Victor Wooten and the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival

At about 5:30am today, Ivi appeared on the doorstep, snow-covered, having just pulled into town after a couple of days in Moscow, Idaho at the annual Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. She and her fellow jazz ensemble members attended workshops and performed in student events. (Ivi tells us that a camera sending live audience projections to the large screens during the big band performance zeroed in for at least thirty seconds on her and Jordan as they danced in the pit) The visiting artist who most blew her away was the "crazy-good" Victor Wooten. Here is a sample from about a year ago:



And from Wooten's own site, a notice of his forthcoming March 8 Virtual Release party for an anniversary of his Show of Hands album:

I see that Wooten will be continuing to tour with Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, possibly to a venue near you.

Another Kind of Music

Coming Up - 100 Lovers

DeVotchKa, one of our favorites, is scheduled to release its new album, 100 Lovers, next Tuesday. In the meantime, you can stream it from NPR.

Robert Johnson Revisited

Robert Johnson, born Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938) is among the most famous of the Delta Blues musicians.

Crossroads Blues (Alternate Take)

Hell Hound On My Trail

I Believe I'll Dust My Broom

Kind-Hearted Woman Blues

Love In Vain

Phonograph Blues

Preaching Blues (Up Jumped The Devil)

TKOL

Everybody who knows me knows that I am a rather devoted Radiohead fan.

A few days ago, I put in an online pre-order -- sound unheard -- for Radiohead's "The King of Limbs", to be available for download at its site on February 19 or as a special vinyl/CD/artwork/digital download combination package by postal mail in May. As I was sitting around on this Friday night, unwinding from the workweek and relaxing with my new Andreas Scholl and catching up with reading, I made a mental note to remember to visit the download site on the 19th to collect the goods. Then it dawned upon me that it was already the 19th for the Brits, so I jumped online and pulled down the 368 MB Zip file (I chose the WAV option rather than MP3: eight tracks at around 50 MB each).

Taking advantage of the absence of Kim and Ivi (they are gone for several days in a whirlwind junket on the west side of the state to visit prospective colleges for Ivi this fall), I was able to crank up the stereo with impunity at the late hour, which is no problem for Nik, either, who also stayed behind and is a night owl, anyway. So for the past couple of hours, we have been infused with the new Radiohead. So far, "Codex" is my favorite cut. Radiohead's stuff is always so sonically rich that I am bound to discover more nuances upon repeated listenings. I highly recommend getting it in WAV format -- and it is well worth hearing with your best headphones, too.

I have no idea, yet, what the album title is all about.

PDX Jazz Fest

Starting today, the Portland Jazz Festival extends through February 27 with an intriguing theme, "Bridges and Boundaries: Jewish and African Americans Playing Jazz". Esperanza Spalding, local girl made good at this year's Grammys, will be a headliner and is designated the festival's "community ambassador". Her friend, Tel Aviv-born woodwind player, Anat Cohen, is also to perform. A group I look forward to hearing, and which is said to exemplify the spirit of the event, is the Afro-Semitic Experience, described as "three Jews and three African Americans playing Klezmer soul".

Read more about the festival in tonight's piece from The Oregonian.

In the meantime, let's hear Linda Hornbuckle, a Portland jazz/soul/gospel singer who came to our attention a few years ago via OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) and its ArtBeat program:

Andreas Scholl, Klaus Nomi and The Cold Song

Just received a new CD today from Amazon of songs and arias by Henry Purcell, the Baroque master, as sung by the incredible countertenor, Andreas Scholl. Here is an amazing taste of his work as found on YouTube, where Scholl performs Purcell's astonishingly-modern-sounding "The Cold Song" from his 1691 opera, King Arthur:

Try this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9wHFCXuCsg

As long as we are here, we should see if we can find the interpretation by the late Klaus Nomi, possibly the most famous and controversial avant-garde countertenor of modern times:



Okay, let's find the lyrics ...

What power art thou
Who from below
Hast made me rise
Unwillingly and slow
From beds of everlasting snow

See'st thou not how stiff
And wondrous old
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold

I can scarcely move
Or draw my breath
I can scarcely move
Or draw my breath

Let me, let me,
Let me freeze again
Let me, let me
Freeze again to death
Let me, let me, let me
Freeze again to death...

Yes, I did think of this as I walked to work this morning, cold wind blowing, just above freezing ...

(Maybe sometime we will have to hear Nomi's "Samson and Delilah Aria" ... maybe even his rendition of Chubby Checker's "The Twist". I'll try to track those down; sorry, won't try to play my own FLACs online.)

More on Esperanza

Today's The Oregonian ran this piece as a front-page story. Portland seems rightly proud of its hometown Best New Artist. In the article, Spalding cites Thara Memory as one of her mentors. (An aside: Ivi was lucky enough to meet Thara Memory and attend one of his workshops a year or two ago in her jazz studies.)

Another Valentine

If you haven't heard of Esperanza Spalding yet, you will soon.


Esperanza Spalding: Short And Sweet

Here's some sample press from Atlantic.com.

eye avenue picked up the now-Grammy's Best New Artist in October 2010; check out her PBS interview and performance.

(In case you're wondering, the Short and Sweet piece was a free download from her site; no animals were harmed, etc.)

A Bit of Beethoven for Valentine's Day

Last night, Kim and I made the one-block walk to our local college campus theatre where two faculty members (Matt Cooper, piano and Lisa Robertson, violin) were putting forth one of their periodic violin and piano recitals. Among other pieces (Janacek, et.al.), they performed Beethoven's Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 30, in C Minor. Wanting to make immediate comparisons of that performance upon returning home, I jumped online and we spent the next couple of hours listening to many different interpretations.

They ranged from an interesting version by the very young Yehudi Menuhin on violin with his sister, Hephzibah, on piano, from many years ago (date?), to this one (also date unknown, obviously several years old), with Itzhak Perlman's violin and Vladimir Ashkenazy's piano:



Another interesting performance was by Jacqueline Wedderburn-Maxwell, who I understand is a teenage South African violinist who started playing at age five, now studies in England, and seems to be a rising star: