Michel Petrucciani exploded onto the North American consciousness in 1982 when he persuaded Charles Lloyd to come out of a self-imposed retirement. The French pianist was a sensation and quickly found himself on a New York-bound Concorde to become the first European artist signed by Bruce Lundvall to a Blue Note Records contract. The label […]
The process of mining – digging deep into the earth to find an essential material – dates back at least forty-three thousand years. However, the process was not modernized until the adoption of rail in the 1550s. Carts would accumulate the laborers’ findings and move them to the surface. Two centuries later, James Watt used […]
Far too often, people tend to compartmentalize and localize matters of concern. However, such an approach minimizes the true scale of what is before us. Only in perceiving the big picture of an issue can truly substantive and meaningful reform occur. As one example, slavery in America and its vestiges are frequently removed from the […]
[Editor’s Note: We are excited to have Anthony Dean-Harris join us again for our year-end lists. Anthony is a longtime friend to the site, a Downbeat contributor, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Nextbop back when that site was both enjoyable and relevant. He’s also a great broadcaster. After many years at KTRU in San Antonio, […]
In pieces reviewing a year past, writers often try to find a few narratives and blanketly apply them. The problem with this approach, however. While providing some coherence, such simplification completely overlooks much of what happened that year. One can posit how, through albums like Mary Halvorson’s ‘Cloudward’ or David Murray’s ‘Francesca’, avant-garde music was […]
In the late 1850s, two decades before Thomas Edison’s phonograph, French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville created the first sound recording device. In the generations since, the interrelation between recorded sound and new creation have continually been a matter of great controversy. When recorded music first emerged, many musicians became dismayed that it would end […]
The albums we collectively felt were the best of 2024 (technically from Thanksgiving 2023 to Thanksgiving 2024) show a beautiful range of diverse voices. I don’t think any of us consciously chose our albums based on identifiers like race, gender, or nationality. The fact it is replete with musicians from around the globe – from […]
Western literature has long noted the disconnection between perception and reality. In 1175, French monk Alain de Lille “Do not hold everything gold that shines like gold.” Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare carried this thought through The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) and The Merchant of Venice (1596-1598), respectively. Now, centuries later, the division of what seems […]
We continue our conversation with Fred Frith (read part one here) with a focus on his work with homemade instruments, specifically his duo with Sudh Tewari, Normal. PostGenre: A little earlier, you mentioned how you put aside the guitar for a few years in the early 1980s. What led to your stepping away from the […]
When first learning about music, students are often taught to classify instruments by their sound. In the abstract, this basic exercise appears helpful. Woodwind reeds will inevitably produce a different tone than one can get on a brass mouthpiece. Tapping fingers on a string will likely not sound close to that produced by the same […]
