This go-round of Exfiltration Radio investigates an unusual jazz instrument, the flute. This one has been bubbling around in my mind since I started putting jazz mixes together. I kept running across unusual instrumentation on some of the recordings, well beyond the sax or trumpet plus piano/bass/drums that I first started listening to thirty years ago. First it was organ, then vibes, and today I finally started pulling together this playlist, which focuses on that other woodwind, the flute.
One thing that jumped out at me in looking through the credits on these tracks is the number of flautists who were also, or even primarily, known for their chops on the saxophone. James Moody, who leads off this set with his famous false start from his Last Train from Overbrook album, was one, but then there’s Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson on Alice Coltrane’s “Blue Nile,” and Yusef Lateef (who here is playing the xun, or “Chinese globular flute”).
But part of the fun of this set for me was digging into some of the artists who were best known for their work as flautists. Hubert Laws, whose playing graces “Windows” (here drawn from the Chick Corea compilation Inner Space, but originally released on his own Laws’ Clause), is all over recordings from the 1960s and 1970s where the flute appears — in fact, he’s also on “Blues Farm.” (There is an alternate universe in which this mix is all Hubert Laws, all the time.) Bobbi Humphrey’s fine playing on “Harlem River Drive,” though drenched in 1970s production values by the Mizells, is outstanding, as is the more modern playing on Chip Wickham’s “Soho Strut.” Finally, we come somewhat full circle on Matthew Halsall’s cover of Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidananda.”
So kick back, dig, while we do it to you in your earhole.
The Moody One – James Moody (Return From Overbrook)
The Plum Blossom – Yusef Lateef (Eastern Sounds)
The Great Pumpkin Waltz – Vince Guaraldi (It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown)
Windows – Chick Corea (Inner Space)
Blue Nile – Alice Coltrane (Ptah, the El Daoud)
Harlem River Drive – Bobbi Humphrey (Blacks And Blues)
Blues Farm – Ron Carter (Blues Farm)
Nancy Wilson – Brian Jackson, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Adrian Younge (Brian Jackson JID008)
Soho Strut – Chip Wickham (Shamal Wind)
Dogon Mysteries – Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids (Shaman!)
Journey In Satchidananda – Matthew Halsall & The Gondwana Orchestra (Journey In Satchidananda / Blue Nile)
Boris Blank, of the 1980s band Yello, with the Fairlight CMI sampler
Today’s edition of Exfiltration Radio looks at making songs from other songs. I started making it just as an exercise in a certain type of 1980s dance music, but realized that what drew me into these songs were the bits of other songs and sounds that popped their heads up in the mix. And why not? The 1980s were when sampling came into its own—whether the cut and paste techniques of Steinski or the early digital sampling exercises of Art of Noise. Even some kinds of remixes fall into the pattern, where a song is deconstructed to its component pieces and augmented with other sounds to make something new. And weird, don’t forget weird.
Do not attempt to adjust your set, there is nothing wrong.
Jazz – Steinski (What Does It All Mean?: 1983-2006 Retrospective)
Close (To the Edit) – Art of Noise ((Who’s Afraid Of) The Art of Noise?)
Regiment – Brian Eno & David Byrne (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts)
Megamix – Herbie Hancock (Megamix)
Love Missile F1-11 (Ultraviolence Mix) – Sigue Sigue Sputnik (The Remixes)
Push It (Remix) – Salt-n-Pepa (Hot, Cool and Vicious)
Pump Up the Volume (USA 12) – Colourbox (Best of Colourbox: 1982-1987)
Wise Up Sucker (12″ Youth Remix) – Pop Will Eat Itself (This Is the Day…)
Beef – Gary Clail & On-U Sound System (End Of The Century Party)
God O.D., Pt.1 – Meat Beat Manifesto (Storm The Studio (Remastered))
Justified & Ancient (Stand By The Jams) – The KLF (Justified & Ancient)
Paranoimia – The Art of Noise with Max Headroom (Paranoimia (12″))
Lee Morgan’s “Search for The New Land” session, Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 15, 1964. This is the cover shot for Shorter’s “The All Seeing Eye.”
