This film from 1978 is about Don and Moki Cherry and others who lived with them in the school house in Tågarp, Skåne, Sweden, in the 1970s and onwards. It includes sequences from SoHo, New York, and Moki Cherry’s textiles on the walls in Hästveda and Long Island City. Produced and directed by Urban Lasson - Youtube
"This tune, often attributed to her one-time husband Paul Bley, who was the first to record it, was actually written by Carla Bley. Goldings (piano) is a Boston born pianist who attended Concord Academy and later, the Eastman School of Music and The New School in NYC. In his teens he studied with Ran Blake and Keith Jarrett. He's played sideman to many recording artists, including Nora Jones, Leon Russell, Rickie Lee Jones, and Tracy Chapman. Bernstein (guitar) is NYC born and is also an active sideman & recording artist in his own right. Likewise for drummer Bill Stewart playing on this date."
"Eighth solo studio album by Welsh musician John Cale, mostly improvised live at Skyline Studios in New York City. His third wife, Rise, sings Sam Shepherd lyrics on this one. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various styles across rock, drone, classical, avant-garde and electronic music. John Davies Cale was born on 9 March 1942 in the mining village of Garnant in the valley of the River Amman in Carmarthenshire of Wales to Will Cale, a coal miner, and Margaret Davies, a primary school teacher. Although his father spoke only English, his mother spoke and taught Welsh to Cale, which hindered his relationship with his father. Upon arriving in New York City, Cale met a number of influential composers. On 9 September 1963 he participated, along with John Cage and several others, in an 18-hour and 40 minute piano-playing marathon that was the first full-length performance of Erik Satie's _Vexations_. After the performance Cale appeared on the television panel show I've Got a Secret. Cale's secret was that he had performed in an 18-hour concert, and he was accompanied by Karl Schenzer, whose secret was that he was the only member of the audience who had stayed for the duration. - wiki"
"This from a set of 24 short pieces for piano, and has been described by music critic Kyle Gann as the first work of postminimalism. "The harmonic language is more active than preexisting minimalist conventions and doesn't satisfy the established expectations of minimalist practice. Along with its elements of minimalism, the preludes utilize many references to piano music of earlier periods, a tenet of postmodernism. The music makes reference to folk music, jazz, medieval music, Erik Satie, banjo strumming, and the style of Jerry Lee Lewis. Duckworth composed The Time Curve Preludes between 1977 and 1978 whileon a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. - wiki . It seems Duckworth rode the wave of claiming/being identified as "first in" on an emerging form. Some of the works that followed involved his wife, Nora Farrell, of which little is available. She specialized in finding an intersection between music and the interweb, and in 2007, worked w/Duckworth on an iPod opera based on Claudio Monteverdi’s "Orfeo."
"Long Island Progressive Rock Band from the '70s. MERCURY CARONIAM IV - drums, cymbals, gongs, vibes, bells, kettle drums, assorted devices and percussion FRED CALLAN - bass, moog bass pedals, vocals PAUL SEAL - lead vocals, percussion, bass pedals TOM DONCOURT - keyboards, percussion RUDY PERRONE - acoustic, 6-string & nylon guitars, vocals.The roots of CATHEDRAL lie in a psychedelic band called Odyssey. When that band broke up in 1975, bassist Fred Callan, and mellotronist Tom Doncourt ventured on to form CATHEDRAL. They toured the Long Island club scene, and bravely decided to play original music. - see link"
This short clip about the Chelsea Hotel was actually made as a pilot, which filmmaker Albert Scopin pitched to the NDR in Hamburg to attract funding for a larger documentary he'd planned. He studied its inhabitants very closely, and lived there himself. His description includes a description of ...."Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe lived in a dilapidated building just next door to the Hotel and are so closely intertwined with all my memories of the Chelsea Hotel that I can’t not mention them. Patti fascinated me from the very start. She really was completely different to any other human I had ever met before. She was pure energy. Everything was an experiment and everything was to be understood. Robert, on the other hand, was a cool cynic, yet the two stood united in their fundamental aim to get to the top.
I first heard this on the soundtack of Albert Scopin's strange and wonderful movie, Chelsea Hotel 1970, which he say he "made as a pilot, which we pitched to the NDR in Hamburg to attract funding for a larger documentary we had planned. Even though the film was never made, it does exist in my head. Living at the Chelsea Hotel I studied its inhabitants very closely. Never before and never thereafter have I encountered a crowd more diverse, more vein (?) and more fantastical. The bizarre paradox I observed was that in all their efforts to be unique, in all their efforts to become noticed, in all their efforts to become famous - all those people were surprisingly similar - made similar by their efforts to be different. - Albert Scopin (filmmaker) who, was, he said, _a more or less permanent resident - hopping from room to room depending on my budget. Initially, after arriving in NY I worked as a photographic assistant to Bill King who, at the time, did mainly photoshoots for Harpers Bazaar."
"LA born pianist, debuted with the LA Phil at age 9, graduated from Juliiard. He's now teaching at the Thornton School of Music at USC. Debussy composed this piece sometime the piece between 1880 and 1884. It was one of his first piano solos to make a lasting impact. According to music blogger & pianist Kathryn Louderback, it came at a time the composer was still trying to find his own voice as a composer at this time (in fact Debussy did not think this work was good at all)..."
