A place to post about new music which I find especially interesting or noteworthy.
Charley Patton is generally considered the oldest Delta blues musician with his work surviving in over 50 recordings. Born some time between 1885 and 1891 he probably was playing around his country from the first decade of the 20th century until his death in 1934. Son House knew him and played with him but was … Continue reading Charley Patton
Black, Brown and Beige was at the time of its debut Ellington's most misunderstood and under appreciated work. The 1943 Carnegie Hall Concert live recording presents the work in its only Ellington-led complete form. But after the initial critical trashing of the work he performed it once more, and then removed it from his band's … Continue reading Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige finally arrives
The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra is the world’s only year-round, professional ensemble re-creating “America’s Original Music” – the syncopated sounds of early musical theater, silent cinema, and vintage dance. The PRO came into being as the result of Rick Benjamin’s 1985 discovery of thousands of turn-of-the-century orchestra scores once belonging to Victrola recording star Arthur Pryor. … Continue reading The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra
Mary Z. Cox has been playing since she was twelve, and is a two time Florida champion. She has won old time music competitions on banjo, dulcimer, and string band in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee and was chosen by Banjo Newsletter readers in 2006 as the fourth favorite claw-hammer banjo player in … Continue reading Mary Z. Cox : Banjoholic
Sixty-five years ago this year an event occcured which changed the course of American music. A unassuming man, unknown, with no professional expertise other than his devotion to old 78s of American vernacular music, released to the public the Anthology of American Folk Music. “Had he never done anything with his life but this Anthology, … Continue reading Harry Smith and the Anthology of American Folk Music
Rayna Gellert is an American violinist and singer specializing in old-time music. She grew up in Elkhart, in northern Indiana. Her father is the traditional fiddler and banjo player Dan Gellert. Originally a classically trained violinist, she took up the old-time fiddle in 1994, when she moved to North Carolina to attend Warren Wilson College. … Continue reading Rayna Gellert : From Violin to Fiddle
Almost exactly one year ago I wrote a short overview of Carlo Gesualdo on the occasion of his 450th birthday, March 8, 1566. I have to admit that I am not entirely pleased with that short article since it played into the recurring stereotype of Gesualdo as an unhinged murdering count. While it is true … Continue reading Gesualdo da Venosa : the music, not the life
Ensemble Gilles Binchois, Dominique Vellard Anne-Marie Lablaude, Brigitte Lesne, Susanne Norin, Emmanuel Bonnardot, Willem de Waal, Pierre Hamon, Randall Cook In fact, with the royal family's increasingly frequent visits to Paris and the development of the university, Paris became the focus of a vital flowering that attracted the greatest artists, musicians, scholars, and theologians to Europe's leading cultural center. From all … Continue reading Les Escholiers de Paris : Motets, Songs & Estampies of the Thirteenth Century
Allmusic.com Biography by Joslyn Layne Seminal gospel-blues artist Blind Willie Johnson is regarded as one of the greatest bottleneck slide guitarists. Yet the Texas street-corner evangelist is known as much for his powerful and fervent gruff voice as he is for his ability as a guitarist. He most often sang in a rough, bass voice … Continue reading Let Us Now Praise Great Bluesmen : Blind Willie Johnson, who died today, 1947, in Beaumont, Texas
Krzysztof Meyer (born 11 August 1943) is a Polish composer, pianist and music scholar, formerly Dean of the Department of Music Theory (1972–1975) at the State College of Music (now Academy of Music in Kraków), and president of the Union of Polish Composers (1985–1989). Meyer served as professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik … Continue reading The String Quartets of Krzysztof Meyer : a major achievement of the second half of the 20th century
Musica Kaleidoskopea 