I’ve been going down a rabbit hole in my listening lately, as I grow increasingly conscious that great artists live among us… but perhaps not for too much longer. One I’m thinking about right now is the great saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.
I started listening to Shorter over 30 years ago, thanks to a CD copy of The Best of Wayne Shorter: The Blue Note Years that I found in Plan 9. Like all single-disc anthologies (and like this mix!), it’s a sparse summary of an astonishing period of creativity and excellent performances. But it hooked me… especially the opening track, the title from Shorter’s sixth album, which manages to be both relaxed and full of tension at the same time thanks to his unshowy use of modal scales.
I think I heard this album before I came across the Second Great Quintet recordings he did with Miles, which included many of Shorter’s compositions (especially the great “Footprints,” heard here) in very different arrangements. Miles’s version of “Footprints,” on Miles Smiles, ups the anxiety in the modal scale through tempo and urgency, especially in Tony Williams’ polyrhythmic drumming. I also looked backwards in time, finding some of the great recordings that he did with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (and recently uncovering some of the sideman work he did for some of his colleagues, including Lee Morgan here).
Thanks to early-90s bias against fusion (which, in fairness, had fallen pretty low by the late 1980s), it took me years to discover Weather Report, particularly the first album, and I only recently began to listen to some of Shorter’s mid-1970s output, which featured a more accessible side of the great composer on songs like “Ana Maria.” And his late-period works with Danilo Perez, John Pattituci and Brian Blade continue to blow my head off with the genius of the collective improvisation, even as they document Shorter’s declining physical stamina. (He retired from performance in 2019 due to mounting health issues.)
Like that first Blue Note compilation, this sixty minute set is necessarily scanty, but hopefully will convince you to seek out more of Shorter’s work as well—and to utter a silent word of thanks that we walk the earth at the same time he does.
Enjoy…
Speak No Evil
–
Wayne Shorter
(
Speak No Evil
)
Ping Pong (No. 1)
–
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
(
Complete Studio Recordings (with Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter…)
)
Edda
–
Lee Morgan
(
The Rumproller
)
Yes or No
–
Wayne Shorter
(
JuJu
)
Footprints
–
Miles Davis Quintet
(
Miles Smiles
)
Tears
–
Weather Report
(
Weather Report
)
Ana Maria
–
Wayne Shorter
(
Native Dancer
)
Aung San Suu Kyi
–
Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock
(
1+1
)
Adventures Aboard The Golden Mean (live)
–
Wayne Shorter Quartet
(
Emanon
)
Pinocchio
–
Herbie Hancock Quintet
(
A Tribute To Miles
)
I was a sixth grader in 1983 from a very white part of town. I went from going to school less than two miles from my home to getting on a bus and riding 40 minutes every day to my middle school, one of two sitting next to each other on the edge of downtown. (Kind of reverse-busing.) The bus was loud, the older kids were scary. But… someone always had a radio.
Technically, they had a boom box. But no one ever seemed to be playing a cassette; it was almost always tuned to one of the local stations, often Z-104. I had grown up in a house that played classical radio, and when not that, easy listening (WFOG!), so the top-40 stuff that was being played was new to me.
So was the other stuff that was sometimes played. I don’t remember the station identifications, but a fair amount of what I remember wouldn’t have been played on Top-40 radio — think “Roxanne, Roxanne” or “Electric Kingdom.” So part of my memory from this time comes with no liner notes and I’m still finding some of the songs.
But the stuff that stuck the longest, earwormed the most thoroughly, was probably the adult contemporary balladry of the time. Many of them aren’t great songs! But they’re really easy to get into, even for a pop music neophyte — the “quiet storm” jazz crossover stuff like Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo” flavored some of what was going on (there’s a common thread between this stuff and Sting’s Dream of the Blue Turtles that also touched the Pointer Sisters; listen to “Automatic”).
And then there were the really goopy ballads. Anita Baker need have felt no shame for “Sweet Love,” but oh man, “On My Own.” And “All Cried Out.” I banished them so far from my memory, I never even touched them when going through 1980s music in a series of ten mixes starting in 2003. But they’re there, and some of them might be worth more than you think.
Just maybe not Gregory Abbott. (Oh well well.)
