Category Archives: Music

Tarkovsky Quartet’s Nuit Blanche

The French pianist François Couturier continues a project of more than a decade now of honoring the spirit of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovksy (1932-1986). Nuit Blanche or White Night, by what is known as the Tarkovsky Quartet, is the fourth … Continue reading

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Philip Glass and Kronos Quartet’s Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass

Mark Swed, in his essay accompanying Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass begins with the claim that “Philip Glass’ string quartets may contain some of his most intimate music.” If I wanted to quibble, I could point out that Richard Guérin … Continue reading

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Daymé Arocena’s Cubafonía

There’s a lot more to Latin music than the cumbia, salsa, samba and Cuban son that North Americans are familiar with. Cuban diva Daymé Arocena covers a lot of sonic territory on her second album, Cubafonía. Drawing on the rich … Continue reading

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Methera Quartet’s Methera

The intersections between high art and the vernacular, at this point in history, come in almost too many varieties to enumerate. Aside from the so-called “classical” composers who have used folk and vernacular material in their compositions (all of whom … Continue reading

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Slothrust’s Everyone Else

The music I find myself drawn to these days has at least some element of a drone in it. Sometimes that’s the comforting drone of hardangar fiddle in Nordic folk and jazz, the martial drone of pipes, the spine-tingling vocal … Continue reading

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Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session

Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session was pretty revolutionary when it was first released in November 1988. Their second release, it was recorded pretty much “live” and pretty much in one day, in a Toronto church, around a single microphone. It … Continue reading

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Rhiannon Giddens’ Freedom Highway

Rhiannon Giddens’ Freedom Highway is one of those rare recordings that grabs your attention right from the first note and won’t let go. Giddens was one of the founders of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a seminal folk group that brought … Continue reading

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Craig Taborn’s Daylight Ghosts

For his third outing as a leader on ECM, pianist Craig Taborn is fronting a quartet and playing more within the contemporary jazz idiom than on his previous releases with that label. The quartet includes Chris Lightcap on bass and … Continue reading

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Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge’s Mount Royal

I’m still wringing major bits of pleasure out of last year’s electric Julian Lage Trio release Arclight, when here comes this splendid acoustic offering from Lage and Chris Eldridge. Mount Royal is the second full-length by this duo, following Avalon … Continue reading

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SVER’s Fryd

SVER is a Norwegian five piece group boasting two fiddlers, a 2-row accordionist, a guitarist and a percussionist. They started out as a group in 2008, but fiddler Olav Luksengård Mjelva and accordionist Leif Ingvar Ranöjen had been playing as … Continue reading

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