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How incredibly gracious! The Signal has kindly relinquished its first two hours to Canada Live at the Junos tonight. But when host Pat Carrabre finally does take over the airwaves, he'll have a great change of pace for you - a one-hour good old mix of experimental electronic music.
Stopped in at Mitzi's Sister, my favourite local, last night on my way home and who should be sitting at the bar doing homework other than Treasa Levasseur!
I passed on to her some of the great comments that came into the blog following the Canada Live broadcast of the Sarah Harmer/Serena Ryder/Treasa triple bill (which you can hear parts of from the Concerts On Demand panel). She told me her whole family across the country tuned in to hear it and that from her perspective it was a perfect show. She said:
"You know when you're just sitting there listening to something you've done and you're waiting for that inevitable embarrassing moment, the inopportune flub to come along? Well, it didn't! I loved it!"
That, and we heard from Joel Plaskett's folks in Nova Scotia that the Canada Live broadcast and the Concerts On Demand feature brought out not only Joel's considerable fan-base but a whole new crop of fans to hear his show with Symphony Nova Scotia. They were thrilled with the results and so are we!
Join hosts Jian Ghomeshi and Holger Peterson tonight for four - count 'em, FOUR! - hours of great music from the Juno Awards in Saskatoon. You'll hear lots of June nominees caught live in concert - Ron Sexsmith, Molly Johnson, Hilario Duran, Joel Fafard and members of the African Guitar Summit, to name just a few.
Jian hosts the first two hours, and Holger does the next two.
I just realized how many headlines include the word "Juno" and I was trying to avoid using it too much.
Anyway, as a very nice appetizer to the tonight's pre-Juno programming on Canada Live, word comes from a stellar showing by Canadian artists at the International Songwriting Competition. Not surprising, really, with five categories won by homegrown artists.
Judges included record execs from Universal, Epic, EMI, Sony and others and artists such as Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rosanne Cash, Robert Smith, Cassandra Wilson and Sean Paul.
Canadian winners included David Myles, Ben Sures, Erik Alcock and Mary Ellen Beatty.
(Read the whole story at CBC | Music News.)
It was the last vestige of advertising on CBC Radio but I clearly remember being at home or in the car or on the weekends when I was a little kid and my parents would have CBC Radio on, featuring "Texaco Star Theatre's Saturday at the Met" from New York.
The Texaco station near our house was the grungiest looking of the neighbourhood gas stations and I could never reconcile the virtuosic vocals of the opera with the greasy rags and wiper fluid of the gas bar. It was if the smell of gasoline somehow permeated the speakers.
Oil company and automotive sponsorships still drive a lot of opera production in North America (and elsewhere) but somehow the olfactory part of the equation has been cleaned up - at least in my mind.
No doubt, Howard Dyck has been an important part of that process. His commentary always seems to evoke such a wide range of synaesthetic experiences - none of them petroleum-based. Having said that, there is something "fishy" about this week's edition of Saturday Afternoon at the Opera.
It's the network premiere of a new production of the "Egyptian Helen" by Richard Strauss from the Metropolitan Opera. The characters include a talking seashell called The Omniscient Mussel. The cast includes Deborah Voigt, Diana Damrau, Jill Grove, Torsten Kerl, Garrett Sorenson and Wolfgang Brendel. Fabio Luisi conducts.
I've never been to a cocktail party with Robert Harris.
You know when you've got a party to go to and you don't really want to go but you go because you sort of have to and you end up chatting with someone totally fascinating you didn't know and you head home thinking how glad you are that you decided to go? Robert Harris would be that guy.
I love listening to the way he listens to music, which he does weekly on I Hear Music. This week, he walks through a sonic history of the Motown sound with the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder and Martha & the Vandellas.
One word of advice, Robert - that picture of you on your website looks like you're the teacher cut from the class photo in 1972.
The past week has been exhausting with not much in the way of sleep to keep the motor running. I also got home late last night, so I was really looking forward to sleeping in this morning.
You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning and then fall back asleep? That little window of 45 minutes or whatever always produces the most amazing dreams. And if you're really lucky, when the clock radio does go off, the music just sort of weaves into your dreams.
That's exactly what happened for me this morning with The Weekender - some jazzified Bach and Molly Johnson were my musical breakfast. Thanks for the gentle awakening, Peter Togni!
If you're in the Central, Mountain or Pacific timezones you can have the same experience! (Although you'd have to be reading this blog in your sleep in order to know that - so I'll just hope for the best for you).
Oliver Schroer is a national treasure - a genre-busting violinist/fiddler who makes his own beautiful records when he's not making everyone else's sound just that much better. He wasn't nominated for a Juno Award this year but for making his "Camino de Santiago" album, he certainly deserves a medal.
The trek along the pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela in the Galicia, Spain, is a rite of passage for many Catholics and a regular old challenge for many others (I went on the bus from Porto, Portugal - I guess that doesn't count). The faithful take mementos of loved ones - Schroer took a small recording studio and stopped to make music all along the way - using the journey and the destinations as inspiration. You'll hear part of that journey tonight on The Signal with Laurie Brown.
You'll also hear the homegrown talent of Blunderspublik from his performance at the New Music Festival in Winnipeg tonight on The Signal. Blunderspublik combines synthetic and organic sounds using his computer, his guitar and his voice.
As part of our Juno-related programming on Radio Two, Canada Live tonight features two more nominees in the line-up:
From Calgary, Chantal Kreviazuk playing a sold-out show in Calgary at the Jubilee Auditorium on Valentine's Day - with her own sweetheart, Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace, joining her on stage. Chantal's song "All I Can Do" has been nominated for the Juno for Single of the Year, and her album "Ghost Stories" is nominated for Pop Album of the Year.
Later, the McDades, a family band from Edmonton. According to one reviewer, they "find their groove somewhere between a down-home kitchen party, a jazzy after-hours club, and a folk festival." They're up for a Juno in the Roots & Traditional Group category. They'll be joined by a large group of backup singers - Pro Coro Canada, a 24-voice professional chamber choir.
For more on the Junos, click the Juno Fever icon at the top of the page.
From the Radio 3 Blog
Visit Radio 3 to hear Grant Lawrence's interview with Dave Bidini.In the late 1970s, Martin Tielli, Tim Vesely and Dave Bidini were three Etobicoke, Ontario teenagers who would pile into their parents station wagon and drive in to downtown Toronto to witness with awe the explosion of musical art in the form of new wave and punk rock.
In 1980, they played their first show at one of those Toronto clubs as the Rheostatics. Over the course of the past twenty seven years, the band has become a Canadian independent legend, both on the live stage and on their many albums.
Tonight, the legacy comes to an end with one final performance at Massey Hall in Toronto. Dave Bidini took time out of what has been a busy and emotional time to speak to CBC Radio 3 about the recent Rheostatics surprise tribute album 'the Secret Sessions' - featuring Rheos covers by Barenaked Ladies, the Weakerthans and many others -and his feelings towards the end of this major chapter in his life.
I think it was Bart Testa, my film prof, who instilled in me a love of the movies of Howard Hawks. If I was a film director, that's the kind of film director I'd like to be: making smart, funny films with incredible actors, pushing the boundaries of society AND Hollywood conventions, hanging out with Hemingway and Faulkner and basically being a cool guy. But if I couldn't be Howard Hawks, I'd want to be the guy who played "Cricket" in Hawks' 1944 film "To Have and Have Not", starring Bogey and Bacall and Walter Brennan. The 'actor' was composer and musician Hoagy Carmichael. It's one of those names that sticks in the culture whether you have any idea who he is or not. But he's the guy who wrote "Stardust" and "Georgia On My Mind". I mean really - come on! And he looked so cool - like the guy who was just meant to be where the party was.
And his music lives on. Norah Jones' "The Nearness of You" is one of his. Katie Malloch plays the original tonight on Tonic. She'll also lay on you Johnnie Taylor's sardonic comment on domestic disputes, "It's Cheaper to Keep Her." And if that doesn't work, try some pelvic gyrations with Hilario Duran and Jane Bunnett's rhythmic "Drume Negrita."
You know, I think these kinds of monikers are basically corny and mostly wishful thinking. I can't really get too wound up about Oscars or Grammys or Junos because they are, after all, just elaborately staged popularity contests. But I have to admit that the Junos have been effectively carving out a soft spot in my hardened heart over the last few years. And frankly, it's not because of the ceremony itself or even particularly the people that it honours...
