dcl

To travel, to experience beyond my boundaries...

"Ethiopian keyboardist Kibrom Birhane plants the flag for Ethio-jazz with Here and There, his third album as leader. Exposed to Ethiopian Orthodox chanting and traditional music in his youth, Birhane later studied at the Mekane Yesus School of Jazz Music in Addis Ababa..." Kibrom Birhane: Here And There

Hey Itch2 The Chrissie Hynde gets top marks from me, too. 💗

A bit of fudging here, however, an anthology is an entryway into new artists for those on the lookout. "Hellbound Train is a double-album retrospective from Steve Tibbetts with music selected by the US guitarist from 40 years of recordings on ECM . Neatly divided into electric and acoustic chapters, the anthology juxtaposes pieces... With its liquid melodies and textures and hypnotic patterns and pulsations subtly influenced by music of many cultures. it’s an ideal introduction to a unique body of work. At different times Tibbetts might seem closer to minimalism, alternate rock or ambient music, yet his artistic signature is unmistakable."

"It’s still a remarkable song—but it’s not the same song. It’s the same singer, but maybe not quite the same singer, either...It is interesting—maybe, for some of us of a certain age, even comforting—to hear rock stars revisit their songs in voices tempered by age and experience, and to know they have a sense of mortality no different from the rest of us." https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/07/pretenders-nick-lowe-elvis-costello-rock-nostalgia/661477/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Steve Tibbetts, Black Mountain Side

Astor Piazzolla's Libertango.

The Sergio Mendez & Brasil 66 version , 1968 I think, is a touchstone. I imagine this concert version would've been a captivating Wow!

Miles Davis, cover of the Tina Turner classic. Recalling he included Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time an on earlier release or two.

There is a Phil Spector sound, Beach Boys sound, Electric Light Orchestra sound...there is ABBA's. I am reading that the original Swedish-version lyrics are different from the English version. Coming now as an old dude to appreciate their craft.

"The Danish String Quartet’s Grammy-nominated Prism project, linking Bach fugues, Beethoven quartets and works by later masters, receives its fourth installment..." More here.

"Kit Downes joins forces with long-time collaborators Petter Eldh on bass and James Maddren on drums for a carefully assorted piano trio programme that treads gentle lyricism and bold creative outbursts in equal measures. Downes, whose prior ECM offering Dreamlife of Debris was termed a “work of otherworldly beauty” by BBC Music Magazine, carves out some of his most compendious pieces to date on Vermillion. Replete with subtle twists and turns, the trio offers its idiosyncratic take on the piano trio format, producing unexpected harmonic alterations and animate rhythmic flashes as they flesh out distinct musical forms. Recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano, the three-piece outlines a unique design for this instrumentation in clear-cut interplay and creates a profound study of Kit Downes’ broad musical imagination in the process."