Jazz, Popular and Other
Listening to People: How the Swiss keep jazz Intakt
With no background of blues, gospel or swing, what does “jazz” sound like? A two-week festival March 1–15 at The Stone of the Zurich-based musicians who record for the Swiss record label Intakt offers intriguing examples. Pianist Irene Schweizer will perform powerful, blocky improvisations. Pierre Favre, her frequent accompanist and one of Europe’s busiest drummers,...
The Whitney Houston Dream: Broadway Lessons from a Pop Diva
Among Broadway’s young theater gypsies, Whitney Houston’s 1994 performance at the American Music Awards has been circulating as a unique theatrical tribute. Houston never appeared in a Broadway show, but her AMA medley of “I Loves You Porgy” and “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”—preserved in a 10-minute YouTube clip—connects to the current...
Through the Eye of the Camp: Parsing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Old Ideas’
Leonard Cohen bookends his new album Old Ideas with a song about mortality (“Going Home”) and a song about the divided culture (“Different Sides”). Throughout, Cohen refines the use of gospel-impulse female singers who added vitality to his own special, deep-toned gravity on the great 1992 The Future (remember the title track’s exhortations to “Repent!”)....
Rihanna’s True Confession: A Pop Star’s Music Video Rebellion
“Trust the tale, not the teller,” D.H. Lawrence’s essential dictum, applies to Rihanna’s recent music video “We Found Love.” Transparently autobiographical in its reference to the 2009 assault incident involving Rihanna and Chris Brown, “We Found Love” answers back to those tellers—in this case gossip-mongers and pundits—whose pontifications reduced Rihanna and Brown to domestic-abuse stereotypes....
Dancing With Myself
Solo videos go viral Too often, music videos exist solely to maximize a performer’s impact on consumer culture, a branding exercise. But there’s a small subgenre of solo dance performance videos—typified by the recent viral hits “Lonely Boy” and “Call Your Girlfriend”—that inverts consumerist logic, expressing instead the impact of popular culture upon the individual...
Lone Wolf Compositions
Tim Berne presents ‘Snakeoil’ Tim Berne is the saxophonist as lone wolf—a rangy and determinedly individualistic composer/improviser who has for 30-plus years lived far from the jazz mainstream and skirted the edges of the avant-garde. He’s been a presence in aficionado venues in New York, North America and beyond, and has just embarked on an...
Song of the Year
Saluting Stevie Nicks’ “Soldier’s Angel” Years from now, 2011 may be remembered as the year postfeminism produced poster girls for the status quo. Female-fronted hits such as the movie Bridesmaids and the TV show New Girl were hailed as breakthroughs, despite their unremarkable content. (Bridesmaids even showed up on some confused critics’ year-end best lists.)...
Best Album and Best Gallery Exhibition of 2011
‘Watch the Throne,’ Kanye West & Jay-Z; ‘Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’amour fou’ Call Larry Gagosian You belong in museums —Jay-Z, “That’s My B**ch” Jay-Z dreams of collapsing the class and race divisions reflected in high art and pop art hierarchies. Reverse the title of Kanye West & Jay-Z’s love song from their Watch the Throne...
Winter Wonderings
Jazzfest remains timely Jazz 2012 in New York City began as 2011 did: with a Winter Jazzfest proving that a couple thousand fans in their twenties and thirties will flock to The Village in January for staggered sets by some five dozen original and emergent ensembles for one low price in multiple venues. The excitement...
The Art of Noise: Dolly and Latifah reclaim glee
Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2003 debut film Camp, the underappreciated—yet secretly influential—pop music celebration set at a training school for young musical theater aspirants. This...
Prophecies to Dance to: How pop can get better
The suicide of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer on Sept. 18—three days before the first anniversary of the “It Gets Better” online campaign supporting bullied LGBT youth—should give our culture pause. It forces us to recognize that in this era of change, cruelty has at least kept pace with the spread of compassion. Even after Rodemeyer took...
You Wanted a Hit: Nile Rodgers gets literary
As pop musicians from Keith Richards to Prodigy have published their life stories in the last few years, the timing couldn’t be better for Le Freak, the recently released autobiography of bajillion-selling guitarist/producer Nile Rodgers. Considering that his career encompasses both a stint in the Apollo Theater’s house band and compositions that have inspired countless...
Seasonal Sensation
Mandekan Cubano Project Delivers The winter holidays’ emphasis on warmth and good will towards humankind means that musicians genuinely possessing those qualities bear the most desirable of gifts. As a New Yorker in constant search of musical substance, engagement and freshness, I’m thrilled that singer-songwriter-electric bassist Richard Bona debuts his Mandekan Cubano project at the...
A How-To Guide to Improv
Free music with direction Large ensembles defying genre labels and intent on collective improvisation are unusual but not entirely new; there’s a nearly 50-year history of them just in the East Village. But a new movement of improvised orchestration is upon us, exploring the balancing act at the heart of the art of jazz: How...
MJ’s Side of the Story: How Beat It Remade a Classic
If you liked Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” you must also love West Side Story—or at least owe it a debt of gratitude for its inspiring Jackson to some of his most compelling, creative work. Think back to the Beat It music video—a street gang fantasy centered on Jackson emerging from his loneliness then entering the...
A Landmark Soundtrack
How West Side Story’s score became basic American vocabulary For West Side Story, the score’s the thing. Even a first exposure to the 1957 original Broadway cast album or the 1961 Academy Award-winning movie soundtrack reveals this music to be the peak of the golden, pre-rock age of American song. Leonard Bernstein’s melodies are immediately...
The New SONiC Youth
A new music festival for the under 40 takes over Manhattan If the words “composer” and “orchestra” conjure up images of stodgy concert halls replete with white-gloved conductors in tails and orchestra pits full of faceless musicians in black formal wear, this year’s SONiC (Sounds of a New Century) Music Festival will be sure to...
Squirmingly Seeking Hipness
Erasure and Frankmusik survive In the face of our current cultural upheaval, Erasure’s new studio album almost defiantly compresses a broad range of inspired and inspiring pop references. Neither comeback nor throwback, Tomorrow’s World attempts to sum up the legendary synthpop duo’s 25-year career in just 30 minutes. This concision may be necessary for survival...
Musical Ambassador
Aurelio Martinez introduces Garifuna Singer, composer and guitarist Aurelio Martinez comes from the remote coastal fishing village of Plaplaya, Honduras, to Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall 10 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 15. It’s an ambassadorship from a musical region far off mainstream New Yorkers’ maps.
Why the Blues Rocks
NY music goes hardcore The Stone, a recital room for the avant-garde, is the size of a corner bodega, and its artistic director John Zorn maintains a strict no refreshments/no hanging out policy. It’s an odd place to hear a bustin’ loose electric jazz power trio such as the Free Form Funky Freqs, who did...
Paris Blues Gets Improvised
Rescuing Bearden from Hollywood In 1961, jazz lovers couldn’t wait for the release of photographer Sam Shaw’s movie Paris Blues. With a score by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn and co-starring Louis Armstrong, it sounded like a brilliant idea; a glorious celebration of the City of Lights’ devotion to jazz. Well, yes—until Hollywood got hold...
