Music
A welcome addition to Scottish percussionist Colin Currie’s endlessly fascinating discography – as well as to Austrian maverick HK Gruber’s.
If this is your first Bluebeard’s Castle, Susanna Mälkki’s recording makes for a fine, occasionally inspired, introduction.
Chronicling Stankonia is an engaging read, one that adroitly balances rigorous academic research with a deeply personal narrative about Black life and art in the post-Civil Rights Era in the South.
“I don’t work the system anymore, except as a last resort: I aim instead to bypass it. The better I have gotten at circumventing gatekeepers, the more successful my writing career has been.”
Free from the stress of leading a major-label band on the road, Mark Sandman could always return home to Hypnosonics, an alternate vehicle for his elastic vision.
Nothing that guitarist Pat Metheny had done previously hinted at this sprawling 1981 masterpiece.
This is one of the best traditional big band records you’ll hear this year, or maybe this decade.
There’s much to enjoy here and admire, both in the performances and the selections on hand, which hardly dwell on the usual suspects or limit themselves too narrowly.
“I really thought that I could sustain a life in music, but perhaps I’d end up in Las Vegas backing Tom Jones or something.”
At this point in his career, Mayr is contributing to the development of the musicodramatic conventions that would set the stage for the masterpieces of Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi.
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