What I’m Listening To
The story of jazz is a desperate struggle of birth and rebirth, of constantly trying to ride the “new,” of reinventing how we feel and relate to the world. Today’s innovators fuse genres, add instruments, at once rejecting the past and later resurrecting it. The jazz gods need constant infusions of blood to stay happy.
CD REVIEW Who Can Turn Skies Back and Begin Again?
Who would’ve ever thought George Crabbe? In fact: who’d ever heard of George Crabbe?
Staff Picks
<b><i>Sam Markson:</i></b><i> </i>“Gilfema and Either/Orchestra look solid, Wednesday and Saturday nights this week at the Regattabar. Also check out Chekhov’s <i>The Seagull</i> at the Zero Arrow Theatre.
CONCERT REVIEW Hiromi’s SonicBloom at Berklee Performance Center
I could say that Hiromi Uehara is one part Santana, one part Robert Fripp, and one part Monk, but it wouldn’t do her justice. Brought up in the Japanese conservatory environment and trained at Berklee (joining in 2003), Hiromi has carved out her distinctive musical niche by marrying her traditional, virtuosic training with an avant-garde flavor.
CONCERT REVIEW Bad Plus Play Residency at New York’s Village Vanguard
A little business, a lot of casual. The members of The Bad Plus look less like performers than the awkward guys who forgot to dress up for the dinner party that is 9:00 at the Village Vanguard. Thirty-something yuppies sip at their Cabernet Sauvignon while three dudes jam in the corner. Go to a Bad Plus show and you’ll be as likely to hear a Nirvana cover as a heavily warped version of a Ligeti composition. Bassist Reid Anderson wails out surreal, textured lines while drummer David King lays out a frenetic beat complete with baby toy tambourines and other contraptions as garnishes. Rock out with your Jazz-Purists’-Shock out. Jazz you can almost dance to?
FESTIVAL REVIEW ‘First Night’ Celebration Electrifies Boston
I boarded the 12:30 December 31 New York-Boston bus at the Port Authority, as my peers in line scoffed “I wonder why so many people are going to Boston for New Years.” At the time, that made sense. I had initially planned to stay in New York, but convenience and fatigue turned the Peter Pan bus line into an inexpensive and only slightly sketchy hotel. I knew vaguely that there was an arts festival in Boston on December 31 — the so-called “First Night” — and that it had some pretty slick events. I was down, and I was looking forward to sleeping in a bed that belonged to me.
CONCERT REVIEW Experimental Antics at the Middle East
As I write this, I have yet to form a solid opinion of the Providence-based punk / showtunes / experimental outfit The Viennagram. At once the group is pretentious and unpolished. Its wisdoms are coal on the verge of becoming pearls, sometimes hitting, but often missing. It’s a spaghetti-on-the-wall philosophy, one that, for all but the most virtuosic, is better left for the rehearsal room than for the concert hall.
CONCERT REVIEW Always Skillful, Often Breathtaking
The much-celebrated Emerson String Quartet performed in Boston last Friday, playing a mostly Dvorák concert that, through the juxtaposition of blasé and breathtaking, demonstrated concert magic.
BOOK REVIEW The Latest (and Earliest) From Kerouac and Burroughs
If you laughed along with Sal Paradise in On The Road, feared the conniving Dr. Benway in Naked Lunch, and saluted the iconoclastic verses of America, then you’re undeniably a Beatnik. While Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg are arguably the three most important authors of the Beat Generation, they are also our default historians of a transitional time period in the United States. Their uninhibited, jazz-inspired prose revealed a candid portrait of a class of people who embraced life in growing cities and welcomed experimentation.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ Eye Candy and Nothing Else
When my friends and I made our way to the “Twilight” premiere, we decided that we were going to act like teenyboppers and blend in with the hordes of high-schoolers and possibly middle-schoolers that we predicted would be present. To our great surprise, half of the audience comprised of college students who were unabashedly hardcore fans. But regardless of age, the majority of the audience at the “Twilight” premiere was female. I estimated a total of 5 percent y-chromosomes, loosely consisting of fathers picking up their daughters, boyfriends of avid fans, and the occasional feminine-looking hipster.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★★ Escaping the Slums
I was a little skeptical walking into a movie centered on the premise of finding a lost love. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not a fan of the romance genre. I decided to go into “Slumdog Millionaire” with an open mind and was pleasantly surprised.