Continue reading "Juno Fever?" »
An Enigma set today on Studio Sparks: two riddle songs by Fred Hersch and Carly Simon, and a concert performance of Elgar's Enigma Variations by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
Pierre Juneau was the CRTC commissioner who instituted Canada's famous Canadian Content regulations for broadcasters in 1971. The Juno Awards, which roll this Sunday night in Saskatoon, are named in his honour.
CANCON had a remarkable impact on the Canadian music industry. Sure, it spawned a lot of lousy artists who got airplay just to fill the void but it also encouraged some very good ones. It also fostered the business end of the equation: labels, lawyers, studios, technicians, designers, etc.
Before CANCON, most Canadian singers were shipped to New York and Nashville to do Canuck covers of songs they didn't write.
The annual awards now honour achievements in almost 40 categories including different genres, producers, cover artists and so on.
Continue reading "Reading Juneau's Tea Leaves" »
Arcade Fire's front man Win Butler blew a gasket at a show in Stockholm a couple of nights ago. Apparently, doctors had told him to suspend performing but he adopted that old "show-must-go-on" thing and did some serious damage to his sinuses. He is now facing surgery and the nine remaining dates on the band's European Tour have been postponed.
If you haven't already, check out their latest, "Neon Bible". So many people, I think, were waiting to see how they could ever possibly follow up the extraordinary year they had last year with the brilliant "Funeral" and the ensuing circus. They've really done it. This thing glitters and crackles like....well.... like a Las Vegas Neon Bible, I guess.
I'm not a scientist or a geek or any kind of technician. Once systems are set up I'm pretty comfortable working with them but I'm prone to panic if anything goes awry.
Funny then, that I'm so enamoured of various geeks and scientists. Einstein, Richard Feynman, Richard Dawkins, Reginald Fessenden, Nikolai Tesla....
When we were in Belgrade with Global-Village in 2001, I visited the statue in his honour in front of the University. He was a Macedonian, I believe, though he is claimed by Serbs as well. Born in 1856, he imagined a world that his inventions in the late 19th century ushered in and that is only now coming to resemble his ultimate dreams. Between Marconi, the Russian Alexander Popov, Canada's Fessenden and Tesla, it was actually Tesla who was credited by the Supreme Court in the U.S. with having invented radio.
Continue reading "Tesla et al" »
I think I've got most of it figured out. I might even publish my predictions tomorrow after my appearance on Music & Company but I'll keep a lid on it for now.
Tonight on Canada Live, Matt Galloway will be featuring several of this year's nominees.
First, it's the Metropolitan Orchestra of Greater Montreal, playing Pierre Mercure's Kaleidoscope and Debussy's La Mer. They're nominated in the Classical Album of the Year category. Later, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and her band pay tribute to Miles Davis (Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year nominee). And last but not least, Monica Freire sings her own brand of Brazilian songs, recorded at the International Women's Day event in Montreal (nominee for World Music Album of the Year)
Cuban musician Faustino Oramas, one of the last remaining stars behind the acclaimed Buena Vista Social Club album, died Tuesday, according to reports from Cuban state radio.
(Via CBC | Music News.)
Oh bless Shelley Solmes for handing me the opportunity to talk about this.
She just played Ravel's "Bolero" followed by "Knee Play 5" from "Einstein on the Beach" by Philip Glass.
(BTW - Eric played an awesome version yesterday on Studio Sparks vocalized by Angelique Kidjo).
I find it very interesting to hear people's varying degrees of tolerance for repetition.
Growing up, Ravel's "Bolero" was one of our favourites around the house. We listened as a family, imagining the massing of a military parade - eventually setting off and cresting a hill before arriving triumphantly in the town square. Hearing Steve Reich and Philip Glass was, for me, an extension of the pleasures I had felt listening to Ravel but with a less conventional narrative arc. Likewise, I was drawn to electronica - never more so than when it abandoned the pretensions of Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre in favour of pure repetition.
Continue reading "And Counting" »
Last night I went to the opening of a fascinating interactive theatre experience at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto called "Static". The predominant theme of the show was: Fear. In fact, when receiving our MP3 player packages at the beginning of the show, there was a tear-away ballot on the instruction card on which we were to identify one of our greatest fears. These ballots were put in a jar and later we were instructed to pull one from the jar at random. And at the end of the show, while all the audience stood on stage, these fear-words were projected out onto the empty seats of the theatre.
There were a lot of familiar fears in the room: cancer, accidental death, debt, spiders, heights, etc.
o one submitted the word Bass (the musical register, not the fish).
Continue reading "Fear of Bass - I Blame Prokofiev" »
Sample the Toronto Symphony Orchestra New Creations Series tonight on The Signal, including 'Scherzi' from Simon Bainbridge, and Julian Anderson's 'Book of Hours'. And speaking of books, tune in to hear host Laurie Brown's deconstruction of "The Lemon of Pink" from the band the Books
Sarah Harmer has the strength of conviction in her craft. Serena Ryder as a kind of raw power that can be awesome and Treasa Levasseur leans on a rock of tradition. You can here all three tonight on Canada Live with Matt Galloway.
Harmer is nominated for the Juno for Songwriter of the Year and her album "I'm a Mountain" is also nominated for Best Album. Ryder's performance at Hugh's Room in Toronto was recorded just before her trip to the South By Southwest conference in Austin and Levasseur, whose debut CD "Not a Straight Line" has been getting hot reviews all over North America, is capable of gentle bluegrass and belting R&B.;
The Queen and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, will be travelling to Virginia, USA at the beginning of May. While they're in the area, they'll be taking in the Kentucky Derby. The Queen is a well known fan of horse racing.
On the same trip, she'll be the subject of a photo session with superstar American photographer Annie Leibovitz. Apparently, Leibovitz is currently in discussions with Buckingham Palace as to what the Queen will be wearing for the shoot.
I was thinking of some of my favourite Leibovitz photos: Sting covered in clay, Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in blue face paint and Meryl Streep in a cosmetic mask. I hope she's not expecting something similar from the Queen.
Read the whole story at CBC Arts.
Or perhaps that should be: "The Signal's from Outer Space".
You know that joke - after the Voyageur probe was sent off into space with information about life on earth, details about our science and culture, including recordings of Beethoven and Chuck Berry - astronomers finally pick up a faint signal from the far reaches of space and manage to decode the message from an alien species. It says: "Send more Chuck Berry!"
My late friend Judith Merrill was actually represented on that space probe as well. She was a wonderful woman and the doyen of the world of Science Fiction literature. If you're ever in Toronto you can visit her Spaced Out collection at the Lillian Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library.
Tonight on The Signal with Laurie Brown, music that has made its way to outer space. It's a concert recording of the world premiere of David Mott's 'Eclipse' featuring pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico and the York World Music Ensemble. It's a piece of music that astronaut Steve MacLean took with him on the Space Shuttle, to share with the rest of the universe.
There's also otherworldly music from Omar Sosa, Autorickshaw, and Bell Orchestre.
I'm very much looking forward to tonight's double-header from Vancouver on Canada Live. First, it's Spirit of the West - veterans of the Canadian music scene - in concert. Later, the CBC Radio Orchestra welcomes Safa, an eclectic world music ensemble featuring Persian lute (tar) virtuoso Amir Koushkani, percussion polymath Salvador Ferreras and clarinetist Francois Houle.
That's all you need to say. You know who I'm talking about.
At the end of next month, Willie Nelson will turn 74. His voice is better than ever. He is as much a contradiction (outlaw, hippie, balladeer) as he ever was.
Just about every survey of the greatest songs of all time includes Nelson's "Crazy", which he wrote in 1961 for Billy Walker. Walker passed on it but it was picked up by Patsy Cline, with whom the song will forever be associated. It remains the most played song on jukeboxes, apparently (I wonder where they got that statistic?).
It's been covered by all kinds of folks over the last 40+ years. Tonight it gets the treatment from guitarist Greg Lowe and bassist Steve Kirby on Tonic with Katie Malloch. Also on the show, Vancouver's Mike Herriott leads his quartet in "A Piece of the Action" and Queen Latifah gets super-charming with her rendition of "I Put a Spell on You".
I'm just curious about people's real relationship to vinyl records.