One last note: I was reminded about more than a few of these songs courtesy of Stereogum’s The Number Ones column, which is essential reading. I’ve linked a few articles below for further reading on some of the tracks, but you should really read the whole thing.
Rumors – Timex Social Club – Timex Social Club (Un, Dos, Tres…Playa Del Sol (12 Magic Summer Hits))
Radio People – Zapp (The New Zapp IV U)
Fresh – Kool & The Gang (The Very Best of Kool & The Gang)
In My House – Mary Jane Girls (20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: The Best of Mary Jane Girls)
Juicy Fruit – Mtume (Juicy Fruit)
Mr. Wrong – Sade (Promise)
Automatic – The Pointer Sisters (Break Out)
Sweet Love – Anita Baker (Rapture)
Love Zone – Billy Ocean (The Very Best of Billy Ocean)
I’ve been listening to a lot of classic Blue Note recordings recently—thanks to a bad HDTracks habit—and what struck me the other day is how the composition of the recordings changes the further back you go. What had become a jazz-funk fusion label by the 1970s was principally a hard-bop label in the 1960s with an incredible stable of performers (even if you could expect to find some of them, like Bobby Hutcherson or Grant Green, on recording after recording during the period). But if you look even further back, the label was unearthing and recording new artists in the early to mid-1950s, like Jutta Hipp, Horace Silver, Gil Mellé, Kenny Drew, and others, on albums that bore the common title New Faces, New Sounds.
So this session of Exfiltration Radio digs into our current crop of new faces and new sounds, with a setlist that is heavy on the current crop of London jazz geniuses (Theon Cross, Nubya Garcia, Sarah Tandy), a few new faces from around the edges of Bandcamp (Joe Fiedler’s nutso take on Sesame Street, Chip Wickham’s meditative cuts from Qatar, the absolutely intense Damon Locks, the Lewis Express), the intense hard bop of Connie Han, the stretch music of Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah—and a few old souls, including the drum-led trio of Jerry Granelli playing the music of his colleague Mose Allison, and the Afrofuturist spiritual excursions of Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids.
Do not attempt to adjust your set!
X. Adjuah [I Own the Night] – Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (Axiom)
For the O.G. – Connie Han (Iron Starlet)
The Colors That You Bring – Damon Locks – Black Monument Ensemble (Where Future Unfolds)
Activate – Theon Cross (Fyah)
Tico Tico – The Lewis Express (Clap Your Hands)
People In Your Neighborhood – Joe Fiedler (Open Sesame)
Baby Please Don’t Go – The Jerry Granelli Trio (The Jerry Granelli Trio Plays Vince Guaraldi and Mose Allison)
Timelord – Sarah Tandy (Infection In The Sentence)
Dogon Mysteries – Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids (Shaman!)
La cumbia me está llamando (featuring La Perla) – Nubya Garcia (SOURCE)
There have been such a lot of mixes this year! It’s almost as if we’ve doubled down on music making to compensate for the otherwise almost complete lack of normalcy.
This time I revisited an old mix in progress that had been kicking around my iTunes—er, Apple Music—library for at least seven or eight years. Originally titled “Unrepentant Throwbacks,” this one went after a certain strain of college rock that emphasized guitars, odd lyrics, borderline competent vocals, and weird band names. You know, like R.E.M..
Only there were probably hundreds of bands that mined the same lode that they did, who never looked beyond their original sound and never got the major league deal. I asked some friends on Facebook and got over 100 great suggestions, which I couldn’t fit into this sixty-minute slot. I’ll post the full list later; it was awesome.
Anyway, hope you enjoy this sixty minute blast of nostalgia, which for some of you will take you back to before you were born. And see you again, sooner than you think.
