Music
Conductor Klaus Mäkelä may be young, but, on the merits of this set, he sure seems to be the real deal. Buckle up: this ought to be an exciting career.
Regardless of what’s to come, Ants From Up There represents a dizzying creative apex for Black Country, New Road.
Both experimental and welcoming, the double album proves more spontaneous in feel and expansive in style than past Big Thief outings.
It has been a long time since I last felt this passionately about a new artist as I do about The Beths.
Despite its flaws, Dreaming Zenzile reflects, with power, on the difficult relationship between art and activism.
This is an album that’s at once musically significant but, more than that, thoroughly enjoyable. How tragic that, largely on account of her race and gender, Florence Price’s music was almost erased.
Pianist Billy Lester is an amusingly dry fellow who is also a deeply serious, idiosyncratic musician.
Others may hear a painfully flawed Latin jazz album, but what I heard was a brilliant postmodern ironic jam session in the mode of Ornette Coleman. I’m probably wrong, but I don’t care, because this album is a blast.
Oscar Peterson always seemed at his best live, which is how we find the pianist in this beautifully recorded, newly issued set.
Fest Review: IFFBoston Shorts — Part One