His Rite of Spring remains central; and its forceful jazz interpretation, arranged by Darryl Brenzel, and performed in Baltimore in 2010 at the Metro Gallery by the Mobtown Modern Big Band, is controlled, offering a shimmery, sizzling sound, with varied pacing that sustains attention.
Hallucination and Healing: The Kiowa Peyote Meeting, Songs and Narratives, featuring Winston Catt, Everett Cozad, Ray and Blossom Coza, George Saloe, and Henry Teimausaddle
There is a droning kind of chanting, earthy, intimate, intense. The songs are dedicated to particular times—such as morning and midnight, with prayers for “everybody.” The chants with both male and female voices have a greater appeal than those with only male voices—there is more complexity, and clearly more community.
Eleven Short Stories, music inspired by film, composed by experimental Turkish composer Erdem Helvacioglu
On his album Eleven Short Stories, he has transformed his piano into the most flexible of instruments, augmenting it with odd implements and making it sing with new tones, telling vivid tales. The pianist, guitarist, and composer Erdem Helvacioglu, informed by classical, folk, and popular music, has wanted to bring together emotion and experiment.
Cornelius Duffalo’s Journaling, featuring the work of John King, Joan Jeanrenaud, Huang Ruo, Vijay Iyer, John Luther Adams, and Kenji Bunch
On Cornelius Duffalo’s Journaling, short, repeating patterns begin to expand, double, triple, quadruple in Vijay Iyer’s “Playlist One (Resonance)” then become simple again; and there is plucking, wailing, then great fast rhythm. In his album notes, Duffalo says the Iyer piece “alludes to the tradition of virtuoso variations, complete with fiendishly difficult passages of harmonics, double stops and left-hand pizzicato, while also creating a unique contemporary sound world.”
Abstract, Beat-driven, Cool: Master of My Make-Believe by Santigold, featuring singer-songwriter Santi White
Santi White, ambitious and determined, is a grown-up, a married woman, her husband being snowboarder-musician Trevor Andrew, but she relishes her youthful impulses, perceptible in her album The Master of My Make–Believe, which features an album jacket portrait by painter Kehinde Wiley and printed lyrics too small to read.
Civility, Lyricism, Passion: Barchords by musical project Bahamas, featuring Afie Jurvanen
Drawing on an old troubadour style and also western folk music and the glamour of modern individuality, the singer songwriter is able to maintain an appeal that seems timeless. Afie Jurvanen, for Bahamas, writes about—what else?— existence and love on the album Barchords, called a “gorgeous, full-bodied recording” by the Los Angeles Times (February 7,2012).
A review of On the Road to Infinity by Mark Logie
The thirteen poems in this chapbook cover a range of themes, working between personal turmoil and political issues. The book works between a number of dichotomies: sickness and health, sanity and insanity, youth and age, city and wilderness.
The First of All My Dreams by Ellen Mandel and Todd Almond
Despite the depth in the lyrics, the pieces remain accessible to the listener – immediately enjoyable and catchy even, growing more so with each listen. The is a deft lightness in the work, from the soft reminiscence of Yeats’ “The Meditation of the Old Fisherman” to the light Broadway style trills on “Don’t Ask Why.”
Expectations, Frustrated and Fulfilled: the album 4 by Beyonce Knowles, featuring “1+1” and “Love on Top” and “I Was Here” and “Run the World (Girls)”
Some of the songs (“Countdown” and “End of Time”) on the album have a brassy, multi-rhythmic quality that I identify with southern brass bands—is that part of (the Texan) Beyonce’s genuine taste?—but the sound could be something one of her producers scavenged from Scandinavian dance music or elsewhere, eager or desperate for a unique sound.
Two Men In Love (I Didn’t Know You Were That Black): Rahsaan Patterson’s music album Wines & Spirits; and Jericho Brown’s poetry book Please
What separates human accomplishment and failure? In the slinky, seductive “No Danger,” using rhythm as a sign or symbol of desire, Rahsaan Patterson describes love as protection against the cruelty of indifference; but in the song that follows, with a theme of unhappiness, “Pitch Black,” a cross of rock and funk, featuring Patterson’s low voice, a fat slow beat, and guitar feedback, there are “pitch black panic attacks.”