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July 2004

Taking it in Stride

Friday, July 30, 2004

Only a handful of contemporary jazz pianists can play Harlem Stride, the sound of Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Willie “the Lion” Smith. Very few of them play Stride on a regular basis. Pianists Mike Lipskin and Terry Waldo are two of today’s better known practitioners, and they join us today to discuss a new one hour film documentary about Willie “the Lion” Smith. Also: New Yorker business writer James Suroweicki stops by to discuss the time-honored—and dishonored—practice of payola in the radio business. Payola became a household word in the fifties, when a host of DJs were found to be playing songs in exchange for favors and money. Today there are other tactics record companies get their songs on the air, including subsidies, gifts, “research funds” and “spot buys.”


The New Elitism

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Is one genre of music superior to another? Should classical music do more to assert its greatness? Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, and Paul Jacobs, chair of the organ department at the Juilliard School, debate the controversial issue of whether there’s room for connoisseurial behavior in our age of inclusiveness and populism. Also: The husband-and-wife piano duo Misha and Cipa Dichter met at Juilliard as students of the legendary Rosina Lhevinne in the 1960s and have been performing together for over 30 years. They join us to look back on the highlights of their distinguished partnership.


String Theory

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

The Tokyo String Quartet is among the elder generation of string quartets, and one whose changing membership has made it even better. New York Times critic Allan Kozinn recently observed that it produces “even richer, more nimble sound than its classic lineup of the late 1970's, when the Tokyo was one of a handful of young ensembles breathing fire into the quartet world.” The group performs an all-Mozart program this weekend at the Caramoor Festival, and joins us today with a live performance. Also on the show, Brazilian vocalist Ciebelle. She serves up tropical electronica inspired by the likes of Nina Simone, Tom Jobim, Bjork, and Ella Fitzgerald, that’s a wide leap from ‘60s bossa nova.


Famous Ray

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

This Sunday, Harlem Week honors the late Ray Charles with a concert at Grant’s Tomb that includes performances by R&B singers like Chuck Jackson, Freddie Jackson, and Lloyd Price, plus the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the ARC Choir. Flo Wiley, host of Host of Black Beat New York on WHCR, joins us with a preview of this event, which kicks off the 30th annual festival celebrating Harlem’s heritage and community spirit. Also: A book recently out in paperback called “Chopin’s Funeral,” by author Benita Eisler strips away many commonly held myths about the Polish composer, including that he was anything but a Romantic artist or a revolutionary. Eisler joins us today to paint a portrait of an embattled musical genius.


Gypsy Caravans and Seven Trains

Monday, July 26, 2004

For a long time, arts groups in Queens struggled to find funding, recognition and audiences. But recent political efforts and government grants have helped to stimulate the arts in New York’s most international borough. The annual Latino Cultural Festival, which gets underway this week, is a perfect example of Queens’ vibrancy, featuring musicians and dancers from Latin American, South American, and elsewhere. Claudia Norman, artistic director of the festival, joins us today. Crossing international boundaries is the premise behind another all-star event, which celebrates the legacy of “Gypsy Swing” guitarist Django Reinhardt. The noted record and concert producer Ettore Stratta has put together a concert at Lincoln Center this week and he joins us to offer a Reinhardt primer.


Long Night’s Journey

Friday, July 23, 2004

So you want to write a seven-hour piece of music for 170-voice choir, organ, Tibetan horns, temple bells and brass band? Perhaps an enormous midsummer night's vigil to herald the "Cosmic Ascent of Christ?" Well, British composer Sir John Tavener can offer some practical advice on the matter, having recently composed “The Veil of the Temple,” a work of such proportions and content which gets its American premiere on Saturday at Avery Fisher Hall, beginning at 10:30pm and ending at sunrise. The mystical minimalist master visits with his predictions for the performance.


On a Whirl

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Mercan Dede is a Turkish-born musician who mixes the ancient traditions of Sufi music with state-of-the-art techno beats and production. By mixing the secular and sacred, the old and new, he creates an often mesmerizing fusion of ideas and sensibilities from different cultures. (Think whirling dervishes meets DJ culture.) We get a taste of Dede’s music in advance of his performance at Celebrate Brooklyn. For a slightly different perspective on Middle Eastern music, Billboard columnist Anastasia Tsioulcas reviews the 2004 Fès Festival of World Sacred Music.