My turntable died on me several months ago and I haven't yet replaced it. On the other hand, I still have about 500 vinyl albums that I'm still hanging on to. I have removed my cassette player from my audio rack - though I still have a couple of portable players and about 300 cassettes neatly indexed on the wall. My once vast CD collection is shrinking as I move music onto the computer (on a couple of hefty RAID drives). CD's seem to have been just a temporary technology at this point.
I have no nostalgia for pops and scratches, as some people have suggested to me and I listen to music so much when I am doing other things - working, cooking, reading, out and about, etc. - that I don't have the time to be a purist audiophile. I have friends who only broke down and bought CD players within the last couple of years, having held out with $10,000 tube amplifiers and $8,000 Oracle turntables as long as they could. Oh right, that's the other thing. I don't have 20K to spend on sound equipment.
For me it's like the difference between Mediterranean and Cordon Bleu cooking. The high French style requires vast amounts of time and finesse for preparation. The pay-off is finely balanced cuisine with hints of this, whiffs of that and all sorts of grace notes and undertones in the flavours. Mediterranean cuisine throws together powerful ingredients like tomato, garlic, basil, strong cheeses and peppers and let's them duke it out.
What about you? What's your relationship to your vinyl?
Is it nostalgic furniture or is it a living collection?
A few years ago, my mother - for no apparent reason - presented me with a cheque for $120.
"What's this?" I asked.
"When you were 14, I bet you $100 that Elton John would last more than a couple of years. I was wrong, so here's the bet - with interest".
And now, he's celebrated his 60th birthday with a record 60th performance at Madison Square Garden in New York attended by Bill Clinton, Whoopi Goldberg, Sting, etc., etc., etc.
I'm not a huge fan of his music any more, though I still have favourites from the catalogue and thought his "Songs from the West Coast" was pretty good. I just would have loved to have been there when he got on stage with Ryan Adams and Ron Sexsmith at the super-grungy Lee's Palace in Toronto a couple of years ago.
The talk on the CBC News in Calgary when I was there last week was about serious potential for flooding this year due to intense run-off after a heavy winter. While scientists and city officials consider how to respond to that possibility, an audience at the University Theatre tonight may have a chance to be reminded of the gentler fecundity of the waters of march, "Aguas de Marco", by Antonio Carlos Jobim, is among the songs in the repertoire of Guido Basso, who'll be performing there tonight - AND being recorded by CBC Radio for Canada Live.
And if you catch Eric Friesen on Studio Sparks from any of the available streams, he's playing Holly Cole's wonderful version.
I think it's pretty much a perfect song - no wonder they named Rio airport after Jobim.
Other versions of the song? Try Art Garfunkel, Damien Rice, Cassandra Wilson, Phil Minton, Al Jarreau, Sergio Mendes, Jane Monheit..........
Well, it's not really jet lag but I did have an exhausting trip to Alberta - a full schedule in Calgary, a trip up to Canmore to see Shari Ulrich with In The Pink on Sunday night and then a drive to Edmonton after the concert to make a meeting first thing Monday morning, then rescheduling 4 hours later after my original flight was cancelled due to storms over Toronto. And I can't sleep on planes.
So I woke up a little late this morning. Fortunately, I can FEEL as if I woke up earlier by catching up with Catherine Belyea's visit to the Unionville High School for the Arts via the Central time zone stream. And whaddya know - there's music by Harry Somers, whom I'd just been mentioning a day or two ago!
The other reason I'm getting to this a little late today is because I was going through the comments, posting some, replying to some, deleting some.
If you're not seeing your comments appearing, one possibility might be that it's off topic. I know this has been a point of contention for some readers but if I do a post about Feist remixed stuff coming up on The Signal and get comments about the absence of news or something you loved or hated on Tonic, I'm going to have to snip the thread, otherwise we'll all be in knots in no time.
If you're wondering about music you heard on the shows, use the PLAYLISTS feature over on the left side of the page. If you have comments about the programming in general, please use the Tell Us What You Think link, or Contact Us link - those will get your questions and comments where they need to go.
Have you heard the new EP from Feist? Picked it up at the iTunes store last week and loving it. It's called "My Moon Man". She'll be touring across Canada starting May 15th in Victoria. Tonight on The Signal, Laurie Brown features a couple of very familiar Fiest hits, redone in surprising ways.
Plus, you'll hear a Silent Shout from The Knife, and we'll learn about the fascinating history of rust with Do Make Say Think.
The accent is on vocal music, as Canada Live brings you an evening of concert performances from Montreal - from swing to Francophone singer songwriters, intimate and unplugged. First up, the Susie Arioli Swing Band, featuring Jordan Officer and special guest Michael Jerome Browne. Later, A Propos' Songwriters' Sessions, with Louis-Jean Cormier (lead singer of the band Karkwa), Antoine Gratton, Vincent Vallières and Sylvie Paquette.
Burt Bacharach is enjoying a re-invention of the sort that was afforded Johnny Cash by producer Rick Rubin. The final years of Cash's career were not the result of simple nostalgia but a complete re-contextualizing of his body of work and the re-positioning of his mature voice as one of wisdom, rather than of mere longevity.
Likewise with Bacharach. He was the virtual poster-boy for a kind of saccharine pop. But one listen to someone like Ron Sexsmith and you realize how profound his influence was in terms of song structure. His genius (and that of Sexsmith, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann) is in constructing something that has the appearance on the outside of a simple, sweet confection that is in fact constructed of a thousand intricate parts - a Swiss Mickey Mouse watch, if you will.
Continue reading "Burt Bacharach: Protest Singer" »
Guest host Catherine Belyea has all kinds of musical goodies for you today on Here's to You - Healey Willan's Second Symphony, played by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Dame Myra Hess playing Symphonic Etudes by Schumann, plus Hindemith's Sonata for Alto Horn in E Flat, played by Mason James with Glenn Gould. Plus a whole lot more.
And then, Bill Richardson wraps up his stint guest hosting for Eric Friesen on Studio Sparks. He'll salute some of the Juno nominees, with encore presentations of Eric's interviews with pianist Alain Lefevre, and soprano Adrianne Pieczonka. And he'll sample Juno-nominated CDs from Les Violons du Roi and guitarist Lubo Alexandrov.
And not just for you!
Recording kits are being packed and mobile studio vans gassed up for another week of recording across the county for Canada Live, On Stage and the Concerts On Demand feature.
Tonight at University Theatre, CBC Calgary will be recording Guido Basso and Verismo.
Tomorrow night, Ancient Cultures / New Sounds takes the stage at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto.
And Friday will be a doozy, with recordings scheduled of the Kitchen Waterloo Symphony, The York Choir and the Rheostatics at Massey Hall.
If you see that familar logo on the trucks and vans as you drive by, give them a friendly honk (oh, wait a minute, they're recording - maybe you'd better just wave).
Every Sunday we used to go to my grandparents' house in Whitby. And pretty much every Sunday, grandma would make meatloaf ices with mashed potatoes and served with overboiled green beans, salad and creamy coleslaw.
While the adults convened in the dining room, my sister and I were set up with TV tables in the back room to watch "The Wonderful World of Disney" while we ate. Once we were sure the adults were settled, my sister and I would look at each other and say: "Let's eat like dogs!". The knives and forks were used to mush everything together on the plate and then abandoned.
A more civilized Sunday ritual is what I'm recommending to you:
An aperatif of Tonic with Tim Tamashiro and a full course of Canada Live with host Patti Schmidt.
Tonight on Canada Live: three concerts, each featuring an outstanding pianist who brings additional musical gifts to the stage. David Virelles is a young Cuban jazz pianist, brought to Canada by bandleader Jane Bunnett. Hear him stepping out as a composer and bandleader. Also, Stewart Goodyear, a young classical pianist who demonstrates his remarkable talent for improvisation. And Don Thompson, playing piano, vibes and string bass. It seems there's no one he hasn't played with, and nothing he can't play. Toronto's jazz community is only too aware of what a gem Don Thomson is, so the community came together to play with him, and pay tribute to him.
I can't stress enough, dear readers, the importance of a well-placed comma.
For the most part, if I'm typing something like "Symphony Hall with Katherine Duncan", you know that means a radio show hosted by a particular person. But if I type "Fuse with Alan Neal" it sounds like something out of Cronenberg's "The Fly".
This afternoon on Fuse, with Alan Neal, veteran St. John's songsmith Ron Hynes comes together with Halifax rockers The Trews, to mess with the DNA of Maritime music.
