Category Archives: Music

Bobo Stenson and Lennart Åberg’s Bobo Stenson/Lennart Åberg

Christopher White contributed this review. Bobo Stenson and Lennart Åberg are among the best known Swedish jazz musicians, playing piano and saxophones respectively. I hear skeptics out there making cracks about “best known Icelandic blues musicians” and so on, but … Continue reading

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Chava Alberstein’s End of the Holiday

This review was contributed by Kate Danemark. When I requested this CD of klezmer music I was expecting something totally different. Klezmer is upbeat, slightly discordant, generally obscure party-type music. Klezmer is “Hava Nagila.” This is, well, different from that, … Continue reading

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Hoyt Axton’s Flashes of Fire: Hoyt’s Very Best 1962-1990

Hoyt Axton was that lovable bear of a father in The Black Stallion, and Gremlins too, as I recall. It seemed so cool to have Hoyt as a dad. He knew what kids wanted … even if it got them … Continue reading

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Howe Gelb’s Ogle Some Piano

Tucson’s musical savant Howe Gelb has released an album of mostly instrumental keyboard music, Ogle Some Piano. It’s a curious disc, even by Gelb’s eccentric standards — 19 tracks of piano meanderings in a variety of styles: jazz, rock, pop, … Continue reading

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Väsen’s Trio

Väsen is Olov Johansson on 3-row chromatic nyckelharpa and kontrabasharpa, Mikael Marin on viola, 5-string viola, and pomposa, and Roger Tallroth on 12-string guitar and bosoki. Having had the opportunity over the last few years to immerse myself in many … Continue reading

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Jevan Cole and Jan Van Dijk’s Tunes of Curly Nature

This review was contributed by Alistair Brown. Very occasionally, those lucky enough to be wandering around the secret corners of some large summer festival will come across the kind of impromptu session where two musicians, apparently separated at birth, have … Continue reading

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Seán O’Driscoll and Larry Egan’s The Kitchen Recordings

Alistair Brown contributed this review. The title of the album says it all; this recording of Irish music on banjo or bouzouki and button accordion was recorded in the O’Driscoll kitchen on a Sony four-track recorder. That is not, I … Continue reading

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Jason Whelan’s Blur, The Tim Malloys’ Wrecked, and various artists’ Shite ‘n’ Onions, Volume 1

Here at GMR we like the raucous music that builds on the Anglo-Celtic traditions; from the Oysterband to the Pogues, we’re there. And this omnibus review finds me with a nice collection of raucous artists, from St. John’s Newfoundland to … Continue reading

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5 Mile Chase’s 5 Mile Chase

Pat Simmonds submitted this review. Another record out of New England is the duo 5 Mile Chase, featuring fiddler Django Amerson and guitarist-singer Brian Miller, again trawling the rich Irish American heritage so abundant in the Northeast United States. What … Continue reading

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Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer’s Music For Two and Obstinato

Banjo vertuoso Béla Fleck, having already pioneered and deeply explored the intersections of bluegrass, jazz and pop in a 20-year recording career, in 2001 recorded a double Grammy winning disc of “classical” music, Perpetual Motion. It leaned heavily to Baroque … Continue reading

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