Artist Spotlight

When I first heard Laura Mvula’s “She” on the radio I was struck by her originality.  Then I heard “I Can’t Live With the World”, another cut that sounded (wonderfully) like one of Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s inspired arrangements.  No, it was Laura’s.  She did all the arrangements on the debut album.
I immediately thought that with a surname like Mvula that she was South African, but …

Celluloid Records, along with Chris Blackwell’s larger company Island and Mango Records, was one of the most interesting and adventurous of all labels in the 1980s.  It had one of the boldest visions of all indie labels and put out fearless and crazy music, way too advanced for its own good.  Fusing world music with electronica, jazz with urban beats and early hip hop …

Bobo Stenson isn’t a household name among jazz pianists such as Brubeck, Jarrett, or Jamal, but he is up there at the top among piano jazz aficionados.  He cut his teeth as a kid in his native Sweden, playing with Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Gary Burton and Don Cherry.
Later the redoubtable sufi mystic reedman Charles Lloyd chose him for his quartet, following earlier pianistic …

First there was the late great Cuban pianist Bebo Valdes with flamenco great Diego El Cigala with their great album Lagrimas Negras (Black Tears).  That record sold over a million copies, a huge amount for a tropical record, and got Bebo and El Cigala a grammy.  Because of it Bebo, like the septuagenarian characters in the Buena Vista Social Club, got a new lease …

Now that there’s a new pope and Easter is around the corner, it might be time to revisit this amazing work.  I saw it performed in Orange County a decade ago and it was one of the most explosive and stylistically varied operas I’d ever heard.  It gave the lie to the heavy-handed world of Wagner or the silly scenarios of Verdi.  La Pasión …

Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba burst upon the African and world music scene a few years ago, winning top world music awards and winning the hearts and minds of African music fans everywhere.  It is pure Malian groove, no gimmicks.  It doesn’t need any .(well, there is a wah-wah pedal and some guest musicians).    Following up on his popular two first …

Another titan has left us:  Bebo Valdes has shuttled off this mortal coil, this past Friday in Sweden, where he lived for fifty years.  He was at the end a spry nonagenarian of 94.   He won three Grammys six Latin Grammys.
Bebo, patriarch of three generations of great Cuban pianists, sons Chucho and grandson Chuchito, returned to the scene a few years ago, recording …

I was happy to receive, from Max Horowitz (who’s doing pr for the cd) the new collaboration album Winter Morning Walks (2 cd’s, Artist Share).    The cd is an artist-owned collective based in New York. I was also surprised, happily so, to see that the large project, featuring not one but two orchestras, had been fan-funded through ArtistShare..   Dawn Upshaw is a …

I was fortunate to get to know Nina Simone while Music Director and doing Morning Becomes Eclectic.   I’ve always loved her music, and sometimes would listen to her classic songs when I needed a good cry.    ”Little Girl Blue”, “Plain Gold Ring” and “I Loves You Porgy” always worked.  ”You Can Have Him” worked even better when hurting from a  breakup.
I interviewed …

This week I attended a very unusual show that showed once again how music transcends all boundaries:  music as universal language.   The two artists on stage at the Skirball Cultural Center—thanks to Yatrika Shah-Rais for programming this show–were Vincent Segal and Ballake Sissoko.  They played two instruments that developed concurrently in West Africa and Europe centuries ago.  The kora is the traditional 21 …