- Details
- Created on Saturday, 15 June 2013 00:00
- Written by Hans Wetzel
Columbia 88883716862
Format: CD
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Whether or not they realize it, almost everyone has heard Daft Punk. The pair of French DJs produced three full-length studio albums before Random Access Memories, and helped compose the music for the film Tron: Legacy. But despite achieving massive commercial success, and having done much to further the appeal of electronic music, they remain reclusive. The Frenchmen remain masked not as a marketing gimmick, but rather as a way to retain their privacy, while also strengthening the illusion that Daft Punk somehow transcends mere flesh and blood.
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- Created on Saturday, 01 June 2013 00:00
- Written by Joseph Taylor
Cherrywood EH 002
Format: Vinyl
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Tenor saxophonist Elias Haslanger is based in Austin, Texas, where he’s a pillar of the local jazz scene. He’s toured the US and Europe with a variety of jazz and pop artists, including Maynard Ferguson, Ellis Marsalis, and Asleep at the Wheel. The cover of his newest recording, Church on Monday, is in mid-’60s Blue Note Records style, front and back, including liner notes by a prominent jazz critic, in this case DownBeat’s Michael Point.
- Details
- Created on Monday, 01 April 2013 00:00
- Written by Joseph Taylor
Telarc International TEL-33814-02
Format: CD
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Move is Hiromi’s second disc with bassist Anthony Jackson and drummer Simon Phillips, aka the Trio Project. Even with Hiromi’s acoustic piano dominating, Voice (2011), her first CD with this group, had more pronounced rock elements than her other jazz-trio recordings. Move continues that trend, and manages to balance even more deftly the muscle of rock music with the complexity of jazz improvisation.
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- Created on Wednesday, 01 May 2013 00:00
- Written by Joseph Taylor
Telarc TEL-34021-02
Format: CD
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Michael Feinstein is a singer and pianist, but he is also, and perhaps primarily, an archivist of the Great American Songbook. Channel surfing the other day, I stumbled on Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook, which PBS first broadcast in 2010. Feinstein was visiting the Gershwin archives in San Francisco (they’ve since been moved to the Library of Congress). Feinstein was a friend of Ira Gershwin’s, and his extensive research of Gershwin’s recordings and sheet music helped ensure that the legacies of Ira and his brother George would be accurately and fully preserved.
Read more: Michael Feinstein: "Change of Heart: The Songs of André Previn"
- Details
- Created on Friday, 15 March 2013 00:00
- Written by Hans Wetzel
XL Records XLCD583
Format: CD
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It’s uncommon to hear new music that stands out from the proverbial pack. Almost everything is derivative in some way or another, and for good reason. Different can mean provocative, but it almost always guarantees commercial failure. Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring provides perhaps the most illuminating example of this. During its very first performance, in Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the audience rioted in response to the avant-garde, thoroughly dissonant composition. Critics were equally unconvinced, one going so far as to label the forward-thinking piece “a laborious and puerile barbarity.” Tough crowd. Stravinsky, of course, would go on to achieve worldwide acclaim. Like so many mavericks, his unique compositions fell on conditioned ears and immutable minds that were unable to appreciate what he had to offer.
