Albums

OSCAR, WITH LOVE AND BEAUTY AND RESPECT AND… It’s a simple idea that could easily have caused higgledy-piggledy results. In fact, many tribute albums involving various artists contain tracks that are jarringly inconsistent and smack of commercialism. Not so here. Kelly Peterson, the widow of Oscar Peterson (1925-2007), personally produced this extraordinary three-disc set which…

BACK TO BRUCKNER That there are over 100 recordings of Bruckner’s Ninth — his final and unfinished symphony — speaks to the enormous popularity of this spectacular creation.  In 1926, American critic Paul Rosenfeld stated that “Bruckner’s symphonies have scarce commenced heaving their mighty volumes through time, before we know we are come into a world…

GIMME FIVE Tony Banks gathers no moss. At 68, the co-founder of Genesis is releasing yet another album, his tenth outside of the band. After a successful career as songwriter, singer, film scorer, and multi-instrumentalist (most especially on keyboards), Banks turned to orchestral compositions. His third, released in February 2018, is labelled “classical” but the…

FEELS FIVE TIMES AS LONG It’s no doubt coincidental that the fifth recording in a series of Bruckner Symphonies conducted live by Rémy Ballot is of the Fifth. If you haven’t yet heard the previous four – the Third, Eighth, Ninth, and Sixth – get ready for a shock. Recorded in August 2017 at St….

SERENE, SEDUCTIVE, SENSUAL Perfect for background music at a Sunday brunch, Guitar Music of Mexico is an accumulation of almost-all late twentieth-century Mexican compositions for guitar, each played by the extremely articulate Veracruz guitarist Cecilio Perera. Similar in tone to the great Spanish works by Albéniz, Granados, Rodrigo and Turina – all of whom wrote…

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR RISES AGAIN, BUT ONLY PARTIALLY TO THE HEAVENS Not nearly as powerful and raw as it could have been, NBC’s live telecast “event” of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar – more music video than Broadway-style production – nonetheless has some admirable qualities — with one glaring pitfall. Astoundingly…

TEN TENACIOUS TENORS I’ve always liked the tenor voice; from Pavorotti to The Three Tenors and everything in between I’ve been fortunate enough to have a wealth of choices. But then I was exposed to ten young Australian guys at a live concert over ten years ago, something changed because here was a group that…

YOUR HOPES AND DREAMS ARE ANSWERED Everyone knows that lullabies help babies sleep. But studies show that they can also ease pain and stress. These tender ditties are much more than a baby song as well. They are an intimate connection between the singer and the baby. And singing lullabies is good for parents. Singing…

TANGO FOR CHURCH Martí­n Palmeri (b. 1965) is not a well-known name, but based on his Misa a Buenos Aires, a rich orchestral and choral work that uses as a subtext both polyphonic music and tango, I hope more folks get to know him soon. Born in Buenos Aires, it’s clear that he’s a composer,…

HELLO AGAIN HELLO AGAIN Hello Again is Michael John LaChiusa’s 1993 musical adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play about sexual intricacies (Der Reigen  and, in French,  La Ronde), which has itself been adapted dozens of times on stage (David Hare’s The Blue Room) and screen (360) since its scandalous censor-banning beginnings in 1897. The basic premise consists of…

JONESING FOR JO JONES Jo Jones (1911-1985) is one of the most important percussionists in jazz history. In 1934, he joined Count Basie’s band, influencing the Great Buddy Rich and the Great Louie Bellson. He was a backbone for Basie’s traveling troupe up through 1948. He influenced swing and bop drummers by shifting the timekeeping…

IVAN THE TERRIFIC Ivan the Terrible, the second joint project of Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev, is a two-part historical epic film, portraying the rise and fall of the autocratic ruler Ivan IV in the 16th century. Prokofiev’s musical portrayal is unique in film history, for the score conceives both parts of the film on…

WELL WORTH A VISIT Perhaps composer/lyricist David Yazbek (The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) was inspired by one of our best new playwrights, Itamar Moses, and his adaptation of the terrific 2007 film, The Band’s Visit. Perhaps his experimentation with harmony, melody, Spanish rhythms, and character development on Women on the Verge of a Nervous…

A HOMOGENIZED SONG FOR YOU Look, it’s a matter of taste. Steve Tyrell began his career in the ’60s as a  music supervisor for Scepter Records in the 1960s where his mentors were Burt Bacharach and Hal David (Tyrell even tagged fellow Texan B.J. Thomas to sing “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” for Butch Cassidy…

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST I’m actually happy I didn’t see this musical live on stage. It makes for a wonderful original cast recording, but what seems like a giant heart on this CD, out recently from Broadway Records, seems like it would get awfully silly on stage (bookwriter Joe DiPietro can get like that)….

AMERICAN QUARTET; AMERICAN ENSEMBLE: OH, BEAUTIFUL! Dvořák’s American Quartet is one of the most famous and loved string quartets, mostly because of the memorable pentatonic melodies (five note per octave scales, which are often found in American folk music) that invoke the wide open prairies of the undeveloped heartland of the country for which it’s…

THE MUSICAL THAT KEEPS ON WORKING Was 2017 really the European premiere of this oft-produced musical? Yep. 40 years since the Broadway opening of Working, and we’re just getting the Original London Cast recording. Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso’s 1978 musical —  adapted from Studs Terkel’s 1974 nonfiction book about working-class Americans – moves between monologues…