Album Review: Mary Halvorson- Belladonna

My first experience with the contemporary classical sound known as new music was a bitter disappointment.  At a time in which my music budget was extremely limited, I took a flier on Anthony Davis’ 1987 album Undine.  Rather than the cutting-edge jazz I’d expected, the long out-of-print release on the Gramavision label contains a pair of challenging compositions in the vein of Morton Feldman.  I didn’t get it.

Mary Halvorson’s thrilling new Belladonna album compelled me to return to Undine for the first time in more than 30 years.  The discordant strings that struck me as an incomprehensible slap in the face in the 1980s now sound entirely natural.  I was uniquely prepared, consequently, for Belladonna.  Featuring the guitarist’s squiggly freakouts over the similarly strident work of the Mivos Quartet, Belladonna is an adventure in dissonance.  

I came to Halvorson’s distinctive attack about a year before the only time I’ve seen her perform.  It’s since become obvious that Halvorson is one of the most important musicians to emerge in the first quartet of this century.  Belladonna, and to a lesser extent its companion album Amaryllis, is precisely the sort of confrontational sound I’ve spent three decades unknowingly preparing to appreciate.

Concert Review: Samantha Ege at the Folly Theater

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Millions of people heard Scott Joplin’s 1902 composition “The Entertainer” for the first time in 1973.  Recorded for the soundtrack of “The Sting,” Marvin Hamlisch’s rendition was a fluke hit.  I was among the dumbstruck listeners who asked “what is this amazing music, and why haven’t I heard anything like it before?”

I had a similar experience at the Folly Theater on Sunday, May 15.  Samantha Ege didn’t play ragtime at her free piano recital for an audience of about 200.  Instead, the British musicologist revived the neglected compositions of African American women.  Selections by the likes of Florence Price sounded as if Claude Debussy had moved to Chicago to become the music director of an African Methodist Episcopal congregation.

The obscurity of the seamless melding of European classical music with American blues and gospel is a cultural crime.  In the remarkably sensitive hands of Ege, the works of Price, Margaret Bonds, Zenobia Powell Perry, Betty Jackson King and Nora Holt seem no less delightful or significant than the output of George Gershwin and Aaron Copland.

Album Review: Andris Nelsons- Strauss

The classical music industry’s proclivity for size is impressive.  Strauss is a case in point.  Andris Nelsons’ new release on Deutsche Grammophon features the conductor leading the Boston Symphony and Leipzig Gewandhaus in an eight-hour and 32-minute marathon of works by Richard Strauss.  Featured soloists include cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Yuja Wang.  Absorbing the vast expanse provided me with considerable time to attempt to figure out how a single composer can be responsible for the worst sorts of classical schmaltz, jarring moments of jarring avant-garde noise and futuristic litanies.  I hope to one day fully understand Strauss’ fantastic achievement.

Doomsday Jazz: The End Times Improvisations of Oren Ambarchi and Ches Smith

The majority of Earth-bound humans would opt for one of two obvious courses of action should they be given sufficient warning the end is nigh.  Some might choose bacchanalian indulgence and lawless decadence.  Ches Smith has them covered.

Interpret It Well, the unsettling new album by the innovative percussionist, conveys the sense of nausea induced by existential excess.  Three distinguished accomplices- violist Mat Maneri, guitarist Bill Frisell and pianist Craig Taborn- enable Smith’s queasy course.

Even idealistic listeners are likely to associate Ghosted with abhorrently riveting experiences such as driving past a ghastly car accident or spending Saturday night in the waiting room of an overtaxed emergency room.

Preparing for destruction will inspire others to summon a higher power.  The inventive guitarist Oren Ambarchi’s hypnotic new album with bassist Johan Berthling and percussionist Andreas Werliin might serve as a nonsectarian hymn.  

The successful melding of Malian folk music, the Islamic adhan, Indian classical music and Terry Riley-style minimalism suggests that Ghosted is the ultimate rarity: a good “world music” album.  In truth, the trio creates interstellar jazz.

Two extraordinary music videos interpret the differing apocalyptic perspectives.  Ambarchi’s "II" consists of everyday scenes of nature.  "Protect Your Home", a short film depicting literal doomsday scenarios, is set to the title track of Interpret It Well.

Concert Review: Little Joe y La Familia at the Guadalupe Center

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I dragged my decrepit carcass to the Guadalupe Center to catch Little Joe Hernández on Saturday, May 7.  The fond memory of a 2019 concert compelled me to overcome crippling fatigue.  The extraordinary energy of the 81-year-old known as The King of the Brown Sound reinvigorated my body and soul. In truth, my disposition revived even before Little Joe y La Familia performed.  Joining the approximately 1,500 cheerful revelers at the free street festival was therapeutic.  Supported by an elite eight-piece band and filled with feisty humor, Hernández made bawdy asides and chided the members of the audience who remained seated. Like Hernández, I couldn’t understand how people resisted joining me at the front of the stage. Hearing potent renditions of hits from 57 years ago by the original artist always represents an irresistibly bewitching opportunity to travel through time and space.

Concert Review: The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s "Tosca" at Muriel Kauffman Theatre

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I didn’t know what to make of the lovely family seated near me in the cheap seats of Kansas City’s splashy opera house on Friday, May 7.  After witnessing scenes of torture, attempted rape, murder and suicide in Giacomo Puccini’s provocatively melodramatic 1900 opera “Tosca,” two perfectly behaved little girls in matching dresses and their doting parents walked out of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts as if they’d just taken in a showing of Disney on Ice.

