Music

I'M WITH MICHAEL BERKELEY

Simon Willis — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:46:17 +0000

~ Posted by Simon Willis, April 24th 2012

In our current Big Question we are asking which is the best musical instrument. The composer and broadcaster Michael Berkeley argues that the piano is the best because of "its quite staggering compass“ and its "ability to move instantly from the highly percussive to the warmly lyrical”. For two and a half hours last night at the Royal Festival Hall, the pianist Mitsuko Uchida played Schubert's last three piano sonatas, and I was with Michael Berkeley all the way.

To play Schubert's late sonatas in one stretch is a huge task, for their length—the first half of the concert lasted almost an hour and a half—and for their extremes of mood. He composed all three between May and September, 1828, the final year of his life. He died of typhoid in November, aged 31. Whether or not he knew he would die when he was writing them (in the programme notes, Uchida says she thinks he did) the music explores a vast spectrum of feeling, from playfulness to despair and derangement.

At the beginning of the slow movement of the A-major sonata, the music is resigned and introspective, the sound of giving up. But then it becomes utterly unhinged, with ugly, discordant snatches of noise. Uchida describes it as music's “greatest mad scene”; Alfred Brendel wrote, in his essay on the late sonatas, that it was "among the most daring and terrifying pages in all music”. read more »

"LES MIS" BEHIND BARS

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:59:58 +0000

~ Posted by Samantha Weinberg, March 12th 2012 read more »

ART AND KRAFTWERK IN NEW YORK

Hazel Sheffield — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:23:06 +0000

~ Posted by Hazel Sheffield, March 1st 2012

Though Kraftwerk has long been celebrated for its formative influence on black electronic music in America—from Detroit techno to New York electro—their albums were slow to chart in the America on release. How times change. When tickets went online last week for a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in April, the eight-night run sold out in an hour.

Only one original member of the band remains. Despite the departure of his founding partner, Florian Schneider, in 2008, Ralf Hütter (now 65) has shown considerable dedication to touring with three new members. Recently, Kraftwerk supported Radiohead in Latin America, performed with robots and four gold-winning British cyclists in the Velodrome at the Manchester International Festival in 2009, and opened an exhibition of some of their visual work in Munich last October. read more »

NETWORKS IN THE DARK

Robert Butler — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:24:31 +0000

~ Posted by Robert Butler, February 6th 2012

When a cinema in Austin, Texas, threw out a customer last summer for using her phone, she left a defiantly rambling voicemail calling the management "assholes" and reasserting her right to use her phone where and when she liked. The movie chain posted her message on YouTube as a plug for the kind of cinema they like to run. The video has had nearly two and a half million hits.

In the Washington Post the critic Ann Hornaday connects this with two other angry disputes: some moviegoers have complained that they should have been told that Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life” would be too philosophical for their taste and other moviegoers have complained that they hadn’t been told that “The Artist” is a silent movie (both groups asked for their money back).

But there are separate arguments going on here. The last two examples are about getting hacked off because the movie wasn't the one you would have liked to have seen (and, frankly, that's just tough). The first is about how people behave in venues. And here it’s not so clear-cut. read more »

OBAMA BREAKS INTO SONG

Hazel Sheffield — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:38:23 +0000

~ Posted by Hazel Sheffield, January 24th 2012

Those who splashed out $200 for a ticket to the Democratic fundraiser at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre got more than they bargained for last Thursday, when President Obama unexpectedly sang the first line of the Reverend Al Green’s "Let’s Stay Together".

“I’m...so in love with you,” crooned the president, in surprisingly good voice, before grinning and admitting to the real Al Green, “I cannot sing like you.”

Still, it takes some nerve to break into song in front of nearly 1,400 supporters just moments after the Reverend's own performance. Obama laughed at the applause and pointed backstage. “Those guys didn’t think I would do it!”

It’s not the first time the president has serenaded his fans. During the 2008 election Obama sang a snatch from Aretha Franklin’s "Chain of Fools" to a crowd that included Franklin herself. That time, he told his audience, "I wasn't going to do that." His good-humoured performance on Thursday night was a welcome respite from the heated exchanges in the Republican debates, which hit Florida with more in-fighting last night. read more »

WHEN MUM WON'T BUY YOU DRUMS

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:59:42 +0000

~ Posted by Charlie McCann, December 21st 2011 read more »

RETURN OF THE SAX

Tim de Lisle — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:05:02 +0000

~ Posted by Tim de Lisle, December 15th 2011

If there was a contest to find the most derided instrument in rock music today, the saxophone would be a prime contender. After ruling the airwaves in the Eighties, it was chased out in the Nineties by grunge, and these days it often feels as if the only person still playing the sax in public is Lisa Simpson. So it was a surprise to go to Bryan Ferry's show at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London and find the sax centre stage.