Should be fun.
Though the stance is softening in the U.S. somewhat with respect to occasional lyrics in Spanish, on the whole, there is little tolerance on commercial pop radio for songs not in English. I've never understood this. I mean, apart from the usual music-is-a-universal-language objection, there's also the fact that in many instances you can't really make out the lyrics unless you're really working at it. And even then it's tricky. There's even a website devoted to it called KissThisGuy.com (as in Jimi Hendrix' line in "Purple Haze": Excuse me, while I kiss this guy).
In 1964, a complaint by an angry parent concerned about the "pornographic lyrics" of the Kingsmen's version of a Richard Berry song, "Louie Louie", lead to an FBI investigation and a state-wide ban of the song in Indiana. There was nothing pornographic whatsoever about the lyrics - it was just that the complainant assumed they must be because they were pretty much unintelligible.
Continue reading "Iko Iko and Desert Rock" »
I'm not real good with pain. I can't even walk barefoot on a beach that might have a couple of stone on it.
So imagine my horror when Andre Alexis walked into my office a week or two ago with a peculiar whistling lisp in his speech. The cause was made clear when he opened his mouth to smile - revealing a gap right where one of his front teeth used to be.
"It was rotten and in pain and I couldn't wait to get to a dentist and my sister advised me to just go ahead and yank it out because that's all the dentist would do and charge me for the privilege - so I did".
I would have been on so much giggle-gas I wouldn't have felt a thing but he did it the good old-fashioned way and he deals with it on the show tonight. Consider it topical pain relief and a whole lot more.
I had a wonderful time in Calgary this week, capped with a couple of brilliant sessions yesterday. In the afternoon I took in the Alberta Sessions songwriter's circle at the Epcor Centre with Steve Pineo (you've got to hear his song "Canadian Man"), Jeff Landeen, Lionel Rault, the sweet-voiced Amy Seeley and the unlike-anyone-else Shane Ghostkeeper. Then, I followed Shane to the Ironwood Stage and Grill for another great show featuring Calgary musicians. It was a packed house for Shane, Anne Loree, Jay Crocker, Lorrie Matheson and multi-string-player Craig Korth. Later today I'm going to take a drive out to Canmore to see Shari Ulrich with the In The Pink women's choir. For some crazy reason, I agreed to hook up with Bill Bourne for breakfast in Edmonton tomorrow morning, which means a long drive tonight but I'm looking forward to seeing Bill, the serene prince of Canadian songwriting, who's just released a new album called "Boon Tang". Here's a snippet of a review from Penguin Eggs magazine:
The one thing Bill Bourne could never be accused of is following the cliché approach to a career. From the early days of his partnership with Jim Morison in the duo Sweetgrass, through his expeditions with the Tannahill Weavers, Alan MacLeod, Shannon Johnson, Tri-Continental, Eivør Pálsdóttir to name a few, each collaboration has been an intriguing experiment. In between his various musical adventures, he pulls in to a rest stop and releases a solo work. Boon Tang is the newest such rest stop along the way. This collection of 11 songs includes what you've come to expect from Mr. Bill and a few surprises. Continuing to use Eivør's wonderful voice as a backdrop to 4 of the songs, along with a new protégé called Laurelle on two others, Boon Tang is definitely Mr. Bill at his core, as he chants and weaves his own path through the English language. What this collection does contain, in addition to the expected, are two fabulous cover versions. One of 'No Woman No Cry' and then a superb rendition of Gordon Lightfoot's 'For Lovin' Me'. Boon Tang is Bill Bourne at his quirky and reassuring best.What's that? Haven't heard of Penguin Eggs Magazine? It's a wonderful folk and world music quarterly published out of Edmonton. Check it out.
You may have heard it on Canada Live. You may have streamed it from the Concerts On Demand panel.
Tonight on On Stage, Shelley Solmes gives you another radio-band opportunity to hear Michael Occhipinti's "Canzoni del Sud" featuring the Sicilian Jazz Project and the remarkable Alessandra Belloni.
I mentioned my cocktail party moment with Harry Freedman and co. earlier this week.
Today, he pops up on Symphony Hall with Katherine Duncan.
Pianist David Jalbert joins the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra in a program that includes the "Wasps Overture" by Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky's "Pulcinella Suite", Ravel's "Concerto for Piano", Prokofiev's "Classical Symphony, Op. 25" and Freedman's "Manipulating Mario".
And you may have heard here or elsewhere earlier this week that the Swiss Tenor Ernst Haeflinger died earlier this week.
On The Singer and the Song, Catherine Belyea will remember him as part of her "Sweetest of Tenors" survey - featuring singers who have always been known for their light, lyrical voices. She'll sample the new seven-CD set featuring Fritz Wunderlich, the Great Dane - Aksel Schiotz, and, of course, Haeflinger. Plus two great Canadian Mozartians, Leopold Simoneau and Michael Schade.
Do you know that song?
It's a Gerry Goffin /Carole King confection written for the Monkees, which, as usual with writers like that, has enough to sink your teeth into as a pop song 30 years after it was written.
I was going to add - tritely - that I hoped it was "pleasant" where you happened to be but it's one of those words that always sounds like you're damning with faint praise.
I listen to a lot of music. Way too much music, really. And sometimes I wonder if I'll ever just want to switch it off for good. But every day, I hear something in music that makes me aware of how transcendant it can be. It might be a few bars out of an hour's worth of listening or it could be a full-on reverie but in all these years music has never failed me yet.
You might consider starting your Sunday with Choral Concert:
This week, it's Part Three of "Bach Talk". The featured work is Bach's cantata "Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam", BWV 7, from the International Bach Festival, Toronto, performed by the Bach Festival Singers and Orchestra, with Helmuth Rilling, lecturer and conductor. Also, Barber's "Prayers of Kierkegaard", performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Robert Shaw.
He was awesome in "Jaws" so this should be great.
Tim Tamashiro's Tonic Weekend.
Yesterday afternoon, I emerged from an appearance on the Homestretch show from Radio One in Calgary to find a friendly guy in the guest lounge. We talked for a little while before properly introducing ourselves. It was Tonic's 2-day weekend host, Tim Tamashiro. He was in to do a little sample spinning for the drive home crowd and to prep them for his new gig.
I listened myself as I sat there in snarled traffic trying to get to another meeting. I'm sorry I never heard him perform as a singer - he's got a warm, engaging style and his choices were smart and fun. I'm looking forward to his debut tonight at 6:00, 6:30 in Newfoundland or timeshifted to your content on the Listen Live panel up and to the right.
As evidence that I'm already getting used this new system, I promptly went to the PLAYLISTS menu to the left to confirm some of the things he played but of course, Homestretch being a Calgary local Radio One show, the list was not here. However, I CAN tell you that tonight on Tim's Tonic debut, Ray Charles sings and Count Basie swings, Montreal's Ranee Lee puts her own twist on a Blood, Sweat and Tears classic and they pay tribute to Oscar Peterson.
It's certainly been a subtext of some of the comments and discussions coming in through this little portal as listeners get first impressions and make first assessments of changes on Radio Two. Many people are commenting on a sense of revitalization and probably an equal number argue that it wasn't broke and shouldn't have been fixed.
What is it OK to mess around with and what should be left alone? What is the obligation of the force making the change to reflect what has come before? Should any change be handled slowly to allow people to adjust to the transition or should the band-aid be ripped of quickly?
I haven't been to a public event where the national anthem has been sung where people don't get all mumbly in the middle where the changes were made.
At least composer Stephen Chatman didn't have to worry about meddling with the lyrics on his latest re-arrangement.
It's one of the country's most recognizable tunes, but Vancouver composer Stephen Chatman was shocked to discover a lack of a "decent" piano arrangement of O Canada. Chatman, head of music composition at the University of British Columbia, will premiere his new arrangement of Canada's national anthem in Toronto Monday as part of the Collaborative Conference, an annual meeting of the Music Teachers National Association that is being held outside of the U.S. for the first time.
Read the full story at CBC Arts online.
You know how people are on a plane when the movie comes on: half the people don't look up, the other half watch with the half-smiles of zombies. The choice of movies is usually designed to encourage this kind of somnambulism (though on my flight to Calgary, I did get to watch "Casino Royale" with the "perfectly sculpted ass" quote that made it into all the commercials excised).
