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Posts Tagged ‘music’

guajiro y carretero: Buena Vista Social Club

Posted in reseña, tagged , , on September 29, 2007| Leave a Comment »

The best thing about Buena Vista Social Club and its musicians is that they are representative. A large, active Cuban musical tradition, of which BVSC is one example, thrives in the hotels and halls of Havana, Camaguey, Santiago de Cuba, and the like.

What has happened here is a marketing coup that ought to be celebrated rather than derided, for it has brought the richness of Cuban son to our ears. If it had not come in the picturesque and personality-rich form of Ibrahim, Compay, and their pals, it would have happened via some other coterie of sonistas who looked and sounded much like them. They are everywhere. (more…)

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a really good JV team: Great Film Themes (Erich Kunzel, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra)

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , , , on September 29, 2007| 1 Comment »

In the mid-1990s, the Times of London flogged a very cool disk-per-week club that was everything eclectic can mean. One of those CDs was entitled Great Film Themes and included music from the likes of Also Sprach Zarathustra, Back to the Future, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Brief Encounters, Chariots of Fire, Goldfinger, Raging Bull, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Jurassic Park, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, and Henry V. (more…)

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jaw dropping: Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, Beatus Vir, Totus Tuus, Old Polish Music

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , , on September 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »

If Maestro John Nelson did not exist, he would have to be invented as a matter of the highest artistic urgency. How else would the rest of us become acquainted with the new or little-known music that is so often recorded under his baton?

Take, for example, the Polish composer Henry Mikolaj Gorecki’s ‘Beatus Vir’, ‘Totus Tuus’, and Old Polish Music. The first of these are newer creations of a very Catholic Poland, redolent of biblical and Roman Catholic piety embedded in the brooding harmonies of Old Poland. (more…)

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cactus is our friend: Girlie Pop

Posted in reseña, tagged , , on September 27, 2007| Leave a Comment »

In the mid-nineties, London’s Sunday Times ran an excellent CD club with the most eclectic offerings imaginable. One of them was Girlie Pop, which presented hits by a larval-stage Madonna, P.P. Arnold, Marilyn Monroe, The Shangri-Las, The Dixie Cups, Betty Everett, Maria Muldaur, Lesley Gorre, Fontella Bass, The Shirelles, and Lulu. (more…)

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and she’s beautiful to boot!

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , , on September 27, 2007| Leave a Comment »

This album is for Jaci Velasquez an extraordinary achievement. In it she emerges from the status of a managed star-in-the-making to that of a young woman who really sings. Mi Corazón uses the hit ‘Como se cura una herida’ as its title track, giving Jaci an opportunity to hint at things to come. (more…)

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telling stories: Ryan Ahlwardt, I Can See Forever

Posted in reseña, tagged , , on September 26, 2007| 2 Comments »

Ryan Ahlwardt’s deep roots in four-part men’s music down at Indiana University show up even in a thoughtful-pop album like I Can See Forever. It’s there in the capacity and control of his voice even when it flits near the limits of his natural range. (more…)

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what they died of: The Lady Killers (The Sunday Times Music Collection DVD)

Posted in reseña, tagged , , on September 25, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Back in the 90s, London’s Sunday Times flogged a music collection on a week-by-week-delivery basis at a ridiculous loss leader price. The results were magnificent overall.

One of the disks in the collection’s ‘Contemporary’ genre was titled The Lady Killers. It is an uproariously eclectic collection of tunes, held together that they’re all sung by blokes. Fronted by a photo of the bare-chested and youthful Rod Stewart, rarely was there ever a strong argument for obligatory waistcoats. The Victorian Age seldom seemed so allluring. (more…)

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startin’ to learn: Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Greatest Hits 2

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , on September 25, 2007| 2 Comments »

Ah, Bob, Bob, Bob, you do it so well.

Rock-and-roll troubadour of the male soul, there is nobody quite like Bob Seger for a night at home after some manly task has been accomplished. (more…)

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pure grace: Point of Grace (1993)

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , on September 24, 2007| Leave a Comment »

This oddly named female band opened their Big Career with this eponymous 1993 release. It was of course not all that they would become, but it was an audacious start. (more…)

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entre sombra y luz: Luz Casal, Como la flor prometida

Posted in reseña, tagged , , on September 22, 2007| Leave a Comment »

It would be possible for music lovers who do not know this Spanish diva-of-sorts to mistake Como la flor prometida as just another B-class Iberian cd whose best moments ought probably not fly too far from the Iberian peninsula. That would be dead wrong.

Luz Casal virtually stuns with an eclectic zig-zag from track that could almost be considered bizarre but which succeeds at every moment in revealing yet another facet of the lady’s artistry. Luz is a force to reckoned with. (more…)

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