Kind Of Blue At 50
Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” was released 50 years ago this coming Monday: August 17, 1959. That was ten years after, and ten degrees cooler, than the little big band of Miles’ “Birth of the Cool.” With...
View ArticleWoodstock At 40
Along with 499,999 others on a countercultural pilgrimage 40 years ago, I was heading for the Woodstock Festival of Music & Love. I was wearing my yellow leather fringe jacket for the first time....
View ArticleMonk, For The Record
In Michael Ondaatje’s wonderful novel “Divisadero” — a most memorable part of which is set in Sonoma County — the jazz of Thelonious Monk is likened to “imprisoned birdsongs.” Leave it to a superb...
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Rock’n'Roll & Brain Drain on the Mendocino Coast: A Q&A with Will Stenberg of...
The Kondors: Buddy Stubbs, Jon Faurot, Willie Rubio, Jubal Steadman. Photo by Calvin Turnbull. Will Stenberg was 24 when he came home. He’d been away for five years—and like most Mendo kids with...
View ArticleRock’n'Roll & Brain Drain on the Mendo Coast: The Video
In these video excerpts, Will Stenberg of the Kerosene Kondors talks about the band, music on the Mendocino Coast and the building of a small, rural music scene. (And yes, that’s a train car he’s...
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One hell of a wisecrackin’ duet
One hell of a wisecrackin' duet This coming Saturday, the 23rd, you can catch Angie Rose and Cas Sochacki, at Lauren’s Café in Boonville (9 P.M, $5.) The wisecracking, bantering couple regularly play...
View ArticleSpring Break Cocktails
Patches of snow cling to the muddy earth in the city’s picturesque 19th-century cemetery just to our north. Down in the gorge immediately to our south the creek builds momentum every hour as the thaw...
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Don Carlos Invades Boonville
This past weekend of the quarter moon, a chilly breeze tempered the usually hot June sunshine, as the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival got off to cool start. Locals noted the traffic was light Friday...
View ArticleThree Cheers for Renée Fleming
The musical terrain stretching between the entrenched aesthetic positions of parents and those of their teenage children is dotted with mines and ordnance laced with mustard gas. After enduring...
View ArticleAnna & The Glass Ceiling
When it comes to the commemoration of dead musicians, few women enjoy even a moment in the posthumous spotlight. They were rarely given the chance to compose, and until the 19th century — and even...
View ArticleChristian Bach’s Castrato Arias
Bach’s sons remained in the homeland — until the last, Johann Christian. Born in 1735, he was called, though even from beyond the grave, father Bach might have regretted that second name after his...
View ArticleDid John Adams Save The Day?
Before I Am Love, directed by Luca Gaudagnino and released into American movie theaters this summer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer John Adams had never written a soundtrack. In a way he...
View ArticleBach On The Accordion? High Plains Trudgery
An increasing number of drawing-room revolutionaries have begun to discuss their strategies to overthrow that despot, the musical score. Rather than treat the notes on the page with slavish...
View ArticleUnexpected Encounters With Greatness
Being present at a musical performance of unexpected greatness is even more memorable than having high expectations met. When I heard Rostropovich with the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa in 1985...
View ArticleCome, Let Us Run Barefoot Through the Surging Surf of Schlock: Kristmas Kitsch
Christmas is the most musical season. Melodies embedded in the memory are reanimated to light the fires of commerce, Christian devotion, and the family romance, packaging the Christmas Experience in...
View ArticleThe Greatest Pianist Ever
It’s almost impossible to evoke good music in print, especially the dazzling and extraordinary sound of the world’s greatest pianist, Art Tatum. But, that’s not for lack of trying. Here’s a sampling...
View ArticleFirst The Downers, Then The Uppers
Using music as medicine goes back to Antiquity and beyond. The Greeks were not alone in recognizing that music was powerful stuff, capable of not only calming the body, but also of rousing it....
View ArticlePrince Did It Way Better Faking It With The Black-Eyed Peas & Obama
The transformation of the NFL — and by extension all professional leagues — from sports to entertainment can be seen most clearly in the evolution of the Super Bowl half-time show, now an object of...
View ArticleMy Butt: The Musical
“If a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, then God has called him.” Robert Louis Stevenson So… some extremely wealthy and astoundingly unimaginative people have...
View ArticleLiving Musical Legend; Unlikely Sex Symbol Willie Nelson
Halfway into his recent nonstop 2-hours-plus set at San Francisco’s fabled Fillmore, Willie Nelson eased into one of his more romantic hits, “You Were Always on My Mind.” Begging for another chance...
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