But once on a long flight, after the feature, they played Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd's rendition of "The Barber of Seville" by Rossini. Every man, woman and child on that plane was riveted to the screen and laughing out loud. I've never seen anything like it before or since (though a commuter flight rubber-chicken safety demo did get a laugh on a short hop from Toronto to Ottawa).
Today on Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, Howard Dyck features a new production of "The Barber of Seville" from the Metropolitan Opera. Maurizio Benini conducts a cast that includes Joyce DiDonato. Juan Diego Flórez, Peter Mattei, John Del Carlo and Canada's John Relyea.
There's a very special event taking place this week at the Vinyl Café - the National Debut of the new surprise tribute CD to the Rheostatics. Join host Stuart McLean for the great unveiling - and of course, great music! Stuart also confesses that he thinks about the Queen while he's in the shower - nothing disrespectful, you understand - but he wonders whether Her Majesty sings in the shower at the Palace - and if she does, whether she ever catches herself singing a particular national anthem.
Stuart will be glad to know that all questions will be answered by Helen Mirren in the DVD extras on "The Queen".
Actually, I met a lovely one last night at my friends Pete and Sue's in Calgary. This cat - like most - was an adept leaper but apparently her real skill was in finding the most ideal curling-up circumstances available - baby car-seats, hat bags and - last night - my guitar case.
But that's not what I meant to talk about. I wanted to mention another accomplished cat, Peter Togni.
I'm pretty sure he used to live in my neighbourhood in Toronto. I have this memory of bumping into him when the Alternative Grounds coffee shop was new. For some reason I think there was a piano in there and he was just playing it. And I wondered if that was what it would have been like if you lived in Glenn Gould's neighbourhood and you both hung out at the same coffee shop. Only Peter was really nice and easy going. I have a feeling GG was a little higher maintenance.
You can share a coffee with Peter Togni Saturday and Sunday mornings on The Weekender.
I'm just listening to the late stream of The Signal with weekend host Pat Carrabré. I tuned in around the Dun Tan mark and listened through to the end. The revelation for me was that track "Broken Arrow" - reminding me very much of possibly my favourite ambient chamber electronic album, "Pop Loops for Breakfast" by B. Fleischman. And the Ann Southam and Gavin Bryars pieces played by Christina Petrowska Quilico that ended the show were just stunning.
Pat is doing the 3-day weekend shift at the Signal. Earlier this afternoon, I emerged from an appearance on the Homestretch show from Radio One in Calgary to find a friendly guy in the guest lounge. We talked for a little while before properly introducing ourselves. It was Tonic's 2-day weekend host, Tim Tamashiro. He was in to do a little sample spinning for the drive home crowd and to prep them for his new gig.
Continue reading "New Faces" »
I used to work at a really nice restaurant in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood. It was called Karin if any of you ever went there. The Canadian composer Harry Somers and his wife Barbara Chilcott Somers, the actress, were regulars there and really lovely people. Which I guess is why they invited the chef and I to cater a party at their home on a weekend afternoon.
At one point in the proceedings, I was doing my waiter-y thing - standing there holding a tray of canapes in the centre of a ring of older guys who were all trying to remember - without success - the name of the French woman composer and conductor who had been a teacher to countless famous musicians. It was Harry Freedman, Harry Somers, John Weinzweig and one other guy.
"Oh, you know her name... Famous... Taught Phillip Glass and Leonard Bernstein..."
Continue reading "Pumpkin Mousse with Harry Somers" »
In spite of the fact that my mum is British and my dad is from Northern Ontario, it was my DAD who was the expert tea maker - always rising early to make a proper pot and bring my mum her cup in bed.
I never got a taste for tea, myself. I don't really drink coffee in the morning either - unless it's a latte but that's well after waking when I'm out and about. For me, it's water first and then juice. Creamy regular coffee is great with the classic breakfast on weekends at the local greasy spoon.
For my morning radio dose, I can't really wake up to just music. It has a way of weaving into my dreams and leaving me asleep. I need something that engages the language centre of my brain right away. That does not mean I like to wake up to the "hilarious" morning teams that every commercial station seems to have.
For me, it's either Radio One or Music & Company with Tom Allen on Radio Two.
I really like his stories and his easy manner that never gets in the way of him saying something insightful and interesting about the music he plays. It's my cup of tea.
Just listening to Canada Live on the Atlantic Stream so lots of time for the rest of the country to tune in live when it gets to your timezone or launch the Listen Live options at the right side of this page.
It's a fascinating musical journey with Michael Occhipinti as he explores his southern Italian roots in a mix of traditional tunes and rhythms, jazz and even a little electronica-sounding stuff with some serious pedal and electric violin work going on. It's called "The Sicilian Jazz Project"
The band is awesome, brother Robert Occhipinti on bass, Ernie Tollar on winds, Kevin Turcotte on horn, Barry Romberg on drums (the full list is on the Playlist feature at the left) but the really exciting addition to the mix is Calabrian-born Alessandra Belloni. She's a student of traditional Italian healing arts, a composer, dancer and performer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. She is composer and arranger on several of the selections.
To find out about the relationship between the dance known as the tarantella and the tarantula spider from which it gets its name, click here.
I was recently asked to cast votes for my top ten Canadian albums for an upcoming book. It's a ridiculous task, frankly. There are so many possibilities by so many artists from every part of the country in so many genres. Ten? They; asked dozens of other people as well, of course, so maybe something interesting will emerge from a vast averaging of opinions.
One that I put on the list that I hope lands on enough others to get her into the book is Mary Margaret O'Hara. She is elusive and mercurial and has really only two of her own albums as a legacy, though she appears as a guest on a hugely diverse group of other artists' albums. One eventuallly appeared as the soundtrack to a film called "Apartment Hunting" (I think) but the other is the celebrated "Miss America".
To this day, it stands as one of the most innovative and striking debuts ever released. She's just one of the features tonight on The Signal. Also, a psychic cat comes between Lily Frost and her significant other, and a feature on the music of Charles Mingus, performed by Montreal's Normand Guilbault Mingus Project.
Brian Eno's first foray into ambient music in 1978 gave a bit of a wink to Eric Satie's "Furniture Music" - updated to fit the idea into a quintessentially 20th century space. "Music For Airports" is one of my favourite pieces of music. But I've always wondered why they don't actually play it in airports.
If you're moving between terminals at Chicago's O'Hare airport, there's a light sculpture that runs the length of the pedestrian tunnel and it's accompanied by some Eno-esque ambient music - but it's a bit too gimmicky for my taste and they play it too loud for it to blend into the bustle of the pedestrian traffic and golf carts.
Continue reading "Music for Airports?" »
Now, this is the other half of my response to the comment from Alan, saying this was just some kind of "faux-blog" (fblog?):
I was working on a project for CBC Radio at the North American Folk Alliance Conference the year it was held in Vancouver. We were focussed on delegates and artists representing the interests of Global-Village listeners but we were set up at a table on the mezzanine with the CBC Vancouver folks, who were covering and co-sponsoring the event.
At one point while the Global-Village team was hunched over our computers editing sound and writing stories, a guy came up who looked a lot like Ralph Lauren - silver hair, perma-tanned, taught, smooth skin, a crisp blue denim shirt and fitted, creased blue jeans. Seriously. Creased blue jeans! ....
Continue reading "The Man In the Pressed Blue Jeans" »
I'm really excited about my trip to Calgary. I have to admit, I usually just pass through Calgary on my way to the Banff Centre. This time I get to stay in the city, hang out with friends, meet people and - of course - hear some great music.
Saturday afternoon, I'll be at the Epcor Centre for the Alberta Sessions songwriter's circle with Steve Pineo, Amy Seeley, Jeff Landeen, Shane Ghostkeeper and Lionel Rault. Saturday night it's the Ironwood Stage and Grill for a show with Shane again, Anne Loree, Lorrie Matheson, Craig Korth and Jay Crocker. Sunday I head up to Canmore to see Shari Ulrich with the local women's choir.
Opera fans are bound to be Alberta bound as well this year as Calgary Opera has announced its 2007/08 season - including a September 26th appearance by the Maori soprano Kiri Te Kanawa as part of her farewell tour.
There's a lot more too. Check out the story at cbc.ca
A listener named Alan posted the following comment:
OK, I give up! Who is Jowi Taylor, and why is he/she posting all these blatant program promos on here, whilst pretending to be a blogger?