CONCERT REVIEW Love, Politics, and … Motherhood
The Little Folk-singer isn’t so little anymore: with more than sixteen studio albums in her catalogue, ownership of her independent label Righteous Babe Records, and now a mother to a two-year-old daughter, Ani Difranco has built a career that’s unparalleled by that of any other female solo artist. Her poignant lyrics are both bitingly honest and elegant, a result of her prior study of poetry at The New School. Erin McKeown supported DiFranco last Sunday at Symphony Hall, playing a short set of simple yet clever songs with just one guitar and her voice. She opened with a fast-paced tune in which she questioned “what kind of lover am I?”
CONCERT REVIEW The Past and Future of Music:
Part of the joy of listening to contemporary music is to have the composer as reference and concordance for the works. For those trying to discover a suitable niche for Ezra Sims work on Friday evening’s Boston Musica Viva Concert, Mr. Sims delivered such a discussion on his piece <i>Four Landscapes</i> (2008). Speaking at Boston University’s Tsai Center for the Performing Arts, where the concert was held, he described <i>Landscapes</i> as a microtonal piece utilizing twelve-tone principles. As crucial as this exegesis was, what was particularly informative were Mr. Sim’s thoughts on how these pieces fit within his entire opus. Comparing himself to Chopin, he observed that this work was his “so-called Preludes.”
ALBUM REVIEW East from the Midwest
Chicago-based trio Pillars & Tongues don’t just play together: they talk to each other, critique each other, and advise each other—with their instruments, of course. Their frank, uninhibited musical conversations have been compiled onto a disc entitled <i>Protection</i>, released just last month on the Contraphonic imprint.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ 1/2 Sex, Rocket Launchers, and Emotional Baggage
If “The Notebook” humped a car chase, the unholy spawn that was produced would be “Quantum of Solace.” Much like a Miss USA contestant named Mildred, the latest Bond film is visually impressive, has a stupid name, and is pretty much devoid of substance. While it features top-shelf action and is extremely exciting throughout, the latest incarnation of James Bond simply lacks the cool confidence that sets the franchise apart from every other secret agent thriller.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★★★ Dense, Lurid Memory
Wong Kar-Wai may be the most unjustly categorized filmmaker alive: it’s easy to see his movies as little more than small, dizzying portraits of love, loss, and romance — as mood pieces.
DANCE REVIEW Lincoln’s Legacy Dazzles at ICA
The Bill T. Jones/Anie Zane Dance Company has been established for 25 years and is renowned as a driving force in the modern dance world. The last weekend of October, the company performed a piece, “Another Evening: Serenade/Proposition,” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
ALBUM REVIEW Crossing Party Lines
We all love to be wordly. Shuffle through your friends’ facebook pages, and you’ll no doubt find a slew of open-minded comrades summarizing their musical preferences as “everything.” That is, everything by the Shins. Or, alternatively, Shostakovich.
CONCERT REVIEW Keith Jarrett is Better Than You, and He Knows It
The trailblazer of egoism in Jazz might be Miles Davis, or perhaps Charlie Mingus; each declared jazz to be art, not just entertainment. They didn’t smile. They didn’t laugh. If you screwed around with them, they punched you in the face (in Mingus’ case).
CONCERT REVIEW New and Old
Sometimes I worry that my particular brand of love for Jane toes a fine, but distinct, line between nuisance and comedic relief. She puts up with a whole lot: I constantly talk to her during lecture, disturb her while she’s in the middle of her experiments, push my fiber pills on her like I were a dealer, tell her dirty jokes (loudly) when we’re in public and insist on detailing the most horrific details of my ever-faltering love life.