CD Music

September 2019

Blue Note B0030782-02
Format: CD

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In several ways, guitarist Bill Frisell is the ultimate Baby Boomer improvising musician. Born in Baltimore in 1951, raised in Denver, Frisell grew up listening to the rich panoply of popular music in the ’50s, fell in love with the Beach Boys and the Beatles, and had his mind blown with the rest of us by Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and the other revolutionary electric guitarists of the late ’60s.

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July 2019

Columbia 19075941972
Format: CD

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The summer I turned 14, my father took us on a month-long road trip through the US Midwest, out to the western edge of Montana. Fifty years later, the enduring memories include the early mornings speeding west along Interstate 90 -- the sun rising behind us and Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” ubiquitous on AM radio.

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June 2019

Smithsonian Folkways 40250
Format: 5 CDs

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It’s not exactly a guilty secret since I’ve shared it with others, but call it a regret-with-reason: I’ve never been to New Orleans. While I regret having never sampled one of the world’s most distinctive cities, I’m not a fan of humidity. And because I already live in a city where the humidex occasionally reaches oppressive levels, I’ve never been drawn to the Crescent City for a vacation.

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May 2019

Golden Records MGJCQ 004
Format: CD

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Just as the 1940s and ’50s are considered the most creative era in jazz, the late ’60s and ’70s are seen as the art form’s nadir. Record sales plunged, as buyers turned their attention to rock and singer-songwriters, and bars supplanted live acts with recorded music.

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April 2019

Exile/Legacy Recordings 88985428402
Format: CD

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Curmudgeonly and unpredictable, at 73 Van Morrison has developed a late-career reputation that sadly overshadows his early triumphs. Like Bob Dylan, if you only judged him based on the man who shambles onstage and grumbles through an assortment of songs that are not necessarily among his best, you might well wonder why he’s considered one of the greatest singers and songwriters of the last 60 years.

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March 2019

A-Side 0005
Format: CD

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A decade before two young music nerds met at Bard College and sparked the evolution of Steely Dan, two other young oddballs -- 21-year-old Ran Blake and 17-year-old Jeanne Lee -- met on the same campus. Blake was a polymath pianist with a deep interest in Béla Bartók, Claude Debussy, Mary Lou Williams, gospel music, and film noir. Lee was equally eclectic, developing choreography for music by Arnold Schoenberg and simultaneously studying child psychology and literature. When she heard Blake playing piano one March afternoon in 1956, she told him he put her in mind of Art Tatum -- a musician most people would never associate with Blake’s minimalist style -- and he knew immediately that she had impressive ears.

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February 2019

ECM 2615
Format: CD

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As the pre-eminent tenor saxophonist of the past 30 years, Joe Lovano has taken on just about every musical style -- including Third Stream, in collaboration with pioneer Gunther Schuller, and operatic arias. The son of Anthony “Big T” Lovano, who was a tenor-playing hero around his hometown of Cleveland, Joe has been playing the instrument since 1958, when he was five.

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January 2019

Resonance 2035
Format: CD

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As a late-night FM announcer on a campus radio station, you get to learn a lot about people’s musical obsessions. During my eight-year tenure at CKCU-FM in Ottawa, there was one listener who was a constant presence on the station’s request line. Occasionally, he’d want to engage in conversation; more often, he just said two words: “Play Dolphy.”

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December 2018

Whirlwind 4729
Format: CD

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Few significant musician/composers of the past 75 years remain as enigmatic and misunderstood as Kenny Wheeler, the UK-based trumpeter who died at age 84 in 2014. Not only that, but few musicians are as influential. Ask most contemporary trumpeters about their favorite peers, and Wheeler is sure to be on the list.

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November 2018

Greenleaf Music 1065
Format: CD

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Few musicians take their geographical influences into the recording studio, and possibly least of all in the jazz realm. To further their careers, young jazz musicians gravitate toward New York City, and to a lesser degree, Los Angeles or Chicago. Whether they’re pursuing advanced education at places like the Manhattan School of Music or chasing gigs with more established players, they usually spend serious time in the big city before gaining the wherewithal to produce a recording. Whatever regionalism they carry with them has generally been erased by the time their music reaches the masses.

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