I'll address the second part of the question in another post but let me deal with the first and please forgive me for being so rude as to have not done this before.
I'm Jowi Taylor. For more than 10 years I was the host of Global-Village which broadcast on Radio 1, Radio 2, Sirius and Radio Canada International. I was also the host and co-producer of an 8-part series called The Wire, which ran a few times on CBC Radio - and on NPR and in Australia and New Zealand - and won us (among several other pieces of international hardware) a Peabody Award.
I've been an occasional visitor to local and regional shows across the country, I've made several appearances on Go and Groove Shinny and I do a bunch of other projects that occasionally introduce me on air in another context.
Sorry for not introducing myself properly earlier.
I just read a comment from someone asking "Where's Here's To You?".
Ummm, well it's right here where it's always been. And in fact, you can hear much more of it if you like by using the Listen Live feature in the top right corner. Follow it across the country like the morning sun that is Shelley Solmes.
Today, Tafelmusik plays Mozart's Symphony No. 41. You'll also hear the traditional story of How the Loon Got Its Necklace, told by Lorne Cardinal and Cheri Maracle, with music by Keith Bissel. And for Organ Thursday, Jurgen Petrenko has music by Saint-Saens.
Did you see that movie?
It's John Sayles' 1987 film about a union drive in a company mining town in West Virginia in 1920.
It stars James Earl Jones and many of Sayles' regular company: David Strathairn and Chris Cooper, Mary McDonnell (Battlestar Galactica) and Kevin Tighe (Emergency! - remember Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto? - It's Roy!). It also features a 10-year-old apprentice preacher played by Will Oldham. Oldham went on to form a band called Palace Brothers and now has a solo career as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. He is one of the most unique voices in American music today. I saw him open for Bjork at Toronto Island a couple of summers ago and he was a total inspiration (as was Bjork and as was Kid Koala, the other opener that day).
Well, you'll hear him in a couple of different configurations tonight on The Signal with Laurie Brown. You'll also hear Bjork reconfigured by Larry Goldings. You'll hear two of my favourite Canadian remixers (Rise Ashen and Dan Snaith), two of my favourite Canadian guitarists (Bruce Cockburn and Kevin Breit), two of my favourite Canadian speak-vocalists (Buck 65 and William Shatner) and two of my favourite songwriters (Patrick Watson and Sufjan Stephens). Plus, two Quasar arrangements of Frank Zappa, Craig Armstrong, the Stars and much more.
Dinah Washington was the Queen of Jazz vocalists. Want to know why? Tune into Tonic tonight, and Katie Malloch will prove it by spinning Washington's version of "Perdida". You'll also hear the gorgeous trombone tone of Juno nominee William Carn on "Time Flies", and "Everlasting", from Remi Shand's album "The Way I Feel."
That just the tip of her jazzberg.
Are you using the Concerts On Demand feature over to the right there?
You know, it's not just for listening to stuff you missed on Canada Live.
You can use it to hear shows that appear elsewhere on the dial and stuff that hasn't even aired yet!
Check out this line up for the East Coast World Music Summit concert from Halifax:
* Chris Church - violin
* Glenn Coolen - Northumbrian & Uillian pipes / whistles / wooden flute
* Mark Currie - dijeridoo / bohdran / percussion
* Tom Easley - acoustic & electric bass
* Saeed Foroughi - santur / harp / flute
* Daniel Heikalo - acoustic guitar / cittern / flutes
* Asif Illyas - acoustic & electric guitar
* Mehdi Koushesh - percussion
* Scott MacMillan - acoustic & electric guitars
* Ian MacMillan - percussion
* Cathy Porter - accordion / percussion / keyboards
* John Spearns - cello
* Dinuk Wijeratne - piano
Now, that show doesn't even air until April 3rd but you can listen today if you like....
...unless you're on a Mac, like me, in which case it's going to take a few more days to work the bugs out.
But, please, don't let me hold you up. Go. Listen!
We've had a few questions about the operation of the site and issues around dial-up and DSL.
The Listen Live panel - there to the right at the top of the column where you can select from any of the live audio streams coming from CBC Master Controls across the country - offers you a choice of LOW or HIGH. LOW or HIGH what? Well, really it comes down to bandwidth and sound quality.
If you're on a dial-up connection (geez, it seems I only hear modems anymore at direct debit terminals in some stores), you'll want to choose the LOW option. There's a thinner pipe at your end of the equation so to get the sound into your computer at a decent rate you'll have to opt for the lower-resolution of audio information.
If you're on a High Speed DSL or Cable connection to the internet, you can go ahead and select the HIGH option. In fact, one the finishing touches are put on the system, you'll be able to opt for even higher sound quality.
ALL of the Concert On Demand streams are for the HIGH option so keep that in mind.
Happy listening.
There's some dispute as to the actual date - different calendars in use in different parts of the world, etc. - but today's the day the world officially recognizes the birth of composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
I suppose I was introduced to his music by Wendy Carlos (as Walter, at the time) on the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange", which, I believe, included the Moog version of "Air on a G String". The first Bach I ever bought for myself was the Tocata & Fugue. I got a bit deeper into his music reading Douglas Hofstaedter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid". Bach's music seemed to me to actually be some sort of map of the brain - although I confess I see Ghanaian master drumming as pretty much the same thing.
Anyway, I suppose if you had the opportunity to get to Leipzig real quick, that would be the place to be. It's J.S.'s home town and there's an event at the Thomaskirche called "Musik der Bach-Familie" that probably gets underway in just a couple of hours.
I suppose the next best thing would be to tune into Here's to You with Catherine Belyea for her Bach Birthday Party Special. You'll hear Bach in original form, and in many transcriptions and arrangements - performed by large modern orchestras, youth choir, piano, guitar - just about everyone wants to play or sing Bach. Performers include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Amabile Youth singers, pianist Stephen Hough, guitarist Angel Romero, Tafelmusik and many more.
If you've missed it on the radio in your own timezone, follow it across the country where it's going out live using the LISTEN LIVE panel at the top right of the page.
Oh, by the way, it's also actor Gary Oldman's birthday. He played Beethoven in a movie, not Bach - but, nevertheless, happy birthday!
I crank up the laptop in the morning and instantly open a bunch of tabs in my browser - including one where I get all my RSS feeds, one where I write this, one where I see how they appear, one where I check my mail and one where I go looking for stuff.
A lot of time is spent going through the comments associated with each post. I have posted comments both positive and negative about some of the new shows when they've been directly related to my original post. There are also a lot of comments coming in that are totally unrelated to the posts but express a genuine concern about the programmes, the schedule, the direction of the network - you know - all the stuff that has been the stuff of the public conversation about the CBC since the very beginning.
This is not the best place to leave those comments. To the left, you'll notice a piano keyboard graphic that says TELL US WHAT YOU THINK. That will get your message to the people it's intended for.
I may agree or disagree with things that are said but I'm not the person who makes the decisions so I'm not the best person to defend or explain the position of CBC management but I will say this:
There is a Universe of music out there that I find fascinating and compelling and that different individuals across the country may feel the same or differently about - or the same or differently from what YOU feel. What you're hearing on Radio Two now retains a very large amount of what you've been hearing for a long time AND opens the door just a little bit wider to a small part of that remaining unheard universe.
In response to my post "Tunng In Your Head", where I argued for genre-free filing of music, listener Scott Belyea posted the following objection:
"Alphabetical by what? I suppose it could work ... as long as you avoided jazz or classical"
Good point, Scott, for it gives me the chance to write the post I've been thinking about ever since I hit SEND on that one....
Continue reading "Taxonomy" »
There's a record store in Austin, Texas with no sections. It's all alphabetical. I think it's a fantastic idea and mirrors my own filing system at home. Why bother with the distinctions? That's not to say there aren't other taxonomic issues to deal with.... but more on that in another post.
I bring this up because there's this great band from the U.K. called Tunng. They've been identified in the genre - either by critics or by themselves - of Future Folk. I'm not sure what that means, really. And I'm not sure that if you opened that section in your local CD shop that it would be very big, last very long or attract that many new customers.
Continue reading "Tunng In Your Head" »
Did you hear the final edition of Radio 3 with Grant Lawrence?
