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To buy any of these titles e-mail agoldinger@politics-prose.com or call him at 202-364-1919
Lila Downs, Pecados y Milagros (Sony Latin/RED, $14.98) –Lila Downs has often brought modern touches to traditional Mexican forms in her original songs, and Pecados y Milagros (Sins and Miracles) is one of her most ambitious projects. Her tunes now have a visual component—Ms Downs commissioned contemporary artists to paint retablos (narrative votive paintings) for her songs, which are reproduced in the beautiful booklet packaged with the CD. Listen and enjoy.
Gregory Porter, Be Good (Motema, $15.98) – New and up-and-coming male jazz singers are quite rare on the scene, and singers who also write are even rarer. Gregory Porter’s voice is deep and versatile, in the Joe Williams range, and his songs are full of soul. Mr. Porter’s follow-up to his 2010 CD, Water, includes mostly originals, and three covers: Nat Adderley’s “Work Song,” “Imitations of Life” from the 1959 film, and, closing the CD, an acapella version of “God Bless the Child.”
Note: Gregory Porter will sing at the Kennedy Center this Saturday, February 4.
Richard Galliano, Nino Rota (Deutsche Grammophon, $18.98) – French accordion master Richard Galliano brought together jazz greats Dave Douglas on trumpet, John Surman on reeds, Boris Kozlov on bass and Clarence Penn on drums to play Nino Rota’s evocative tunes that he wrote for the movies. The tunes include themes from The Godfather, as well as from the Fellini favorites Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, Amarcord and Juliet of the Spirits.
The Descendants: Original Soundtrack (Sony, $11.98) – Alexander Payne’s movie starring George Clooney has garnered many accolades—for its screenplay, its acting ensemble, and also for its fine use of Hawaiian music on the soundtrack. There are wonderful examples of slack-key guitar masters and singers such as Gabby Pahinui, Ray Kane, Keola Beamer, and Sonny Chillingworth on the CD. This soundtrack is a great introduction to Hawaiian music.
Click here for more news and reviews. Please call us at 202-364-1919 or email me at agoldinger@politics-prose.com to order these CDs.
Paolo Pandolfo at the Library of Congress
This Saturday, January 28, at 2 p.m., the renowned viola da gamba virtuoso Paolo Pandolfo will give a free solo recital at the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium.
I’ll be at the Library selling Mr. Pandolfo’s CDs, among them Bach: Sonatas and Arias for Viola da Gamba and Abel: The Drexel Manuscripts (both on the Glossa label).
NEW
Simone Dinnerstein, Something Almost Being Said: Music of Bach and Schubert (Sony Classical, $13.98) – Ms Dinnerstein had a breakthrough with her Goldberg Variations almost five years ago, and her follow-up discs of Bach have brought her great acclaim. Here she plays Schubert’s Four Impromptus, Op. 90, book-ended by Bach’s Partitas Nos. 1 and 2.
Listen to Simone talk about her career and this album in an interview on the Diane Rehm Show
Ms Dinnerstein is playing this Sunday, January 29, at Strathmore Music Center.
Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas (Columbia, $13.98) – Leonard Cohen has been writing great songs for decades on the themes of love, lust and mortality. And he’s delivered them in his instantly recognizable deep, deadpan voice (with the hint of a smile). Listen to the sage deliver some more great songs.
Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International (Fontana, 4 CDs, $24.98) – A fundraising project for the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International, Chimes of Freedom gathers eighty (!) artists on four discs in all-new recordings of songs by Bob Dylan. Among the many artists both young and old, I’d recommend Mariachi El Bronx (“Love Sick”), Lucinda Williams (“Tryin’ to Get to Heaven”), Patti Smith (“Drifter’s Escape”) and My Morning Jacket (“You’re a Big Girl Now”). But the version that struck me the most—in a performance that gave me shivers—was by the singer who’s sung Bob Dylan songs the longest: Joan Baez’s take on “Seven Curses” brought out all the fear and foreboding in this classic ballad of treachery and retribution (and made me appreciate Dylan’s songwriting even more).
Ani DiFranco, Which Side Are You On? (Righteous Babe, $17.98) – Eleven new songs plus a reworking of the title tune, with its composer, Pete Seeger.
GRAMOPHONE’S RECORDINGS OF THE MONTH
Every month, the British classical magazine, Gramophone, selects a recording of the month, and devotes a two-page spread to the review.
Here are their last three selections:
Diane Damrau, Liszt: Lieder (Virgin Classics, $16.98)
Doric String Quartet, Schumann: String Quartets, Op. 41 (Chandos, $18.99)
Richardo Chailly, conductor; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Beethoven: The Symphonies (Decca, 5 CDs, $59.98)
Click here for more news and reviews. Please call us at 202-364-1919 or email me at agoldinger@politics-prose.com to order these CDs.
JAZZ MASTERS
In 1982, The National Endowment for the Arts first awarded its Jazz Masters Fellowship to masters of the art form—the first honorees were Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge and Sun Ra.
Celebrating 30 years, the 2012 NEA Jazz Masters were recently awarded to bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Jack DeJohnette, trumpeter Jimmy Owens, vocalist Sheila Jordan, and saxophonist Von Freeman.
Three of the awardees have brand new albums:
Charlie Haden & Hank Jones, Come Sunday (Emarcy, $16.98) – A followup to their 1995 collaboration, Steal Away, Mr. Haden and pianist Hank Jones (a Jazz Master honoree in 1989) reunited for another album of hymns, spirituals and gospel tunes—played simply and gracefully. This was Mr. Jones’s final recording project before his death in May, 2010. NPR had a reminiscence by Charlie Haden about this project (http://www.npr.org/2012/01/15/145172275/charlie-haden-a-moment-of-clarity )
Jack DeJohnette, Sound Travels (E One Music, $17.98) – Jack DeJohnette has been the drummer for some of the most important small groups of the past fifty years: Charles Lloyd’s quartet of the late 1960s, Miles Davis’s transitional quintet of the early 1970s, and for the last 25 years, Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. DeJohnnette is also a talented pianist and composer, and he brought together many friends for this project: Jason Moran, Esperanza Spalding, Bobby McFerrin, and Ambrose Akenmusire, among them.
Jimmy Owens, The Monk Project (IPO Recordings, $15.98) – Mr. Owens has not released many albums under his own leadership, so it’s good to hear his new project: a septet playing Thelonious Monk tunes (and an arrangement of Monk’s version of Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing”). Mr. Owens and his trumpet are joined on the front-line by Wycliffe Gordon on trombone, Marcus Strickland on tenor, and Howard Johnson on baritone and tuba. The great rhythm section has the great Kenny Baron on piano, Kenny Davis on bass, and Winard Harper on drums.
and one more:
Chick Corea/Eddie Gomez/Paul Motian, Further Explorations (Concord, 2 CDs, $19.98) – Speaking of jazz masters, pianist Chick Corea brought together bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Paul Motian to pay tribute to Bill Evans over a two-week engagement at the Blue Note in New York in May, 2010. Corea couldn’t have found better partners:
Gomez played with Bill Evans for eleven years (1966-1977), and Motian was in Evans’s iconic trio with bassist Scott LaFaro on his most influential recordings in the early 1960s. Further Explorations is a 2-CD set of Bill Evans originals and songs he is associated with, as well as tunes by Corea, Gomez, and Motian.
Click here for more news and reviews. Please call us at 202-364-1919 or email me at agoldinger@politics-prose.com to order these CDs.