Black Cab Sessions

On my fairly frequent business trips to New York in the 70s, I often rode in Checker cabs. I have never ridden in a London taxi, but if they are as spacious as Checkers, I can imagine how Black Cab Sessions might be possible. The whole thing is about the videographers taking performers for a ride in the back of a London cab, whilst taping their performance ... "one song, one take, one cab".

At last count, they were up to over fifty such sessions. Some of the artists are well-known -- Spoon, The National, My Morning Jacket, Martha Wainwright, etc. -- others not so (to me, at least). Ivi was bemused at the sight of Man Man with a complement of saxophone, keyboards and trumpet, all fitted to theback seat of a London cab. An example or two:

Winter Family

This Israeli-French duo has something a bit different going on:





And check out these vids at La Blogotheque or DailyMotion:

Omaha
Abraham
Shooting Stars

Cello and Beyond

Gaspar Claus is a young French cello adventurer. Some good examples of his work can be found at http://www.myspace.com/gasparclaus.

Then yesterday, I discovered his series of collaborations with long-time classical flamenco guitarist, Pedro Soler, when they visited the French-Spanish border in some explorations earlier this year:












This stuff is almost perfect for me.  In college, I became hooked on flamenco.  Two or three years ago, I converted some of my precious Carlos Montoya to digital form from its 1959 - 60's era vinyl state.  And for a brief period in LA,  I had a roommate, Michael, who once aspired to be a concert pianist.  When we found that we both had a great fondness for the music of J.S. Bach, he persuaded me to drive him to a small, fourth-floor recording studio on Hollywood Boulevard where he had been offered a piano for the taking.  Michael went down on the street and convinced a nearby street person to help, and we lugged it into the elevator and onto my old '65 Ford pickup.   Listening to him night after night play his incredible live-right-there music gave rise to all sorts of musical confessions.  Among them was not only that I wished I had kept playing piano in my youth, but that the instrument that I really might have wanted to take up would be the cello, and I dug out my recordings of Pablo Casals.  Michael then told me how Casals had devoted one year of his life to exclusively studying each of the Bach Cello Suites -- an idea that stuck in my mind ever since.  So cello + flamenco guitar ... how cool is that?!

Holiday Weekend (Microphones In The Trees, and Much More)

Kim phoned me at work Friday to remind me that a three-day holiday weekend was coming, which, of course, I had forgotten.  This meant, at a minimum, that I might have an opportunity to troll for some fresh music.  Yesterday, as it turns out, mostly was spent catching up on bookkeeping, bank reconciliations, and other computer administrivia, but I was able to concurrently search the likes of YouTube and DailyMotion for special sounds.  I ended up spending most of my time multi-tasking at La Blogotheque (fast becoming one of my favorite 'Net destinations) and Black Cab Sessions, then I was able to cap it all off with the as-always-supreme pleasure of sharing it all with Ivi (until I noticed that she had fallen asleep well before I finally shut down just before 3am).  There is so much to report on and to share that I will probably have to spread it over several articles, but let's start with a band totally new to me: Silver Mt. Zion -- or is it Three Silver Mt. Zion, or even Tra-La-La Band? -- doing "Microphones In the Trees" ...

Back On Stages 3-A Silver Mt Zion-Microphones in the trees
by lablogotheque

(btw, if like me, you don't have all the bandwidth in the world, you might need to hit the HD button on the player to avoid trying to render in the highest quality.)

The Second of Six Degrees of Separation

A couple of days ago, I brought up the matter of Nico Muhly; see the August 19 posting. Last night, Chika fired off a message, which I will quote in part here:

>It's funny that you mention Nico Muhly on your >blog- I went to camp with him! That summer I >spent at the Tanglewood Institute in the >Berkshires doing an art program - it was mostly >a music camp, so there were some budding >composers there too. Anyway, the 6 of us in the >visual art program buddied up with the 6 >composers and did a partnered project, and my >boyfriend at the time was Nico's partner. > >Nico was certainly memorable then, but I didn't >realize until recently that he's kind of a big >deal now! Working with Bjork and the like!

Then, today she added more detail:

"... you can add that my friend got some original hand written sheet music out of the deal, but he gave it to another friend of ours who still has it, and is kind of thrilled that Nico Muhly is doing so well. I was buddied with Ken Masur, who's father, Kurt Masur was a well known conductor. When he visited, he gave out a lot of autographs. It was funny to be a music ignorant visual arts person in an classical orchestra camp."

Thanks, Chika, for helping round out that blurb on N.M.

(Well, as luck would have it, Kurt Masur is one of my favorite conductors, whose work I have been hearing since the 70s, when I first discovered him on a classical radio station in Los Angeles, and have since added some recordings to my music collection..)

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btw ... Six Degrees of Separation, in case you're wondering, refers to the proposition that if you are one degree from anybody you know, two degrees from people known by those you know, and so on -- then each of us averages being only six degrees of separation from anyone else on the planet.

You Know How One Thing Just Leads To Another ...

Did it start with my interest in the music of Leonard Cohen in the 60s and 70s?  Fast-forward to the wonderful Cohen bio-film, "I'm Your Man", of 2005, I think.  One of the superb performers of Cohen music in that film was Antony, of Antony and the Johnsons.  So while trolling the Web for more Antony music, I blunder upon a mesmerizing snippet of sound, sung by Antony and written by one Nico Muhly.

As it turns out, I can't get enough of Muhly's music at the moment. Perhaps the best place to hear Nico Muhly is on his MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/muhly. Here are some YouTube examples of some of his collaborations:

Then there is Muhly's blog, where I find not only that he listens to some of the same music that I do (e.g., Rachmaninoff vespers, Bach chorales, etc.), but he also works with Philip Glass and was influenced by Steve Reich and John Adams, all among my very favorite composers.  We also find that that he is a budding chef, and readily dispenses far-ranging, brash opinions on just about anything.

A New Yorker piece has quite a good backgrounder on this young whippersnapper.

... And then I discover that Muhly's blog shows he was in Portland last Friday!

UPDATE: 8/19/08 - 2:40pm:  Just found two recent pieces from The Oregonian, one before the Portland concert, one following.  As usual, it looks like everybody else has known about this guy all along ...

UPDATE: 8/21/08 - 2:25PM: See Chika's unexpected but most welcome input

Toby at Grammy Camp Showcase

Dennis passes along these pics of Toby in action in Los Angeles.