It was raucous good fun including vintage interview segments with William Shatner and John Lydon and live farewells from Jim Bryson, Tegan & Sarah and - all the way from Australia - Joel Plaskett. Grant played a really nice little Plaskett overview including a "live on R3" classic and a preview from the new album (which comes out April 17th, I believe).
It was a nice little advance notice of the debut of Canada Live last night featuring Joel in performance with Symphony Nova Scotia. If you didn't catch it, you still can. Check the Concerts On Demand panel to the right of this space. That just lists the most recent additions to the stock. You can also navigate to the Concerts On Demand page from the menu on the left column - that'll give you more info.
The point is that you can listen whenever you like.
I had a pretty big Globe and Mail paper route when I was a kid. My parents also, unfathomably, gave me a pretty decent allowance. Every penny from those two sources, plus birthday cards from grandma, odd jobs, you name it, was spent in a weekly ritual that started on the subway and ended up here at the CBC. Let me explain...
Continue reading "From R.O.W. to Canada Live" »
I am no longer embarrassed.
It used to be that when you went online to find out what exactly what piece of music you were listening to at a particular time, it showed up in a web form bravely cobbled together by some hardworking web-types around here who were given several proverbial sow's ears and told to make a designer collection of silk purses. I apologized then for what listeners might have to sift through to get the info they were after but no longer!
Look at the column on the left side of this page and you'll see a heading PLAYLISTS. Click there.
It will launch a selection page that lets you choose the show and the date you're interested in. If you just click the show directly it'll give you the latest info.... which is how I know that the pieces in the Steve Reich portion of tonight's edition of Canada Live with Matt Galloway will be "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ", "Electric Counterpoint" (an awesome piece and source for the Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds") and "Sextet".
Cool.
In so many ways.
Got a message from Laurie Brown that I had restored her "hair confidence" by my comment about her always-great hair to match her always-great taste in new music. Which is more than I can say for myself this fine morning. I'm now going to tell you about my hair but there IS a point to this beyond vanity...
Continue reading "Bad Hair Day Follows Good Hair Comment" »
It's one of the most historic places in Canada - perched high atop the mouth of the narrows out past the Battery in St. John's Newfoundland. I've been up there when you could see so far you thought you could just make out Ireland and I've been up there when you couldn't see more than a metre in front of your face.
It's a controversial spot in the history of radio too (as Laurie Brown makes history tonight on Radio Two ;->)
For one thing, it's not 100% certain that the wireless signal Marconi had sent from Poldhu, Cornwall on December 12, 1901 was the signal he received with his kite at the Cabot Tower on Signal Hill. The particulars and technicaliites are still a matter of debate among radio scientists.
But it was success enough to bolster his company and put the fear into the barons running the communications racket in St. John's, which was the communications gateway to North America - with ships tossing their load of message canisters near the shore to be retrieved by what would have been the pre-radio-age equivalent of service-providers.
Continue reading "Signal Hill" »
This, to me, is really exciting.
Some of the great moments in the history of CBC have been in the recording of Canadian talent,
Did you know that Gordon Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy", Sarah McLachlan's "Possession" and Crash Test Dummies' "Superman" were commissioned by CBC Radio?
Canada Live represents a whole new era of command performances from right across the country and right across the musical spectrum. Tonight's debut is a perfect example...
Continue reading "Stand and Deliver: Canada Live" »
I met Robert Dickson several years ago when we were both involved with the Millennium Foundation Scholarship Awards Conference in Ottawa. He was a soft-spoken man with salt and pepper hair and smiling eyes.
He won the Governor-General's Award for French language poetry in 2002, for his book "Humains paysages en temps de paix relative" ("Human Landscapes in Times of Relative Peace").
He also wrote songs for the Franco-Ontarian 1970's prog-rock band CANO. More recently, he'd been professor of French Studies and Translation at Laurentian University in Sudbury.
Last summer, I commissioned three poems from him for a project that was recorded for broadcast on CBC Radio at a show at the Townehouse pub in Sudbury. His poems opened the show.
I heard he had been ill and had surgery a few months ago and we corresponded a little. He seemed from his email to be in good spirits.
He was a kind and generous hearted person with an easy smile and I was very sad to learn today that he died this morning. He was a prince of a guy and I'm very sorry that he's gone.
Katie Malloch hosted Jazz Beat for something like 23 years. I'm a total punter compared to her.
Michael Enright has been a fixture on the CBC for - oh, I don't know - a hundred years or something.
That didn't stop me from taking up the "anti-jazz" position on a friendly debate on the Sunday Edition a few months back with the formidable front of Michael and Katie arrayed against me.
Now before any of you get your knickers in a twist, I am not against jazz music at all per se - I have quite a lot of it in my collection. What I was objecting to was the vaseline-on-the-lens spin on the genre that glosses over the gritty roots of the form in favour of a kind of bejewelled vision of elegant couples sipping Kir Royales on their penthouse balconies with something smooth, tinkly and "sophisticated" playing in the background as evidence of their good taste.
Michael told me they had never received so much mail on a single interview - about half of it siding with me, the other half wanting my head on a pike.
Continue reading "Katie, Michael and Me" »
Controversy dogs Rock and Roll Hall of Fame choices: "With Eddie Van Halen in rehab and Ronette's producer Phil Spector facing a trial for allegedly killing an actress, the induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday evening could be most notable for its absences."
(Via CBC | Music News.)
Controversy? HELLO-O people - it's the ROCK AND ROLL Hall of Fame, not the Lawrence Welk tea party induction. What would it be without some substance abuse? Although, that Phil Spector guy - genius aside - really has gone too far. The hair alone is an indictable offense.
Swiss tenor Ernst Haefliger, known for his interpretations of German lieder, opera and oratorio music, has died.
Barbara Higgs of the Lucerne Festival confirmed the 87-year-old singer passed away Saturday in the southeastern Swiss town of Davos. Higgs said he died from acute heart failure.
Haefliger was the leading lyric tenor with the Deutsche Oper Berlin between 1952 and 1972 and sang all of the tenor parts for Mozart's compositions.
Read the full story at CBCArts.
Incredibly, as I write this I'm listening to Music & Company from the Mountain timezone radio stream (you'll find the available streams on the top right of this page) and Tom is just talking about one of the stories I posted a day or two ago from cbc.ca about the new museum in Italy for compositions by WWII prisoners. That story inspired Tom to discover some new music by a Czech composer named Rudolph Carol and it's playing this moment.
That's the kind of connection I hope will begin to bloom between this site, the hosts and producers of shows both new and existing and you the audience.
You can be as involved as you like: switch on the radio in the kitchen and forget about it, track live radio streams across the country through the radio panel, access Concerts On Demand in the next panel down on the right hand side of the page or follow the conversation here.
Although I can't remember the last time I had one, I understand this "Spring Break" thing is pretty popular.
People tootle around town or they go skiing or the go to a sunny spot somewhere. And the idea is that it comes near the end of a long bout of winter and they come back rejuvenated and ready to sprout like new buds and blossoms.
We're familiar with that idea around here.
Hosts and producers and web people and just about everyone else has been scrambling to put the finishing touches (well... not quite... more on that later) on a newly invigorated Radio Two.
Even your familar friends like Tom Allen and Shelley Solmes have a certain "spring" in their step.
Continue reading "Spring Break" »
They were Blair Packham, Matt Greenburg and Danny Levy's late 1980's Toronto New Wave pop outfit - sort of Canada's answer to Huey Lewis and the news (though with better songwriting, I think). But if you think that that's what this entry was going to be about, you'd better go here for more info.
No, the jitters I'm talking about are the ones related to the official launch of this site tomorrow. We want people to come and start getting comfortable with using this as their own Radio Master Control - skipping through Canada's timezones to find what they're after, streaming our Concerts on Demand, finding their desired playlists quickly and efficiently and engaging with yours truly.
Wait, Jowi. Breathe. Calm down. Everything will be fine. It's time to feel a little bit more "Sunday afternoon" before I start feeling too "Monday morning". Talk to you later.
So many musicians live and die in obscurity. So many talented composers are the victims of bad career timing, not being in fashion, or any of a million and one vagaries that prevent their light from ever shining on the world stage.
Imagine the added cruelty for World War II prisoners whose wish to make music may have been one of the last things to wither even as their bodies wasted away or worse. Now it seems that some of their music will see the light of day they never saw themselves.