"Ethiopian born Meklit is the former Head of Creativity and Impact at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and was a 2019 Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University. She has a podcast, Movement, that airs periodically on public radio via the program The World. Her core band is made up of Drums / Colin Douglas, Saxophone / Howard Wiley, Tupan,Davul / Marco Peris Coppola, Bassist / Sam Bevan, Keys / Kibrom Birhane"
"Harmolodics is the term Coleman coined to describe his music and his philosophy of life. He decided to do a short film about Harmolodics. A few artists were enlisted, including Lou Reed, Thurston Moore, Yoko Ono and dancer Wunmi Olaiya. He made a short film to go out to journalists as part of the press kit for his album Tone Dialing. This short clip is from that film. "
From Guelph, Ontario (same town as Jane Siberry), Petric is an innovative performer with a career defined by championing a wide reaching repertoire for the instrument. He is also celebrated for his technique. From wiki- Petric’s approach creates a unique sound that has subtle colouristic and expressive devices like vibrato, which is an innovation in accordion performance, This holistic approach is foundational for his delivery of diverse musical languages and accordion repertoire in the contemporary concert hall.
aka Isabel Vargas Lizano was a Costa Rican-born Mexican singer (1919-2012). Antonio Bribiesca Castellanos (Mexico City, 1905-1980) appeared in movies (see link) This song, Flower of the Azalea, is considered one of the most traditional boleros…According to wiki, the bolero is a genre of song which originated in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century as part of the trova tradition. Unrelated to the older Spanish dance of the same name, bolero is characterized by sophisticated lyrics dealing with love. It has been called the _quintessential Latin American romantic song of the twentieth century_
Kronos is Cello – Jennifer Culp, Viola - Hank Dutt, Violins - David Harrinton and John Sherba. Joining them on this cut is Ali Jihad Racy on Ney (flute) and Souhail Kaspar on Tar (drum).
"Born in Nashville, lived in Oakland in the late 60's, teaching poetry at Merritt College, considered a center of Black activist activity during that period of agitation re: Civil Rights. Students at the time included Maulana Karenga, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. She later taught at Oberlin, U of Iowa, and U of Wisconsin. Folkways released four albums of her work."
"Avant-garde rounds with Julie & Martyn singing nursery rhymes to Moondog percussion and arrangements. Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916 – September 8, 1999), known professionally as Moondog, was an American composer, musician, performer, music theoretician, poet and inventor of musical instruments. Largely self-taught as a composer, his prolific work widely drew inspiration from jazz, classical, Native American music which he had become familiar with as a child, and Latin American music. Hardin was born in Marysville, Kansas, to Louis Thomas Hardin, an Episcopalian minister, and Norma Alves. Hardin started playing a set of drums that he made from a cardboard box at the age of five. When he was 16, he found an object in a field which he did not realize was a dynamite cap. While he was handling it, the explosive detonated in his face and permanently blinded him. From the late 1940s until 1972, Moondog lived as a street musician and poet in New York City, playing in midtown Manhattan, eventually settling on the corner of 53rd or 54th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. He was rarely if ever homeless, and maintained an apartment in upper Manhattan and had a country retreat in Candor, New York, to which he moved full-time in 1972. He partially supported himself by selling copies of his poetry and his musical philosophy. - wiki
"Soundwalk Collective aka Stephan Crasneanscki & Simone Merli. is the contemporary sonic arts platform of founder and artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli. Working with a rotating constellation of artists and musicians, they develop site- and context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual, literary or artistic themes. See link for info on their most interesting collaborators"
"Michael Alden Hadreas (born September 25, 1981), better known by his stage name Perfume Genius, is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Hadreas's music explores topics including sexuality, his personal struggle with Crohn's disease, domestic abuse, and the dangers faced by gay men in contemporary society/ Growing up, Hadreas was the only openly gay student at his school, and he received death threats that were ignored by the school administration. He dropped out of high school during his senior year. Two years after dropping out, he was attacked by several young men in his neighborhood. He moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and worked as a doorman for a club in the East Village."
Having released albums every year since 1989, Aberdeen’s Alan Davidson has amassed quite the catalogue. Operating in terrain similar to Current 93 (with much more of an emphasis on the folk side of things) and also Ivor Cutler.
"Richard Myhill is a British singer-songwriter, musician, composer, producer and arranger, originally from Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, who worked on Duran Duran tracks in the early 1980s"
This film from 1978 is about Don and Moki Cherry and others who lived with them in the school house in Tågarp, Skåne, Sweden, in the 1970s and onwards. It includes sequences from SoHo, New York, and Moki Cherry’s textiles on the walls in Hästveda and Long Island City. Produced and directed by Urban Lasson - Youtube
Joseph Spence (1910 – 1984) was a Bahamian guitarist and singer. He is well known for his vocalizations and humming while playing the guitar. Several American musicians, including Taj Mahal, the Grateful Dead, Ry Cooder,Catfish Keith, Woody Mann, and Olu Dara, as well as the British guitarist John Renbourn, were influenced by and have recorded variations of his arrangements of gospel and Bahamian songs - wiki
"In 1969, the Art Ensemble of Chicago (which had recorded just one official record, Congliptious, as a group at that point in time), moved to Paris for two years and recorded this and seven other albums during their first year overseas alone. The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide said "their masterpiece, People in Sorrow, a forty-minute example of how the group's menagerie of instruments and spontaneous approach to structure can create clearly delineated precisely shaded and starkly emotional music." Featuring Lester Bowie: trumpet, percussion instruments; Malachi Favors Maghostut: bass, percussion instruments, vocals; Joseph Jarman: saxophones, clarinets, percussion instruments; Roscoe Mitchell: saxophones, clarinets, flute, percussion instruments
"Jason Rayles produced a long audio doc about his grandfather, Jimmy, from which I've excerpted. He learned about Jewel at Jimmy's funeral service, and decided to explore further. "
