CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Orchestra Hall October 26 and November 3 Samuel Barber had the misfortune to peak early. In 1933, when he was barely 23 and fresh out of the Curtis Institute, the Philadelphia Orchestra introduced his very first orchestral score. Other premieres and honors soon followed, including a prestigious Prix de Rome that […]
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Mekons
It’s possible that the only true survivors–emotionally, musically, and politically–of the great initial blast of British punk are the Mekons. The music of their convincing early onslaught has evolved over the last six or so years into an unassailable melange of modern British postpunk and Hank Williams-era C & W, and the result is an […]
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Putting Pere Ubu together again
It’s hard enough being one of the hundreds of bands trying to reach the record-buying public these days. More and more, battling for music-television exposure, a slot on corporate rock radio’s playlists, and a slice of a label’s recession-squeezed promotional budget amounts to a musical Darwinism in which “fittest” too often means “easy to market.” […]
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Medieval Soap Opera
THE ROMANCE OF TRISTAN Newberry Consort at the Newberry Library October 5 Of course Wagner came up with the most famous and definitive version of the story of Tristan and Isolde’s doomed love–the one in which Isolde sings for more than 20 minutes before death transports her to the Valhalla for postsuicidal couples. But Wagner […]
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8 Bold Souls
8 Bold Souls is the most famous unknown band in America. They play mostly in tiny Chicago clubs, far from the center of the jazz world; nevertheless, when the Village Voice took a poll of jazz critics to determine the outstanding albums of the 1980s, 8 Bold Souls won second place–especially amazing considering the disc […]
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Guaranteed Period
BASICALLY BACH at Scottish Rite Cathedral September 27 MURRAY PERAHIA AND THE ORPHEUS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA at Orchestra Hall October 4 As much as I’d like to applaud the period-instrument, authentic-performance movement’s effort to simulate original concerts, the concerts I’ve heard demonstrate why most composers since Haydn have wanted bigger, better-tuned instruments. The short-necked, gut-stringed violins […]
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Virtual funk: the soul of the new machines
You might call it Virtual Funk. It’s the process whereby “feel” and “groove” in modern pop music have been progressively diverted from actual human performers and inserted into microcircuits. Contemporary dance music of all kinds–rap and hip hop, soul, pop, and hard rock–all now benefit from the triumph of the machine. If it seems paradoxical […]
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Nirvana
“Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the first song on Nirvana’s major-label debut, Nevermind, is a potent, almost mythopoetic rendering of the modern rock ‘n’ roll condition. “I feel stupid and contagious / Here we are now, entertain us,” sings lyricist-guitarist-singer Kurt Cobain with ferocious glee. The song’s shattering attack confirms Nirvana’s status as, finally, a group […]
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Steve Lacy + 16–Itinerary/Franz Koglmann–The Use of Memory/Charlie Haden and the Liberation–Dream Keeper/Carla Bley–The Very Big Carla Bley Band/Kenny Wheeler–Music for Large & Small Ensembles/Freddie Redd–Everybody Lov
ITINERARY Steve Lacy + 16 Hat ART THE USE OF MEMORY Franz Koglmann Hat ART DREAM KEEPER Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra Blue Note THE VERY BIG CARLA BLEY BAND Carla Bley Watt MUSIC FOR LARGE & SMALL ENSEMBLES Kenny Wheeler ECM EVERYBODY LOVES A WINNER Freddie Redd Milestone GENIUS OF MODERN MUSIC, […]
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Robert Ward: a guitar legend back from obscurity
“Rediscoveries” are rare in blues and R & B these days. About the closest thing recently was the rehabilitation of Memphis soul legend James Carr, the man who recorded the original “Dark End of the Street” in 1966 and seemed marked for stardom until mental illness derailed him a few years later. After decades of […]
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Chillin’ of a Lesser God
CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Petrillo Music Shell September 21 Is Daniel Barenboim facing rough waters ahead? Even before he was appointed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s highest artistic post, the Argentinean-born conductor was getting a bad rap in the local press. One commentator attributed his strong candidacy to cronyism (the cronies being Georg Solti and […]
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Days of Rose’s whining
There are about half a hundred funny things about Guns n’ Roses’ superhyped pair of new albums, Use Your Illusion I and II, the band’s first real output since their 1987 debut. One funny thing is that the first record starts off with a song called “Right Next Door to Hell,” which takes its title […]
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Truth, love, peace, and get it on
It’s conventional wisdom that modern soul music arose out of the marriage of the sacred and the profane that occurred in the 50s when Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and others melded traditional gospel with secular lyrics. The revolutionary music that resulted was a source of widespread enthusiasm, but it also bred consternation, and not only […]
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Basically Bach
Basically Bach, the enterprising period-instrument ensemble, deserves an “A” for chutzpah for attempting to subject Mozart’s greatest and most complex symphony to the “authenticity” treatment. The profound beauty and formalism of the Jupiter Symphony depend heavily on its contrasts and reconciliations, which can be best expressed by a large modern orchestra. (Even by 1788, the […]
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Composing Women
NEW MUSIC CONSORT at Ravinia August 29 The creative side of music has long been a men’s domain, and it remains astonishingly so even today. Few women figure in any account of the history of music, and none can claim a place in the familiar pantheons of great composers. This dearth can be attributed to […]