Fun & Games – The Connells (Fun & Games)
Do It Clean – Echo & The Bunnymen (Songs To Learn & Sing)
I Want You Back – Hoodoo Gurus (Stoneage Romeo)
Watusi Rodeo – Guadalcanal Diary (Walking In The Shadow Of The Big Man)
Talking In My Sleep – The Rain Parade (Emergency Third Rail Power Trip: Explosions In The Glass Palace)
With Cantaloupe Girlfriend – Three O’Clock (Sixteen Tambourines/Baroque Hoedown)
Kiss Me On The Bus – The Replacements (Tim [Expanded Edition])
I Held Her In My Arms – Violent Femmes (Add It Up (1981-1993))
Voice Of Harold – R.E.M. (Dead Letter Office)
Writing the Book of Last Pages – Let’s Active (Big Plans for Everybody)
Think Too Hard – The dB’s (The Sound of Music)
Spark – The Church (Starfish)
My Favorite Dress – The Wedding Present (George Best Plus)
Muscoviet Musquito – Clan of Xymox – Clan of Xymox (Lonely Is an Eyesore)
Tripped Over My Boot – Storm Orphans (Promise No Parade)
Feels like a good time to go to outer space! Here’s an hour of space-themed tunes for this Friday that veers from funk to jazz to whatever the heck that Flying Lotus track is. Enjoy!
Also Sprach Zarathustra – Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm (2001: A Space Odyssey (Soundtrack))
P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up) – Parliament (Mothership Connection)
Space – Prince (Come)
Leave the Planet – Galaxie 500 (On Fire)
Space – M.I.A. (MAYA)
Space Is the Place – Sun Ra (Space Is The Place (Original Soundtrack))
The Planets – Gary Bartz NTU Troop (Harlem Bush Music – Uhuru)
Innerstellar Love – Thundercat (It Is What It Is)
Boom Boom Satellite – Sigue Sigue Sputnik (Dress for Excess)
See The Constellation – They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)
Space Station #5 – Montrose (Historia de la Musica Rock: Locas)
Hallo Spaceboy – David Bowie (Outside)
Satelllliiiiiiiteee – Flying Lotus (Cosmogramma)
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space – Spiritualized (Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space)
Space Suit – They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)
Drift – Brian Eno (Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks)
This is the second of two recent Hackathon playlists, and where The Holy Ghost was all about the Spirit, this one’s all about the body.
I have trouble believing that 1988 was thirty years ago, but then I also have trouble believing that my being old enough to drink happened before some of my youngest coworkers were born.
Lots of material that I omitted that might have made a volume II, in favor of more recognizable (though still oblique) corners of 1988. But it’s worth recognizing that the iconic rubbery shredding guitar on that iconic early Morrissey solo number is by none other than Durutti Column frontman Vini Reilly. And that Janet Jackson wouldn’t do anything as innovative as Rhythm Nation for basically the rest of her career (though she’d have bigger hits). And that Madonna would ultimately prove more transgressive than what Thurston did to “Into the Groove,” but that the combination of the two would be as dark and unsettling as Leonard Cohen. And… Well, you get the picture. There was a lot of darkness around the corner everywhere in the late 1980s.
Eye of Fatima, Pt. 1 – Camper Van Beethoven (Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart)
Birth, School, Work, Death – The Godfathers (Big Hits, Skinny Ties:New Wave)
In Your Room – The Bangles (Everything)
I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me – Morrissey (Viva Hate)
Peek-A-Boo (Single) – Siouxsie and The Banshees (Peep Show)
Cupid Come – My Bloody Valentine (Isn’t Anything)
Everybody Knows – Leonard Cohen (I’m Your Man)
Into The Groovey – Ciccone Youth (The Whitey Album)
Miss You Much – Janet Jackson (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814)
Silver Rocket – Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation)
Coldsweat – The Sugarcubes (Life’s Too Good)
Dad I’m in Jail – Was (Not Was) (What Up, Dog?)
Don’t Believe the Hype – Public Enemy (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back)
Christine – The House of Love (The House of Love)
Carolyn’s Fingers – Cocteau Twins (Blue Bell Knoll (Remastered) [Remastered])
It’s been a hard day for many folks, after a hard year and 259 days. But in these days you have to do what you can, and not worry about what you can’t.
For me that translates to seeking out what’s important in music. Which is why the fifth volume in my series of one-hour Exfiltration Radio shows is about spiritual jazz.
(Why that name? The music takes some of the techniques of free jazz and infuses it with the searching, looking beyond that Coltrane brought to the table with A Love Supreme. It’s a broad banner, as the multiple volumes of the Spiritual Jazz compilation series show.)