The Age of the Director

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Productions by Francesca Zambello are always newsworthy. Next week should be no exception, when the American stage director visits Bard College to direct Shostakovich’s opera "The Nose," based on Gogol's famous short story, and featuring sets by architect Rafael Viñoly. Today, Zambello joins us to talk about her often provocative career. We’re also joined by New York Times music critic Anne Midgette, who sheds some light on why "director's theater" – the kind of interpretive, radical stagings of traditional operas that are often derisively termed "Eurotrash" and get so many traditionalists up in arms. We’ll look at some examples of operas that have enjoyed particularly off-the-wall reinterpretations.


Schubert as Sex Symbol?

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

At a time when “Chick Lit” is a hot literary form – detailing the lives, loves, adventures of young single urban women – there’s a new book that takes an unusual spin on the genre. Bonnie Marson's "Sleeping with Schubert" depicts the Austrian composer as a sexy, happening kind of guy and has been described in the Washington Post as a "dazzling, touching, funny and original tale." It also asks the question: How can a great composer from the 19th century coexist in the everyday life of a modern American woman? Marson joins us to sort it all out. Also on the show, managing editor of NewMusicBox.org and a columnist for New York Press, joins us to preview the upcoming Joe’s Pub in the Park series. The new concert series by the downtown cabaret takes place the pastoral confines of Central Park.


Is it Live or Memorex…Or Edison?

Monday, July 19, 2004

In the 1910s and 1920s New Jersey inventor Thomas Edison staged elaborate infomercials in which he blindfolded audiences in an attempt to judge which was producing the "real" sound: his new phonograph or an opera singer alongside. With "Tone Test," composer-librettist Nicholas Brooke has created a piece for two performers and a phonograph based on these performance-experiments that will be presented at the Lincoln Center Festival. Brooke joins us today to discuss Edison’s legacy.

Also on the show, the Imani Winds, a young wind quintet of African American and Latino musicians whose music is as comfortable in Africa and America as in the cultured halls of Europe. They’re performing at the River to River Festival tonight as part of the "Summer Stars" Concert Series.


Blues Traveler

Friday, July 16, 2004

Charlie Musselwhite was born in Mississippi and raised in Memphis and Chicago where he learned the blues at the feet of the masters. He has been a celebrated harmonica player since the early 1960's, and four decades and 33 albums later he is seen as one of those keeping the blues alive. He joins us on Soundcheck to perform selections from his latest album, "Sanctuary." Also on the show, composer Richard Rodney Bennett, whose 1965 opera “The Mines of Sulfur” gets its long-overdue American premiere this month at the Glimmerglass Festival.


Sounds of the City

Thursday, July 15, 2004

A small plaza in Lower Manhattan, just outside the World Financial Center, has become a stage for a unique sound installation, designed by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger. Titled "Blue Moon" it uses three "tuning tubes," and transforms ambient city noise into music in real-time, mixed by the moon and tides. As the tides rise and fall the mix of tuning tubes changes key, modulating with the orbits and cycles of the moon. John Schaefer pays a visit to the installation and speaks with Odland. Also on the show: Elvis Costello has written his first full-length orchestral composition—“Il Sogno”—and it is conductor Brad Lubman’s job to bring it life. Lubman, a professor of conducting at Eastman, conducts the American premiere with the Brooklyn Philharmonic this weekend at the Lincoln Center Festival and he joins us today with a preview.


Salaam, New York!

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

From the musical "Bombay Dreams" to the popular Bhangra parties at the club SOB’s, it seems that New York’s music world is suddenly transfixed with all things South Asian. One of the highlights of this year’s Lincoln Center Festival is "TransMetropolitan," a program of Fourth World compositions mixing world music, video, and literature, organized by the multimedia artist DJ Spooky. On the bill are performances by some of the leading creative artists in the field including jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and Pakistani playwright Ibrahim Quraishi. They’ll join us today along with DJ Spooky to talk about the rendezvous of Western music and Eastern art.

Also on the show, Terry Teachout, drama critic of the Wall Street Journal, music critic of Commentary, and serial blogger, joins us on the heels of the release of The Terry Teachout Reader. He weighs in on the notion of "middlebrow culture" in the U.S.


Toppling Tours and Living Monuments

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

The Lollapalooza concert tour, long one of the big events of the summer mega-concert season in the US, was recently cancelled because of poor ticket sales. It's only the latest blow for promoters in a summer which has seen slow sales for many large touring shows. Newsday pop music writer Glenn Gamboa joins us to examine why the concert market is slumping, and what can be done about it. Also on the show, WNYC’s Margaret Juntwait joins us to look back on the life of the late, great contralto Marian Anderson. Anderson was the first black singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera and she broke down a host of other color barriers as well. A Connecticut museum recently restored her rehearsal studio and turned it into an exhibit celebrating her career achievements, and Margaret gives us a report.


