What do Patricia Barber, Luciano Berio, and Buddy
Miller have in common? Well, they’re all on this list...
Alison Krauss + Union
Station—Live (Rounder)
Rounder’s
holiday season gift—a two-disc concert CD at under $20—finds Alison
and the band in top form, which is to say as good as music making
gets. I prefer this release to her studio albums because of its
intense live edge. (The band is so good that multiple studio takes
must often prove superflous.) Alison and Jerry Douglas consistently
excel up front. That’s the way it should be: they’re both world-class
players. And then there’s Alison’s stunning soprano. It’s a truly
singular gift.
Mariza—Fado
em mim
(World Connection)
The
late Amalia Rodrigues finally has a worthy successor. Hearing Mariza
for the first time on her debut CD is revelatory. She has the entire
package: a stunning voice, innate musicality, and—crucial to Fado—an
ability to navigate the fine line between passion and restraint. Just
as remarkable, she shows no trace of anything mechanical; it’s as if
her art is as natural as breathing. Expect Mariza—a transplanted
Mozambiquean living in Portugal—to win this year’s vaunted BBC world
music award for best newcomer.
Arvo Part—Orient
Occident (ECM)
During
the past three decades, the Estonian composer has distinguished
himself as one of the planet’s leading spiritual forces in music. But
he’s typically conveyed those aspirations through a relatively spare
orchestral/choral palette. This triumphant CD expands his
orchestral/textural resources, even introducing Middle Eastern
elements on the title track. The outcome is convincing and
illuminating. Is this the beginning of a new musical odyssey for
Part?
Wayne Shorter
Quartet—Footprints Live! (Verve)
Wayne’s
first fully acoustic album since the late 1960s was well worth the
wait. Four masters of improvisation and ensemble unity breathe intense
creativity into seven Shorter standards. The rhythm section of John
Pattitucci and Brian Blade couldn’t be better, but the cornerstone of
the quartet is the consistently interactive relationship between
Shorter and pianist Danilo Perez. Both thrive on chromatically
polyglot fluency, jagged rhythmic passages, and gorgeous lyricism. And
both can transmute chromatic and rhythmic angularity into ravishing
beauty on a dime.
Patricia Barber—Verse
(BlueNote/Premonition)
If,
like me, you value Patricia Barber’s evocative, quirky song writing,
you won’t be disappointed here. For the first time in her career, she
has penned an entire album, in this case ten gems that consistently
resonate with freshness and inventiveness. This, her seventh CD, has
a wonderful “live” sound--Michael Arnopol’s bass and Joey Baron’s
drums were recorded up front with Ms. Barber’s voice and piano. Neal
Anger adds harmonically challenging guitar playing and Dave Douglas,
who was a significant presence on Ms. Barber’s standout disc,
Modern Cool, returns to up the voltage on this exceptional
recording.
Glenn Gould—A
State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations (1955 & 1981)
(Sony)
Record
companies have become the planet’s compulsive recyclers. Being green
is compelling when you’ve sunk your costs decades ago. In this
reissue, however, every minute is justified. Hearing the two Bach
performances in tandem at their sonic best—one at the beginning and
the other at the end of Gould’s recording career—reveals two
startlingly different windows into one of the 20th century’s great
pianists/musical minds. A third disc adds 1955 Goldberg recording
session outtakes and asides, as well as an interview with the
enigmatic pianist following the 1981 session. Amazon.com lists the
three disc-set $19.95—a steal for this bona fide desert island
accessory.
Luciana Souza—Brazilian
Duos (Sunnyside Communications)
In
each of the twelve songs on this ravishing disc, the versatile Ms.
Souza teams up with one of three different guitarists (including her
father, Walter Santos). The result is one dialog after another of
striking musicality and intimacy. The songs—by Luis Gonzaga, Djavan,
Jobim, her parents, and others—reveal Luciana as a master of color
and nuance. That goes double time for rhythm: her voice traverses
time with the grace of a master dancer. Last summer, Souza—frequently
associated with jazz—revealed another side of her versatility,
singing alongside Dawn Upshaw and others at Tanglewood in Oswaldo
Golijov’s riveting La Passion Segun San Marcos.
Steve Earle—Jerusalem
(Artemis)
Not
quite on a par with the eclectic Transcendental Blues or the
desert island classic, Guitar Town, Jerusalem is still
a formidable accomplishment. In large part, it’s Steve Earle’s
ambivalent take on current socio-political concerns, including
American hubris, threats to civil liberties and human rights, economic
injustice, and patriotic gore and other varieties of testosterone
toxicity. The CD’s widely discussed track, John Walker’s Blues,
is a strikingly successful endeavor in multi-textural musical
layering—an avenue that Steve should continue to explore in future
outings. Nearly all of the CD’s tracks resonate with energy and bite,
aided and abetted by Steve’s emphatic guitar work. Ultimately, you
can take Steve Earle out of Guitar Town, but you’ll never take Guitar
Town out of him.
Luciano Berio—Voci
(ECM)
The
new-music disc of the year. Violist Kim Kashkashian brilliantly
elucidates Berio’s inspired incorporation of Sicilian folk influences
into the CD’s eponymous orchestral work. Building on an essentially
atonal scaffolding, Berio explores, celebrates, deconstructs, and
reframes his Sicilian folk resources with nonstop ingenuity. Sicilian
folk themes receive equally masterful treatment in the CD’s two other
compositions, Naturale and Sicilian Folk Music (the
latter which employs folk singers on tape).
The Silk Road: A
Musical Caravan (Smithsonian Folkways)
The
“other” Silk Road Project release is the best one-stop shopping we’ve
ever had for field recordings of Silk Road virtuosi. The two-CD set’s
forty-seven well-recorded tracks highlight awe-inspiring masters of
the Armenian duduk, Azerian saz, Iranian ney, Chinese pipa and
guquin, Kyrghiz kormuz, Kazakh dombra, and dozens of other
instruments. Kudos to ethnomusicologists Ted Levin and Jean During
for the compilation’s pithy annotations and judicious selections—many
recorded by them in the field.
Buddy Miller—Midnight
and Lonesome (High Tone)
Buddy
Miller returns to the top of his game with this latest release,
recorded—where else?—in his living room in Nashville. His marital and
musical partner, Julie Miller, contributes several new songs,
including the album’s terrific title track. Emy Lou Harris joins Buddy
for a vocal duet of Jessie Winchester’s A Showman’s Life,
which rivals in poignancy their memorable duet, Cruel Moon, on
his album of the same name. Miller also makes his own powerful
spiritual statement, Water When the Well Is Dry, which shares
the intensity of his wife’s best work. And from time to time, he takes
the weight off the listener with humorous romantic tracks, including
the Miller&Miller sparker, Little Bitty Kiss. What sort of
miscreant would take issue with a line like, You can stick a
feather in my cap and call it matrimony ?
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