Jorja Chalmers (right), from Sydney, reeled off one sax solo after another. She operated like a set of italics, adding wistfulness to "Avalon" and punch to "Let's Stick Together"—appropriately enough, as the sax was part of the glue on a night that made sense of the disparate facets of Ferry's 40-year career. On "If There Is Something", from the first Roxy Music album, she picked up a twisted country tune and ran off with it, deep into the woods of modern jazz.

Ferry, of course, had a sax beside him from the start. Roxy Music were the first great rock band in which a woodwind player was a central member (Andy Mackay, on sax and oboe; there has still, arguably, been only one more: Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, featuring the late lamented Clarence Clemons). But, on Ferry's solo tours, the sax has tended to be just one instrument among many. Last night, Chalmers was almost as prominent as Ferry's two guitarists, and when it came to the band intros, she got just as big a cheer. read more »

BRAHMS AT HARVEST TIME

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:00:29 +0000

From his spartan farm house, Nguyen Huu Dua explains in Vietnamese the time when he received a midnight visit from the organisers of a concert at Hanoi's famous opera house. He and his troupe of violinists were scheduled to perform there, and the event’s producers couldn't believe that they were all several generations of humble farmers. Dua later took to the stage in his traditional farmer's pajamas, and remembers the event fondly.

We arrived at his small house deep in northern Vietnam's farmland without notice; local government officials had no idea who he was or how to put us in touch to arrange an interview. We found him and his wife busy with the rice harvest, drying the grains in their courtyard.

Dua first heard the violin when he was young and swiftly became enamoured. He already played the mandolin and guitar—both considered French instruments—and convinced the local chiefs to hire a violin instructor for his village, called Then, which was already known for its musical talent. He bought his first violin in the mid-1950s for several hundred kilos of rice and an unspecified number of chickens. His neighbour's cello cost several buffalos. He later taught a generation of villagers the violin.

The military recruited Dua and trained him further in music. Other villagers were also recruited to travel with army squadrons stationed around the country during the war with America. Unlike the classical music he first fell in love with and the folk music he played for the village, music in the army was confined to revolutionary fervour. Songs about Ho Chi Minh and examples of great communist heroism were the standard. read more »

THE Q&A: BJÖRK, MUSICIAN

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:59:22 +0000

Björk Guðmundsdóttir laughs a lot. In conversation, these outbursts are the only moments when she doesn't sound like "Björk”, the pop star once described as "the most famous Icelander since Leif Erikson" by Alex Ross of the New Yorker. Otherwise, she trills in the same register as she sings, with a Nordic inflection that lilts and rolls. Hers is a voice made for dreams and torch songs. The laugh keeps things grounded.

Outside Iceland, many first heard Björk in a single called “Birthday”, recorded when she was the lead singer of a band called the Sugarcubes in the early 1990s. With her 1993 solo album “Debut”, she emerged as a singer-songwriter who contained sonic and stylistic multitudes. The record seemed to brand Björk not so much a rising star, but a distant planet with complex weather patterns.

Seven albums in 18 years have bred familiarity with her world. In a Björk song the melody floats freely above a modal structure. Her lyrics can appear digressive. Then, just as her words are getting too weird, too solipsistic, they conjure an image so vivid you can see it shimmer.

This is exactly how she talks, too. She spins and spins while making the occasional intuitive leap, until finally a dazzling shape materialises. Then she chortles girlishly. Today Björk is speaking from her home on the Icelandic coast. We are meant to discuss her new project, “Biophilia”, but our conversation takes a bracingly roundabout route. Along the way she unravels a few of the mysteries surrounding her songwriting methods.

Your albums suggest you are a listener who pays special attention to timbre. read more »

THE HIGH LIFE

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:36:01 +0000

Cancer isn't cool.

Nile Rodgers's diagnosis in late 2010 proved especially baffling for him. A 59-year-old music producer, he was putting the finishing touches on his tell-all memoir, "Le Freak", when his doctor gave him the verdict. Given his partying history ("Since the tender age of eleven, I'd been dabbling in mind-altering substances," he writes in the book), Rodgers had expected a malady more in keeping with his past.

"The whole thing took me completely by surprise," Rodgers says in a recent phone interview. "Cancer? Are you kidding me? It's such a non-rock'n'roll disease."

His new book is candid with his rock'n'roll preferences, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Rodgers was a regular at New York's infamous club Studio 54, dividing white lines with the VIP crowd in the balcony as people danced to the crossover hits of his band Chic, including "I Want Your Love" and "Good Times". He is the co-writer of the Sister Sledge smash "We Are Family" and the Diana Ross anthem "I'm Coming Out". He is also the man behind such hit albums as David Bowie's "Let's Dance", Duran Duran's "Notorious" and Madonna's "Like a Virgin". Now 17 years sober, he declares he is simply high on life, which also happens to be not so rock'n'roll. "I'm always swimming forward like a shark," he says of his drive to beat his disease and continue making music. "You just keep going and you don't rest. I love waking up knowing that I have a problem to solve." read more »