16729. (Edward Elgar) Chan­tant for Piano
16730. (Edward Elgar) Pas­tour­relle, air de ballet
16731. (Edward Elgar) Rose­mary [piano version]
16732. (Edward Elgar) Griffinesque for Piano
16733. (Edward Elgar) Sonati­na [orig­i­nal version]
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There’s a tra­di­tion of folk fid­dling all across Cana­da. The vari­a­tion that devel­oped in rur­al Ontario is less well known than the rich tra­di­tions of Que­bec and the Mar­itime Provinces. To tell the truth, it’s rather tame com­pared to the east­ern styles. You get the impres­sion that the phleg­matic Old Ontar­i­ans did not let their hoe­downs get too far down. But there are some pleas­ant tunes, and some of the “old tyme fid­dlers” in the province where fine musi­cians. Clare Adlam has a pret­ty con­vinc­ing claim to hav­ing been the best. Begin­ning his pro­fes­sional career at the age of four, and hav­ing his own radio show at the age of four­teen, he dom­i­nated this lit­tle musi­cal niche for an incred­i­ble sev­en­ty-five year per­form­ing career. “Adlam’s Apple”, a vinyl issued in 1978, is the only record­ing you are like­ly to find, and it con­tains a mix of stan­dards and Adlam’s orig­i­nals, the best being “Geor­gian Bay Two Step”.

16587. (Béla Fleck & Edgar Mey­er) Music For Two
16588. (Chris­tos Hatzis) De Angelis
16589. (Chris­tos Hatzis) Ever­last­ing Light
16590. (Chris­tos Hatzis) Fer­til­i­ty Rites
16591. (Chris­tos Hatzis) Hunter’s Dream
16592. (Chris­tos Hatzis) Foot­prints In New Snow
16593. (Chris­tos Hatzis) String Quar­tet #1 “The Awakening”
16594. (101 Strings) Back­beat Symphony
16595. (George Rochberg) Con­cer­to for Oboe and Orchestra
16596. (Jacob Druck­man) Prism Read more »

The Tai­wanese boy-band “5566”, led by Tony Sun has dom­i­nated the Chi­nese pubes­cent pop mar­ket since 2002. If you think that boy-bands like N’Sync had overblown arrange­ments and stu­dio glitz, they were noth­ing com­pared to this. Every­thing from piano glis­sandi and heav­enly choirs to tech­no nois­es accom­pany these mushy songs. Some of the lyrics are in Eng­lish, though most are in Man­darin Chi­nese (peo­ple in Tai­wan usu­ally speak a vari­ety of Fukienese at home, but Man­darin is the offi­cial lan­guage, taught in school). The melodies are some­times bor­rowed. Dis­con­cert­ingly, the last song on the album is to the tune of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”.…. Actu­ally, it would be fun to have this stuff in the back­ground at a noisy party.

Eng­land pro­duces lots of wimpy art-song cycles, and even the best ones, like Vaugh­an William’s On Wen­lock Edge, seem a bit cutesy-poo. You can’t say this about Ivor Gurney’s cycles The West­ern Play­ground and Lud­low and Teme. They both have a def­i­nite “edge”. These are set­tings of A.E. Hous­man, like V.W.’s Wen­lock, but much more like Schu­bert lieder in design. Gur­ney was him­self a poet of con­sid­er­able pow­er, whose work, much of it writ­ten on the bat­tle-front in WWI, is present­ly being redis­cov­ered. Gurney’s life was trag­ic. At fif­teen, he was already a very promis­ing com­poser. With­in a few years, he was on the war front, being wound­ed and gassed. His poet­ry from the peri­od was pub­lished as, Sev­ern and Somme (1917) and War’s Embers After the war, he began stud­ies with Vaugh­an Williams, but by 1922 was com­mit­ted to a men­tal asy­lum for what would now be diag­nosed as extreme bi-polar dis­or­der. The last third of his life was lived in insti­tu­tions, and he died in 1937. Odd­ly, he only once set his own verse to music. His grave, in the small vil­lage of Twig­worth, Glouces­ter­shire, reads “a lover and mak­er of beau­ty”. (1919).

Guitarist/vocalist Patrick Mata, first came into view in Los Ange­les’ hor­ror punk-rock scene of the ear­ly 1980s, with his band Kom­mu­nity Fk. This band sound­ed a bit like Chris­t­ian Death. After near­ly a decade, Mata formed Sati­va Luvbox with drum­mer M.P. and bassist Steve Brun­dege. This band played for a cou­ple of years, and was bet­ter described as “acid punk”. It sound­ed as if an eight­ies punk band had received a drug-induced epiphany from King Crim­son. They did a cou­ple of inde­pen­dent albums, one of which, Close One Sad Eye, I remem­ber lik­ing, but can’t find any­where. Beloved Satel­lite was their 1993 MCA release, and it’s a nice album to play while enter­tain­ing low-main­te­nance friends, along with a bong and a box of donuts on the liv­ing room table.