This one mixes up a track from one of my favorite McCoy Tyner albums, his Extensions, with other tracks from Alice Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Wayne Shorter, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the redoubtable Pharoah Sanders, and a few other goodies that I’ve found over the years on Bandcamp or other spots. It’s a good one-hour introduction if you’re feeling sinister—and it’s a good reminder that not everything that is in the world is of the world.
Enjoy…
Rainbow Warriors – Alan Braufman (Valley of Search (Reissue))
Journey In Satchidananda – Alice Coltrane (The Impulse Story: Alice Coltrane)
Message From The Nile – McCoy Tyner (Extensions)
Dance! Dance, Eternal Spirits – Joe Bonner with David Friesen, Billy Harper, Virgil Jones, M (Black Saint)
Elijah – Donald Byrd (A New Perspective)
Ja Mil – Hastings Street Jazz Experience (Spiritual Jazz)
JuJu – Wayne Shorter (JuJu (Rudy Van Gelder Edition))
Spirits Up Above – Rahsaan Roland Kirk (Volunteered Slavery)
My other Hackathon mix is here. This is a true mixed-genre, anything-goes hour of stuff, with everything from Devo to shoegaze to Folkways to the late Philip Levine. I’m really enjoying this format, btw—though it’s hard to edit down to an hour, it feels like these come together much more rapidly than the bigger mixes I’ve been doing before. Enjoy!
Time Out for Fun – Devo (Oh No! It’s Devo)
Do You Like Me – Fugazi (Red Medicine)
Blonde Redhead – DNA (“Fame” (Jon Savage’s Secret History of Post-Punk 1978-81))
Junun – Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood & The Rajasthan Express (Junun)
Exhumed – Zola Jesus (Okovi)
Political World (feat. Keith Richards) – Bettye LaVette (Things Have Changed)
Dry Bones – Delta Rhythm Boys (Historia de la Musica Rock: Locas)
I’ve found myself doing more radio listening lately. Partly because it’s starting to be challenging to spend time digitizing LPs or even doing digital digging on Bandcamp (though I’m still doing both). But most of my listening has not been FM. Here’s what I’ve been turning to:
Sirius/XM Radio. Though the poor quality audio throws me off—I can’t stand listening to the classical channels for more than a few minutes—it’s great being able to turn on the First Wave channel and hear “Mad World” pretty much any day you want to. And a bunch of other tracks as well.
In the Groove. Another radio-originated podcast, Ken Laster’s WWUH radio show is jazz focused and has a special slant covering independent jazz artists. I’ve had a few discoveries from this show, including Cecile McLorin Savant (featured in Ken’s Newport Preview episode). The Wayne Shorter episode is pretty good too.
The Broadcasting System. My friend Tyler DJs this show on Monday afternoons under the nom de radio of “Tyler Broadcasting System.” WTJU doesn’t podcast but they do stream live and archive a few weeks worth of shows. I highly recommend the show from September 18 while it’s still available, which veers from Meredith Monk and Moondog to Pram and ELO and Pharoah Sanders.
Somehow in the past fifteen years I’ve been blogging (!), I missed writing about “Blind Willie McTell.” Ever. This despite the fact that the song made the playlist of one of the first mixtapes I ever made back in 1991. And I don’t know that I ever connected the dots on the song’s meaning, in all that time, beyond the vague sense of prophetic dread conveyed by the slowly more intense vocal and piano performance.
And I am left feeling that amid revival tents, amid the attempts to dress up the past betrayed by cheap hooch, and despite the otherwise redemptive charge of the blues, we are left with this: an arrow in the doorpost, the ghosts of slavery ships, and the promise of our life in these United States undercut by power, greed, and the inevitable corruption and decay of our descendants.
Symphony Hall, orchestra rehearsal for the Brahms Requiem.
(By which I mean, of course, my age, not the age of the work.)
I last wrote about Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem in 2009, at the end of a run in which we performed the work in Symphony Hall, issued an official recording, and reprised it at Tanglewood. It was a different time: James Levine was at the relative height of his powers and I was singing more regularly with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.
We reprised the work a few years later under Christoph von Dohnányi, in a totally different performance. By that time I wasn’t blogging as regularly so I don’t have any notes from that run. I remember a few things, though: his tempi were brisk, his interpretation totally unsentimental, and his demands on the chorus’s diction were fierce.
