Category Archives: Music

Randy Armstrong’s Dinner On The Diner

Big Earl Sellar wrote this review By way of introduction, here’s an insight as to how Green Man Review works. About once a week, an e-mail gets sent to the reviewers with a list of review materials to be doled out. Then … Continue reading

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John Abercrombie’s The First Quartet

American jazz guitarist John Abercrombie has spent most of his 40-plus-year career playing various styles of contemporary jazz with some of the best-known musicians around. After attending the Berklee College of Music and playing in Boston, he moved to New … Continue reading

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Kathy Kallick Band’s Foxhounds

Bluegrass doesn’t get more solid than the music on this, Kathy Kallick’s 20th album. Kallick herself is an institution in bluegrass, not only through her work with this band but as a founding member of the Good Ol’ Persons, plus … Continue reading

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Ustad Amjad Ali Khan’s Raga Shuddh-Sarang; Raga Piloo-Kafi

Ustad Amjad Ali Khan began playing professionally in 1952, at age six. His father, the legendary Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, was his primary teacher; the father also shared a teacher with Ravi Shankar. Amjad Ali Khan is among the most … Continue reading

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Various Artists (John Noise Manis, prod.): Gamelan of Java

Volume I: Kraton Kasunanan Volume II: Contemporary Composers Gamelan of Java is a new series from John Noise Manis, who produced the landmark series, Gamelan of Central Java. Volume I features two gamelans from the court of Surakarta, the Kyai … Continue reading

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Kodo’s Live at Symphony Center, 2/21/11

“Symphony Center” is what, after renovations and expansion, they now call Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. And it would seem an ideal venue for Kodo: a relatively intimate space (I said “relatively”), almost perfect acoustics, excellent sightlines from almost anywhere in the … Continue reading

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Kodo’s Akatsuki

Once upon a time, when I was younger and lived, possibly, more completely in the world of art than I do now, I went with some friends to Chicago’s then newly refurbished Auditorium Theater to see the Kodo Drummers, as … Continue reading

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What’s New for the 6th of January: del Toro: Pan’s Labyrinth, Yugoslav folk music, Richard and Linda Thompson doing trad Irish music, Cape Breton music, a wee hedgehog puppet, Finnan hadddie, more chocolate, Armenian folk music, fantasy noir and a lot more!

Whatever happened next, good or bad, it would be wonderful finding out. — Mathew Swift, the Midnight Mayor, in Kate Griffin’s A Madness of Angels Ahhhh, plump pork sausages sizzling in their own fat, eggs any way you like them, palacsinta … Continue reading

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Enrico Rava Quartet with Gianluca Petrella’s Wild Dance

“Wild” doesn’t necessarily mean fast or crazed, as Italian trumpeter and bandleader Enrico Rava and his four companions demonstrate on Wild Dance. The bulk of the pieces on this date are slow to medium tempo, modal or modernist excursions into … Continue reading

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Mari Boine’s Eight Seasons and Remixed

Mari Boine is one of the many artists brought to American audiences by way of Northside. These recordings were originally released by Lean in 2001 and 2002 and licensed by Northside for USA release in 2003. Boine is the embodiment of … Continue reading

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