Journal
- Friday, November 22, 2024
The Way Out of Easy, the first album from guitarist Jeff Parker and his long-running ETA IVtet—saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, drummer Jay Bellerose—since their 2022 debut Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, which Pitchfork named one of the Best Albums of the 2020s So Far, is out now on International Anthem / Nonesuch Records. Like that album, The Way Out of Easy comprises recordings from LA venue ETA, where Parker and the ensemble held a weekly residency for seven years. During that time, the ETA IVtet evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form journeys into innovative, groove-oriented improvised music. All four tracks on The Way Out of Easy come from a single night in 2023, providing an unfiltered view of the ensemble, fully in their element.
Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News
- Friday, September 30, 2022
Congratulations to Molly Tuttle, who has won the International Bluegrass Music Association Award for Female Vocalist of the Year! Tuttle has just shared a new live performance video for the title track to Crooked Tree, the debut album with her band, Golden Highway. The video was filmed during their sold-out release show at Nashville’s legendary Station Inn this past spring, celebrating the acclaimed new album. Tuttle and the band were joined by Jerry Douglas, who co-produced the album with her. You can watch it here.
Journal Topics: Artist News, VideoFriday, September 30, 2022Hardly Strictly Bluegrass returns to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where both Emmylou Harris and Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi perform Sunday. Also doubling up at festivals this weekend are The Black Keys and Wilco, both at Mempho Music Festival in Memphis, and Hurray for the Riff Raff and Conor Oberst at Felice Country Fair in upstate NY. Punch Brothers join others to pay tribute to Bob Dylan at The Town Hall in NYC. Devendra Banhart is in Kyoto, Japan. Jeremy Denk and Tigran Hamasyan each give solo piano recitals—in Carmel, CA, and Florence, Italy, respectively.
Journal Topics: On Tour, Weekend EventsThursday, September 29, 2022Björk's new podcast series Sonic Symbolism, in which she explores each of her albums, one per episode, focuses this week on Biophilia, her 2011 album, app, and musicology curriculum. "One of the things that really influenced me during Biophilia,” she says on the show, “was the element table. I really liked to connect nature with musicology, and connect with it raw materials, so it’s not human scale. It’s not tables and chairs and violins and humans and these interactions … [but] places where there are no people, which is either inside the atoms or in galaxies.” You can hear the episode here.
Journal Topics: Artist News, PodcastFriday, September 23, 2022Caroline Shaw’s Evergreen, featuring Shaw and Attacca Quartet, is out now. Evergreen is five original works by Shaw: three pieces written for string quartet—Three Essays, Blueprint, and The Evergreen—and two songs written for string quartet and voice. It also includes an interpretation of a twelfth century French poem, which the Quartet performs with Shaw on vocals. Shaw and Attacca Quartet perform from Evergreen at Public Records in Brooklyn this Tuesday, September 27. You can take a quick look inside the album here.
Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist NewsFriday, September 23, 2022Makaya McCraven's new album, In These Times, is out now on International Anthem / Nonesuch / XL. It is the album McCraven’s been trying to make since he started making records, an appropriately career-defining body of work. The eleven-song suite was created over seven-plus years, as McCraven strived to fuse odd-meter compositions from his working songbook with orchestral, large-ensemble arrangements and the edit-heavy “organic beat music” he’s honed over the years. With contributions from over a dozen musicians and creative partners from his tight-knit circle of collaborators—including Jeff Parker, Junius Paul, Brandee Younger, Joel Ross, and Marquis Hill—In These Times highlights McCraven’s gift for collapsing space, destroying borders, and blending past, present, and future into poly-textural arrangements of post-genre, jazz-rooted 21st-century folk music.
Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist NewsFriday, September 23, 2022Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade tour California, at SFJAZZ, Monterey Jazz Festival, and Blue Note Napa. Timo Andres is in Brooklyn. The Black Keys play the iHeart Radio Festival in Vegas. Michelle Branch is at The Fillmore in San Francisco. Joachim Cooder is in Georgia.. Cécile McLorin Salvant concludes her Blue Note NYC residency. Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion perform Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part at Skidmore. Molly Tuttle is in Minnesota and Tennessee. Wilco is in Calgary and Montana.
Journal Topics: On Tour, Weekend EventsThursday, September 22, 2022Michelle Branch has released a karaoke version of "Not My Lover," a song from her new album, The Trouble with Fever, so fans can sing along and recreate the official video, in which Branch and friends visit a local karaoke bar in Nashville. You can find the karaoke version and the song's lyrics here to join in, as well as the original video for inspiration.
Journal Topics: Artist News, VideoWednesday, September 21, 2022The first studio recording of Tyondai Braxton's Telekinesis—an eighty-seven-piece work for electric guitars, orchestra, choir and electronics—is due November 11 on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records. The album features the Metropolis Ensemble conducted by Andrew Cyr, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus conducted by Dianne Berkun Menaker, and chamber choir The Crossing conducted by Donald Nally performing what the Guardian calls "a superpower-themed symphony … a titanic composition." Braxton cites the Japanese manga classic Akira as a thematic guide, with its story of a young boy's discovery of his telekinetic powers and his inability to control it, leading to his own destruction.
Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist NewsMonday, September 19, 2022Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway were on PBS’s The Caverns Sessions, performing songs from their debut album, Crooked Tree, released earlier this year on Nonesuch. The set was taped deep within the subterranean amphitheater of The Caverns in Tennessee's Cumberland Mountains. You can watch the episode, featuring the album tracks "She'll Change," "Castilleja," "Side Saddle," the title track, and more, here.
Journal Topics: Artist News, Television, VideoMonday, September 19, 2022Congratulations to Cécile McLorin Salvant, who has won the Edison Jazz Award in the Netherlands for International Vocal for her Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song, released earlier this year. Salvant leads a week-long residency at the Blue Note in New York City this week and returns to Europe to tour in October.
Journal Topics: Artist NewsFriday, September 16, 2022Michelle Branch's fourth solo album, The Trouble With Fever, is out now. Also out today is the video for the album's second single, "Not My Lover," directed by Alexa Stone and Stephen Kinigopoulos at a local karaoke bar in Nashville. You can watch it here. "This song is about the mistakes we make and trying to learn from them instead of letting them burn you down,” Branch says. "You have the power to change your own narrative." Branch's tour began in Boston last night and continues in Philadelphia, NYC, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA. Her sold-out show at the Troubadour in LA September 27 will stream live.
Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News, On Tour, VideoFriday, September 16, 2022Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway have released a cover of Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 hit "White Rabbit," available only on Amazon Music. "I have loved the story of Alice In Wonderland since I read the book as a kid and played the Queen of Hearts in my school play,” Tuttle says. "Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane is from Palo Alto, CA, just like me, and this song gives me the nostalgic feeling of growing up, but recording it also pushed my band forward into new territory musically." Tuttle and the band can be seen on PBS's The Caverns Sessions this Saturday.
Journal Topics: Artist News