­er two are Lisa Saza­ma and Shak­ti Hayes), with fid­dle Daniel Lapp, and with vocal­ist Win­ston Wut­tunee. The Cree-lan­guage songs are the most pow­er­ful. The album is tru­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive. Some are the finest moments belong to Hayes on “Nit­si­mos” and to “Wut­tunee” on “Tap­weh” (a tra­di­tional round dance that would fit in at any west­ern powow).

One review­er describes Holy Fuck as “strange­ly melod­ic and pulse pound­ing free-form fusion of the heavy chug and groove rock of Trans Am and the quirk­i­ness of Beck rolled into one mes­mer­iz­ing view­ing and lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence.” Well, I don’t know if you can form any plau­si­ble impres­sion from that descrip­tion, but it’s fair­ly accu­rate. A more com­pre­hen­si­ble way of describ­ing this Toron­to band is to say that they try to dupli­cate, live, using phys­i­cal instru­men­ta­tion, with­out pre-tap­ing or splic­ing, the sounds that you would think could only be done by com­puter. I think they achieve this admirably, judg­ing from the record­ing I have of their epony­mous debut all­bum. Here, band mem­bers Bri­an Borcherdt, Gra­ham Walsh, Mike Bigelow, Loel Camp­bell, Kevin Lynn, Glenn Milchem, Rob­bie Kuster, Matt Schulz are joined by Lau­rence Cur­rie and Dave Newfeld (of Bro­ken Social Scene). Some­thing like this should be seen live. I haven’t had the chance to, yet, but a hint of it can be seen in the videos avail­able on their Myspace site.

17311. (Elvis Costel­lo) The Very Best of Elvis Costel­lo and The Attractions
17312. (Nico­lae Guţǎ) Select­ed Roman­ian Manele Songs
17313. (Bohuslave Mar­t­inů) Sym­pho­ny #1
17314. (Bohuslave Mar­t­inů) Inven­tions for Large Orches­tra [Invence Sym­fon­ická sklad­ba o 
. . . . . třech vĕtách]
17315. (Ján Šim­bracký) Con­grati sunt inimi­ci nostri
17316. (Ján Šim­bracký) Ange­lis suis man­davit dete
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Li Xiang-Lan

Between the two World Wars, Shang­hai was one of the most cos­mopoli­tan and sophis­ti­cated cities in the world. It was also one of the world’s hotspots for Jazz. The great jazz bands toured there, and there was a con­sid­er­able pool of local tal­ent. Pre-emi­nent among the local artists were the “Lounge Divas”, female singers who owed their orig­i­nal inspi­ra­tion to Amer­i­can stars like Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Bessie Smith, and to Euro­pean cabaret singers like Edith Piaf, but who qui­ckly devel­oped their own, indi­vid­ual styles. Among the great­est of these divas were Li Xiang-Lan, Bai Kwong, Chang Loo, and Chow Hsuan. All had glo­ri­ous voic­es. I recent­ly acquired a fas­ci­nat­ing 2‑cd set. The first cd has the orig­i­nal record­ings from the 1930’s. The sec­ond has mod­ern remix­es of the same songs, done up to suit the cur­rent taste for dance music in Asia. I have no objec­tion to these. The dance remix­es are per­fectly legit­i­mate, and rea­son­ably well done. But the orig­i­nals are far more inter­est­ing. They take you on an amaz­ing jour­ney to a place and era lost in dim light and a haze of cig­a­rette smoke.

A num­ber of years ago, I was walk­ing across the plaza of Toronto’s City Hall. Designed in the 1960’s by Finnish archi­tect Viljo Rev­ell, it’s a pleas­ant place, filled with skaters in the win­ter (when the orna­men­tal pond is frozen), and music con­certs in the sum­mer. On this par­tic­u­lar occ­ca­sion, a Big Band was play­ing music from the 1930’s and 1940’s. Fold­ing chairs had been set up in the plaza, and there was a rea­son­ably large crowd enjoy­ing the music. When I sat down among them, I noticed that almost every­one there was a) very old, and b) Chi­nese-Cana­di­an. I turned to a dig­ni­fied-look­ing elder­ly cou­ple, and asked them why so many Chi­nese had come to this con­cert. With a twin­kle in his eye, the man said: “This is the music of our youth. We lis­tened to this in Shang­hai, when we were just mar­ried.” Lis­ten­ing, now, to Chang Loo singing “All the Stars in the Sky”, I think I can under­stand what that twin­kle in his eye was all about.

17251. (Carl Maria von Weber) Sym­pho­ny #1 in C, J.50
17252. (Carl Maria von Weber) Sym­pho­ny #2 in C, J.51
17253. (Carl Maria von Weber) Music for Schiller’s Turan­dot, J.75: Overture
17254. (Carl Maria von Weber) Music for Schiller’s Turan­dot, J.75: March
17255. (Sandy Scofield) Dirty River
17256. (Sán­dor Kalla und seine Zige­uner Kapelle) Kulacs Restau­rant: Berühunte Umgarische
. . . . . Zige­uner­Lieder und Immer­grüne Melodien
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17142. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in E‑flat for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.12
17143. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in F for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.22
17144. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in G for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.65
17145. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in G for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.35
17146. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in E for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, [incor­rect Op.36]
17147. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in E‑flat for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.83
17148. (Mary O’Hara) Mary O’Hara’s Ireland
17149. (Sandy Scofield) Ketwam
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17059. (Lui­gi Boc­cheri­ni) Quin­tet for Gui­tar and Strings in E Minor [arr. of Piano Quin­tet G.407]
17060. (Lui­gi Boc­cheri­ni) Quin­tet for Gui­tar and Strings in C “La Riti­ra­da di Madrid”, G.453
. . . . . [arr. of Piano Quin­tet, G.409]
17061. (Vish­wa Mohan Bhatt) The Best of the Cord, Vol.2
17062. Game­lan Semar Peg­ulin­gan from the Vil­lage of Ketewel, Bali, Record­ed by Wayne Vitale
17063. (Alfred Schnit­tke) Con­cer­to Grosso #3 for Two Vio­lins and Cham­ber Orchestra
17064. (Alfred Schnit­tke) Con­cer­to Grosso #4 [aka Sym­pho­ny #5]
17065. (Lu Chun­ling) Eight Mas­ter­pieces of Jiang­nan Folk Music [Jiang nan si zhu ba da ming qu]
17066. (Franz Shrek­er) Over­ture to Men­non [Vor­spiel zu ein­er grossen Oper Mennon]
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