16362. (Chick Corea) My Span­ish Heart
(William Wal­ton) Songs [Ben­jamin Lux­on, bari­tone & David Willi­son, piano]:
. . . . 16363. (William Wal­ton) “The Wind From The West“
. . . . 16364. (William Wal­ton) “When As the Rye”
. . . . 16365. (William Wal­ton) “My Gost­ly Fader”
. . . . 16366. (William Wal­ton) “Lul­la­by”
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‘Ali Riza Mashayikhi is the dom­i­nant fig­ure in mod­ern Iran­ian con­cert music. Born in 1940 in Tehran, he stud­ied in Vien­na and Utrecht, and was intro­duced to mod­ernist tecb­niques by Otto Jelinek. How­ever, he does not appear to be com­mit­ted to any of the dread­ful “sys­tems” that ide­ol­o­gized com­po­si­tion in the 20^th cen­tury. He sen­si­bly draws on any tech­nique that is use­ful to the cre­ation of a par­tic­u­lar piece. Some of his works draw heav­ily on Iran­ian folk­loric tra­di­tion, intend­ing to con­very a region­al spir­it, while oth­ers pur­sue oth­er ends entire­ly. Mashayikhi was one of the first com­posers to bring com­put­er­i­za­tion into mid­dle-east­ern music. The pieces in my col­lec­tion are: Sym­phony #2. Op.57, the Con­certo for Vio­lin and Orches­tra, Op.96, and Nous ne ver­rons jamais les jardins de Nishapour for Two Pianos and Orches­tra, Op.56. The lat­ter piece is an exam­ple of a work that does not direct­ly employ any Per­sian mate­r­ial that I can see, but nev­er­the­less con­veys a dis­tinctly Per­sian mood. His out­put is huge, so it will require a lot of explor­ing. I like very much what I’ve heard so far. A curi­ous thing about the composer’s name: While he is undoubt­edly Per­sian, “Al-Mashayikhi” is Ara­bic for a per­son of the Mashayikh tribe in Iraq, cen­tered in the towns of Tarmiya and in Al-Hawe­jah, quite close to Sad­dam Hussein’s (and Saladin’s) birth­place in Tikrit. Mashayekhi or Mashayikhi seem to be com­mon Iran­ian names. Jamshid Mashayekhi is an Iran­ian film star, and Ario Mashayekhi is an expa­tri­ate painter, sculp­tor, and actor liv­ing in Chica­go. Anoth­er curios­ity: there is anoth­er com­poser, named Nad­er Mashayekhi, also trained in Vien­na, but born in 1958 (a bit old to be a son, and a bit young to be a broth­er — are they relat­ed?). I have not heard any of his music. There is also a folk­loric group from Iran called Mashayikhi Ensem­ble. The name seems to be pro­foundly musi­cal. Are we deal­ing, here with an extend­ed tal­ented fam­ily like the Bachs were in Thuringia? Or is it all coincidence?

Fela Sowande (1905 — 1987) with his fiance, Amer­i­can sopra­no Mil­dred Mar­shall, in Regen­t’s Park, Lon­don, 13th Sep­tem­ber 1936. Sowande is work­ing as a the pianist and Mar­shall is singing in the Lon­don pro­duc­tion of Lew Leslie’s musi­cal revue, Black­birds Of 1936.

Nige­ria has pro­duced some of the great­est musi­cians of the world. Prob­a­bly best known are juju mas­ter King Sun­ny Adé and the great jazzman Fela Aniku­lapo Kuti. But in an ear­lier gen­er­a­tion, Fela Sowande loomed quite as large. Sowande was suc­cess­ful in pop­u­lar music, as a band­leader in the ear­ly High­life scene, as well an accom­plished jazz per­former. He was also a fine clas­si­cal organ­ist and choral con­duc­ter. His largest body of work is church choral and organ music. Migrat­ing to Britain, he achieved instant fame as a con­cert pianist with a per­for­mance of Gershwin’s Rhap­sody in Blue, and sub­se­quently per­formed in duets with Fats Waller. He even­tu­ally returned to Nige­ria as a teacher, and then lived his last years in Ohio, where he is buried. Read more »

16290. (Siouxsie and the Ban­shees) Juju
Rough Guide to Brazil: Bahia:
. . . . 16291. (Tim­bal­a­da) “Motum­ba”
. . . . 16292. (Sylvia Tor­res) “Take Sarava”
. . . . 16293. (Daniela Mer­cury) “Swing Da Cor”
. . . . 16294. (Ze Paulo Beck­er) “A Vida e Boa”
. . . . 16295. (Riachao) “Pita­da de Tabaco”
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