Just Don’t Call them Sidemen

Monday, July 12, 2004

Jesse Harris is best known for being Norah Jones's favorite songwriter, having written the smash hit song "Don’t Know Why," along with several other cuts on her Grammy-winning album “Come Away With Me.” It's perhaps less known that he’s also a talented recording artist himself, having cut his teeth at the Downtown club, the Living Room. That’s also where you can sometimes find singer-songwriter Richard Julian, who, not coincidentally, has also worked with Ms. Jones and whose alternately funny and disturbing songs are quintessentially New York. Both artists join us today for a live performance. Also on the show: Budd Mishkin. Not only is he the smooth-voiced sports anchor for the cable news channel NY1, but he’s also an interpreter of Russian folk songs, particularly those of revered Soviet-era songwriter Bulat Okudzhava. He’s performing tonight at Makor and we’re treated to a preview live in the studio.


The Orchestra Wage Gap

Friday, July 09, 2004

Are conductors and executives bankrupting American orchestras? In a recent New York Times piece, writer Blair Tindall described a conflict between the skyrocketing salaries of those at the top, and the cries of institutional poverty which have led to stagnating musician salaries and increasingly bitter fights between labor and management. Tindall joins us today to look at the “plight of the white tie worker.” Also: Who says you can’t find unusual operatic offerings during the summer months? At the Caramoor Festival in northern Westchester County a bel canto series led by Will Crutchfield gets underway this weekend which promises three rarities, all semi-staged: Gluck's "Paride ed Elena," Pauline Viardot's enchanting salon operetta, "Cendrillon" ("Cinderella”), and Francesco Conti's "Don Quixote in Sierra Morena." We get a preview today from the venturesome conductor and scholar.


Roger Dodger

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Jazz pianist Roger Kellaway is known as the quintessential musician's musician: eagerly admired by colleagues, critics and fans, but less familiar to the public at large. Yet he’s performing this week at the legendary club Birdland and he’s written music for Yo-Yo Ma, the New York Philharmonic, and the theme for the ‘70s TV show “All in the Family.” He joins us on the heels of the re-release of his classic Verve album “The Roger Kellaway Cello Quartet.”


Happy Meal Composer

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

The record-breaking success of non-fiction documentaries in movie theaters has been a boon to not only independent filmmakers but also composers who write the often highly original soundtracks. One of them is Steve Horowitz, the composer behind the music heard in this year’s surprise hit documentary, “Supersize Me." Today on Soundcheck, Horowitz talks with John Schaefer about his unusual approach to writing the score and about music for a host of other media including television, cartoons, and video games.
Also on the show, Carl Hancock Rux, the 34-year-old poet, actor, playwright, spoken-word artist, musician – who is now also a novelist. He discusses his new novel, Asphalt, and his recently released CD, Apothecary Rx.


North and South of the Border

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

The band Calexico takes its name from a California border town and the band manages to bridge the borders of country, folk, jazz, surf, mariachi, and the blues as well. They play live in our studio today. Also, The Spanish Harlem Orchestra is dedicated to preserving the vital history of classic latin dance orchestras and writing and arranging new music for the audience of today. The orchestra’s founder salsa great Oscar Hernandez joins John Schaefer in the studio to talk about their newest album, Across 110 Street.


Global Beat

Monday, July 05, 2004

Youssou N'Dour is a renowned singer, songwriter, and composer, who mixes the sounds of traditional Senegalese rhythms with eclectic influences ranging from Cuban samba to hip hop, jazz, and soul. He has collaborated with musicians of all nationalities and joins John Schaefer today on the program to talk about his most recent project, a concept album called Egypt. Also, Sheng is an unusual big band, which offers a combination of master musicians from China, Mali, Senegal, Morocco and Vietnam, all lead by jazz conductor and composer Lawrence "Butch" Morris. We’ll hear from this international mix today in the studio.


Hello... Newman

Friday, July 02, 2004

Singer and songwriting legend Randy Newman spent most of the 1990s composing film scores like “Toy Story” and “Monsters, Inc.” But he became famous much earlier for writing dark and satirical songs about the lives of misfits, outcasts, and con-men. Today, the multifaceted master of irony joins John Schaefer to look back on his busy career.


Cue the Cannons

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Frequently derided as a patchwork of bombastic clichés, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” is nonetheless a well-crafted, brilliantly orchestrated work—and staple of July Fourth fireworks celebrations everywhere. But while it may seem as American as apple pie, it was composed to commemorate the victory of Russia in the Napoleonic Wars of 1812. Today on Soundcheck, Pittsburgh-based music critic Andrew Druckenbrod talks with John Schaefer about how the work caught on during the height of the Cold War.