A special repository of music composed by those who lived and died in the concentration camps and prisons of the Second World War is set to open in Rome in 2007. Italian musician and researcher Francesco Lotoro has spent more than 15 years locating and archiving music written on loose pages, diaries and even toilet paper to create a unique library set to open its doors in September at Rome's Third University.Read more on this story from CBC Arts.
Do you know that song? By the Eels?
Great song.
It's a good choice for cranking up the day really fast - kind of like sugared cereal and cartoons for adults. Sometimes I programme my iTunes alarm to start a Saturday with that song. Not today.
Today I programmed it to launch some Franz Schubert piano sonatas played by Wilhelm Kempff. Lovely. A recommendation, in fact, on the Deutsche Grammophon label, from Rick Phillips on Sound Advice.
After the noon news today, Rick will wrap up his series on another pianist - Sir Clifford Curzon - with his recording of the Trout Quintet, made fifty years ago - and still a classic.
Did you catch Danny Michel on the Vinyl Cafe today? The boy's a genius, IMHO.
Also coming up later today on Saturday Afternoon at the Opera with Howard Dyck:the Metropolitan Opera goes to the Devil this week with Gounod's Faust, starring Ramón Vargas in the title role, with Ruth Ann Swenson, Karine Deshayes, Hung Yun and Ildar Abdrazakov. Maurizio Benini conducts.But if I may indulge you one last time: please tune in tonight for the final episode of Global-Village. We had the privilege of 10+ years of your ears and tonight we do our best to sum it all up. I confess it's a bit of a tear-jerker in places - especially the young HIV+ Zambian girl in the orphanage who holds on to music as her biggest source of hope and the still-bittersweet story of Difang Kuo - the Taiwanese rice-farmer who gained anonymous fame as the uncredited voice behind the massive Enigma hit, "Return to Innocence", which later became the theme to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
That's tonight at 6:30, 7:30AT, 8NT.
Hello.
Hello.
HELLO.
It's me. Jowi Taylor Here in the middle of the page.
Welcome to the new CBC Radio 2. This is it kids. This is the place you want to be for music in Canada. This is your hub. This is where you conduct your own radio experience.
Continue reading "Well Cut My Ribbon" »
I can't tell you how many guys - when I tell them I know Laurie Brown - confess to me their long-harboured crushes on the New Music journalist/goddess.
She was certainly the coolest chick any of us had ever scene when scrappy CityTV in Toronto basically invented pop-music journalism for television. But what was so cool was how she grew into the role. Even as TV began looking for ditzier VJs to cover ditzier music, Laurie Brown remained the keen-eared journalist with the great hair and an even greater sense of what was worth exploring behind the creative process (or behind the music industry curtains).
Continue reading "The R2 Dreamgirl" »
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
Geez, I must have been about 10 years old and my dad was part of a pilot project with his bank that allowed him to go to a kiosk built into the wall of the Parkway Mall branch, put a plastic card into a slot, type into a keypad and cause the machine to spit out $20 bills. There were a handful of machines around the city at the time and he could use those too but mostly he would ask my sister and I if we wanted to go with him to the Magic Money Machine and he'd let us push the buttons.
Continue reading "The Magic Money Machine" »
...a strange time to be thinking of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons but such is the mystery of a mind full of music.
The point is that last night at the Lula Lounge in Toronto was a brilliant send off to my long-running show Global-Village and an even more brilliant welcome to the brand new show Canada Live.
There was a line up to get in and lots of people peering through the glass of the front room from the street for a glimpse of the stage at the far end of the packed house.
Madagascar Slim and Donne Roberts stepped off the African Guitar Summit for a lovely, lilting (and occasionally lightning-like) set of duelling Godin guitars (though Slim picked up the Taylor for a tune as well). In spite of the two being members of the Summit and both at one time together in Ndidi Onukwulu's band, seeing them perform as a duo is a bit of a rarity. Personally, I think they should take the act on tour. Gorgeous!
Continue reading "Oh What a Night! (mid-March, 2007)" »
Is it an annoying guy who is compelled to be "hilarious" in the morning? Does it wear Birkenstocks or does it wear designer glasses? Is it urbane, folksy, hip or is it just really desperate to be hip?
You know the answer to this question, probably, because - especially if you're a CBC listener - you have a relationship with your radio. It's not that you can't have a relationship with other radio stations, just that the depth of the relationship is questionable when your "friend" leaves the room for minutes at a time and puts you in the company of some other "friends" who have some wonderful opportunity for you to give them some money.
Continue reading "Who is your Radio?" »
According to Nettwerk Records boss Terry McBride, Avril Lavigne sells more music in Asia than she does in all of the western hemisphere combined. Which may be why her new single features a chorus in a multitude of languages.
Aside from English, the chorus to Girlfriend has been recorded in Mandarin and Japanese for her massive Asian fanbase, as well as Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. "We tried Hindi twice but the diction and the meter of how you sing Hindi versus the western rhythms just didn't match and we just couldn't pull it off," McBride, also the CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, said in an interview on Thursday.My question is: how do you spell SK8RBOI in Japanese?
from CBC.ca
Such a hive of activity is my building. I'd arranged with Ed, who runs Gallery 345 on the main floor of my building, to borrow the space one afternoon to do a photo session for another project of mine. I went down a little early to scout where to put the backdrop and - as there so often is these days - vigorous piano sounds were coming from behind the door. I waited until those sounds were replaced by talking, knocked and let myself in. Who should be there at matched grand pianos (one 7' Steinway, one 9' Baldwin) but Casey Sokol and Andrew Craig! They were rehearsing for a prepared-piano tribute to John Cage held last Saturday night at York University in Toronto.
Production units across the country have been busy as beavers this past week - making sure the radio cup will runeth over with great performances recorded live.
This past Tuesday at the Glenn Gould a new performance of Gavin Bryars' settings of 14th century Laude and the premiere of Nine Irish Madrigals, based on Petrarch sonnets with Anna Maria Friman, soprano.; John Potter, tenor; Douglas Perry, viola; Max Christie, bass clarinet; Gavin Bryars, double bass.
And tomorrow night, the Canada Live recording mobile will drive into the thick of Canadian Music Week for a sold out performance at the Mod Club by rising star Serena Ryder and new traditionalist Treasa Levasseur.
Check the Canada Live schedule elsewhere on this page for broadcast details.
Well, at least we got to hear the Stooges sing (Curley, Larry, Moe and Shemp in a couple of episodes and later Iggy Pop for a whole career). But I've always wondered about the stars of the silent era - many of whom must have had talents beyond the pantomime in which they specialized. Charlie Chaplin, of course, was a great composer - penning many of his own scores and writing the heavenly "Smile", made so famous by Nat King Cole. A new Vancouver production of a Strauss opera is at least temporarily uniting these disparate worlds. According to director David Gately, his aim is to emphasize both the comedy and the tragedy in Ariadne auf Naxos. This actually reminds me of a funny story. My cousin moved to Germany where she met and married an Austrian conductor and pianist named Gunther. On their first return trip to Canada, the extended family gathered at grandma and grandpa's cottage to meet the illustrious addition to the clan. The neighbours were curious too, of course, so they were invited to come to the big meet and greet. Poor Gunther might as well have been a trained monkey, sitting at the piano pumping out the requests. Mrs. McLaren from across the way had something she wanted to hear but could quite put her finger on the title or composer. "You know," she said,, "it's by that Austrian fellow - part of a father and son team. They had their own TV show." After a few baffled moments, Gunther ventured, "Strauss?" "Yes, that's it! Strauss!" The Strauss Family Variety Hour? I guess we didn't get that channel. Vancouver Opera stages Ariadne auf Naxos March 3, 6, 8 and 10 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 600-block Hamilton.
That's what it feels like around the Broadcast Centre these days. There's the anticipation of having an exciting time - inviting new people over and having fun (with lots of great music, of course) but there's also the feeling of anxiety: is it going to be a success? Will people enjoy themselves? Will my new friends and old friends like each other? Am I going to have one too many tequila and say something embarrassing? Well, OK - maybe it's not exactly like that but similar. People are putting the finishing touches on new shows, tidying (or in this case, remodelling) their offices and generally looking busy (or is it nervous?). I imagine this is what pop singer George Michael is feeling like these days as he prepares to open the brand new Wembley Stadium in London. Will anyone come? Will they have a good time? Should I buy more mix? At least in our case we know someone will be bringing the Tonic - that's the name of the new Jazz strip in the evenings.
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