This run, which concluded a week ago, was to have been conducted by the great Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, with whom I was fortunate to sing a few times. But he passed away this summer, and the task of filling his shoes went to Bramwell Tovey. The chorus had sung with him before, but I had not, and had heard about his affability but not much about his musicianship. He turns out to be, at least with the Requiem, a conductor concerned not so much with putting an individual stamp on the work than with seeking how the text determines the flow of the piece. To that end he, like Dohnányi, asked the highest level of diction and pitch precision from the chorus. Our chorus conductor, Bill Cutter, helped with that, pitilessly letting us know when we could be doing better.
For this performance, my third time through the work, I had a pretty good idea of what some of the major challenges would be for me. I wrote about some of them in the post from Tanglewood:
I found what may be the real culprit of the sixth movement, for me at least. It’s not just the overall arc of the piece, but specifically the tenor part immediately preceding the fugue, where all choral voices respond… And the text is sung at absolutely full volume over some of the thickest orchestration in the work, and in the high part of the tenor range.
This is the rub, at least for me. The need to support the voice is strong, but at that volume and emotional fervor it’s very easy to tip over from supporting to tightening, and then the battle is lost and the voice closes progressively until it is difficult to get any sound out at all. Once that happens the following fugue is unsingable.
Well, friends, I’m here to tell you that I had the right problem area, but the solution was both easier and harder than I thought.
The hard part was in placing my voice properly. I have never had more than a few hours of formal voice instruction since I got my full instrument, and so it takes me a while to learn things that I suppose most voice majors know inherently. (The hazards of being a sciences major and not taking advantage of the meager vocal instruction offerings at my undergrad, among other things.) Sometime over the past few years, though, I managed to learn about two important concepts in voice placement: singing toward and through the mask, and keeping the ceiling of the vocal chamber high. What follows is an embarrassing amateur’s assessment of how this works; I welcome correction.
The “mask,” or the frontal bones of the face, is where a good portion of the resonant overtones of the voice develop, due in no small part to vibrations through the sinus cavities (yes, they’re good for something besides infections). But the voice must be directed through this part rather than being allowed to linger in the back of the vocal chamber for the resonance to take effect. Once it does, the difference is startling: a brightness and sharpness to the sound that cuts through surrounding noise for far less vocal effort. The challenges are in keeping the sinuses clear (no small task thanks to the common cold) and managing the position of the facial muscles that support singing so that the placement happens properly.
The full vocal chamber, otherwise known as the front of the face, the cavity of the mouth, and the back of the throat, is important in developing the fullness of the sound. Again, my amateur guess is that this has something to do with developing the right resonant frequencies. It turns out that for me, one of the most important parts of this process, in addition to the mask, is keeping the soft palate, which forms the ceiling of the vocal chamber, high and out of the way. If it comes down, producing sound on pitch is much harder, the sound is muddied, and if you’re singing through the mask and not taking advantage of the full chamber you get a sharp thin sound rather than a penetrating fuller sound.
This leads me to the other thing that was much easier in solving the problem. One of the things that makes keeping the soft palate in the proper place extremely hard is not being prepared for the next vowel sound that is being produced. If you are unsure about whether an e or an ah is coming next, the palate doesn’t know where to go, and producing any sort of sound at all becomes a challenge of brute force.
In this context, my prior problem about my voice “tightening” had a simple diagnosis: I was not comfortable with the text. By that point in movement six my memory was generally unreliable so I couldn’t anchor the Den es wird die Pasaune schallen. I finally figured out what was going on in one of our rehearsals when we started on the second repetition, Der Tod is verschlungen in den Sieg, sung on virtually the same tune, and I had no difficulty in keeping the voice from tightening. Why? I knew the words better! I didn’t have to force the sound, and that meant I could keep the palate high and the muscles in the proper place! All I had to do to make this a general solution was focus on ensuring that I had the right words!
So for this run I managed, most of the time, to keep the apparatus such that I was producing the right sort of sound throughout, and it made all the difference in the world. I even sang in my church choir the following morning; usually after a Brahms Requiem run I’m a ragged baritone for at least a week.
