Latest Programs
Sunday 24 August 2008
Listen Now - 24082008 |
Darrell Scott is living proof that a ‘talented non-conformist’ can enjoy success, even in today’s Nashville. He has won more than one national award for ‘Songwriter of the Year’, but other great North American songsters wrote everything on his Modern Hymns. Darell is a superbly soulful singer and multi-instrumentalist. With top-shelf accomplices, he does wonderful, non-imitative, oft-surprising, but always-appropriate things to Joni, Bob, Kris, Leonard, Paul et al... including some writers whose surnames you’d not so easily guess!
Saturday 23 August 2008
Listen Now - 23082008 |
Jazz guitar’s rising star grew up in Benin. Lionel Loueke has also lived and studied in other parts of Africa and in Paris. His musical world is not just ‘jazz.’ He is, however, American-resident and already a refreshing force in American jazz. Karibu is at core a trio set of new music. Most of the composed notes are the leader’s. His bassist and drummer are, respectively, Swedish-Italian and Hungarian. Loueke’s guests are jazz icons who have already employed and championed him: saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Herbie Hancock. Says Hancock, ‘I haven’t found anybody that’s excited me this much in a long time.’
Sunday 17 August 2008
Listen Now - 17082008 |
Our featured duo’s members are, respectively, one of her and his generation’s key figures in Finnish music. Johanna Juhola was born in 1978. Her ‘creative fury’ moved one approving reviewer to remark that she was one reason ‘Finnish tango is not what it used to be’. Tango is just one aspect! Before she was born Timo Alakotila was already one of the keys to Finnish ‘folk’ music becoming so vibrant, creative, so unconfined by ‘folk’ or any label. On Vapaassa Tilassa {their first duo album} Timo plays grand piano and Johanna two kinds of accordion. The duo performs its own original music, with very nice cameo roles for splendid players of other instruments.
Saturday 16 August 2008
Listen Now - 16082008 |
Senegal’s Baaba Maal has one of this planet’s singular voices. For too long, it has not graced a new album. His 2008 release On the Road is not on a shop shelf near you, and Baaba Maal did not enter a studio to make it! A lot of Maal’s finest moments occur on stage, especially when he is in intimate, ‘acoustic’ mode. Available via the artist’s own site, On The Road presents 8 such performances. The late-great kora player Kaouding Cissoko is on several cuts. Ernest Ranglin plays very tasty guitar on one. Maal’s mesmerising singing is the key, constant element.
More Past Programs...
One of the 20th century’s greatest American songwriters is now in his 65th year. He is still writing great new songs in the 21st century. Harps and Angels shows that Randy Newman is not retiring ... in any sense. Be warned: this American does have a keen sense of irony. If you enjoy mordant wit, Newman’s latests musings on mortality {with particular reference to his own and to ‘the end of an Empire’} ought to make you laugh out loud; the music itself is also amusing ... and deliciously rich. However, if Short People made you angry and fooled you into thinking prejudice was Newman’s pleasure rather than target, you will be much happier with some other sweeter, simpler songster.
6am AEST