Lessons learned?
Stay conscious of the mask and the ceiling of the chamber.
Learn the damned text. First, if possible.
This should be fun as we head into the Rachmaninoff that we’ll sing next. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to learn that much Russian.
Starting to have the energy again to think about posting here, which is nice. I’ve been down the grindstone for a very very long time, and now, faced with some unexpected downtime, I’m going to use the opportunity to catch up on a few things.
Starting with this. I completed something other than regret, my 33rd mix in the modern era, on the 10th of November, and it’s all over the map, but with some pretty strong thematic material running through as well. I especially love the way that Laura Marling excavates on the three tracks from Once I Was an Eagle, which is my favorite album of 2013; the woozy, witchy, R&B-driven silliness of “Nommo (The Magick Song)” (“All praises due to the Black man,” indeed); the light touch of Antony’s “Crackagen”, and the way that John Fahey’s riff on Clarence Ashley’s “The Coo Coo Bird” fits so seamlessly with gospel. I’ve definitely got something other than regret.
Song-Song – Brad Mehldau Trio (The Art Of The Trio Volume 3)
Nommo- The Magick Song – Gary Bartz And NTU Troop (I’ve Known Rivers And Other Bodies)
Is That Enough – Yo La Tengo (Fade)
Blue Light – Mazzy Star (So Tonight That I Might See)
Life & Soul – The Sundays (Blind)
Take The Night Off – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
I Was An Eagle – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
Crackagen – Antony and the Johnsons (Another World)
Everybody’s Heart’s Breaking Now – Lavender Diamond (Incorruptible Heart)
Variations On The Coocoo – John Fahey (The Dance Of Death & Other Plantation Favorites)
Where Shall I Go? – Sister Marie Knight (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)
Don’t Give Up – Peter Gabriel (So (Remastered 2012))
Incinerate – Sonic Youth (Rather Ripped)
Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes – Sun Kil Moon (Tiny Cities)
We’ll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning – Gram Parsons (G.P. / Grievous Angel)
Breathe – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
Turn Your Color – The Men (Campfire Songs)
I’ll Fly Away – Southern Sons (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)
As I grow … well, older isn’t right, and neither is more mature, so let’s just go with “as I grow,” I find that what I listen to is less about lyrics and singing along and more about just listening. So, of the 19 tracks on this mix, six have no words at all, and a few more are mostly nonsense.
No real notes here, except to note that Jonny Greenwood’s Bodysong, from 2003, is an unlikely sleeper album. There are bits that remind me of Ravel, and Berg, and glitchy techno, and sometimes they come in the same song.
Also: why did it take me so long to listen to Bruce Cockburn? He would have been right up my alley in 1988 or 1989.
Also also: I’m in the crowd for that 2004 Sonic Youth performance at the Showbox. This one.
Burning Of Auchidoon – Maddy Prior (Silly Sisters)
Tree (Today is an Important Occasion) – David Byrne (The Knee Plays)
Ready to Start – Arcade Fire (Ready to Start – Single)
Lovers In a Dangerous Time – Bruce Cockburn (Stealing Fire (Deluxe Edition))
Wiggle-Waggle – Herbie Hancock (Warner Archives)
Everything In Its Right Place – Radiohead (Kid A)
24 Hour Charleston – Jonny Greenwood (Bodysong (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
Concorde – Modern Jazz Quartet (Concorde)
Track 4 – Sigur Rós (( ))
Chemtrails – Beck (Modern Guilt)
Sorrow – The National (High Violet)
I Should Watch TV (M. Stine remix) – David Byrne & St. Vincent (Brass Tactics EP)
Pattern Recognition – Sonic Youth (Live at the Showbox in Seattle (2004))
Milky Way – Weather Report (Weather Report)
Alone And Forsaken – Neko Case (Live from Austin, Texas)
Hi-Speed Soul – Nada Surf (Let Go)
After All – Christian Scott (Yesterday You Said Tomorrow)
Bode Radio/Glass Light/Broken Hearts – Jonny Greenwood (Bodysong (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
I Wanna Dance With Somebody – David Byrne (David Byrne: Live from Austin, TX)