The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s production rattled me.  “Tosca” was the first professional opera I’d experienced in-person since 2019.  As documented extensively at this site, I came to opera late in life.  I immersed myself in the form during the pandemic.  When I finish watching the Hungarian State Opera’s mesmerizing new four-hour rendering of Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal,” I’ll have taken in 303 online operas in the past two years.

The initiative altered my expectations. Having seen Luciano Pavarotti play the ill-fated painter Mario Cavaradossiin in two filmed productions of “Tosca,” my standards are now unreasonably high. Only Marina Costa-Jackson’s turn in the title role didn’t disappoint me last night. Other positives: the Kansas City Symphony was electrifying, the lighting was excellent and the informal banter among patrons in the peanut gallery was refreshing.

Album Review: Pavement- Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal

I was never entirely sold on Pavement during the band’s 1990s heyday.  I loved college radio staples like “Range Life” but roughly half of the band’s deeper cuts irritated me.  I was suspicious of Pavement’s ironic sensibility and its affinity for jam band aesthetics.

My affection for all 161 minutes of Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal, the new expanded version of Pavement’s 1999 album, indicate I’ve become substantially less stodgy.  It helps that I’m now able to recognize primary songwriter Stephen Malkmus’ channeling of literary titans like Don DeLillo while he and his band mates noodle.

“Major Leagues” and “Spit on a Stranger” have aged into a bespoke form of classic rock while the skepticism I once felt for tracks like “Speak, See, Remember” has been replaced with unqualified admiration. Besides, the knowing smirk that once annoyed me now seems like the only appropriate affectation for indie-rock musicians.

Album Review: LeVelle- My Journey Continues

An atrocious new recording by a Kansas City vocalist temporarily poisoned the well for locally based R&B in my compound. Auditioning LeVelle’s album was delayed to allow my ears and mind sufficient time to recover. I needn’t have waited. Where the unnamed project is amateurish, uninspired and dull, LeVelle’s My Journey Contines is professional, invigorating and exciting. The silky Kansas City vocalist is joined by the neo-soul giant Anthony Hamilton on the grown-and-sexy single "Fell In Love". The remainder of the album is almost as good. Not only is My Journey Continues the strongest (non-jazz and non-classical) album by a Kansas City artist released in the first four months of 2022, it has the capacity to cleanse the memory of many unpleasant experiences.

April 2022 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot from the trailer of the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” by There Stands the Glass. PBS broadcast the opera on April 1.

Top Ten Albums (Released in April, excluding 4/29 titles)

1. Pusha T- It’s Almost Dry

The trio of Kanye, Pharrell and King Push is an unbeatable dream team.

2. Gerald Clayton- Bells on Sand

My review.

3. Billy Woods- Aethiopes

Highbrow hip-hop.

4. Tord Gustavsen Trio- Opening

My review.

5. Myra Melford- For the Love of Fire and Water

The pianist leads a free jazz supergroup.

6. Joel Ross- The Parable of the Poet

Palpably spiritual jazz.

7. Mitsuko Uchida- Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

My review.

8. Sault- Air

My review.

9. Cole Swindell- Stereotype

My review.

10. Vince Staples- Ramona Park Broke My Heart

Understated excellence.


Top Ten Songs (Released in April)

1. Miranda Lambert- "Actin' Up"

Call the cops.

2. Kaitlin Butts- "She's Using"

Codeine dreams.

3. Christian Nodal- "Aguardiente"

Poison.

4. Bonnie Raitt- "Love So Strong"

Kombucha for the soul.

5. Horace Andy- "Watch Over Them"

Reggae lion in winter.

6. Anitta featuring Chencho Corleone- "Gata"

The cat’s pajamas.

7. Young M.A.- “Tip the Surgeon”

Bloody.

8. Doechii- "Crazy"

Time to get right with God.

9. Lele Pons and Kim Loaiza- "Piketona"

Clubbed.

10. Making Movies- "Sala de los Pecadores"

Den of sin.


Top Ten Performances of April

1. Joyce DiDonato at the Folly Theater

My review.

2. Daniil Trifonov at the Folly Theater

My review.

3. Drew Williams, Ben Tervort and Brian Steever at Westport Coffee House

My review.

4. Babehoven at Farewell

My Instagram clip.

5. Kwan Leung Ling, Evan Verploegh and Ben Baker at Charlotte Street Foundation

My Instagram clip.

6. Ducks Ltd. at the Green House

My Instagram clip.

7. Maul at Vivo

My Instagram clip.

8. Tyrone Clark, Charles Gatschet and Taylor Babb- Green Lady Lounge

The venue’s all-originals policy is paying off.

9. Jeff Harshbarger Quartet at the Blue Room

Standards deviations.

10. A Pile of Dead Horses at 7th Heaven

Fargo noise.



Last month’s survey is here.

Concert Review: Daniil Trifonov at the Folly Theater

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Possession of a deeply discounted ticket for Daniil Trifonov’s April 24 concert at the Folly Theater helped sustain me in the bleakest moments of the pandemic.  I’d been looking forward to the pianist’s twice-rescheduled recital for a long time.  I can’t speak for others in the audience of about 700, but the misguided calls for a boycott- Trifonov was born in Russia- meant nothing to me.

The first half of the concert exceeded my lofty expectations.  The 45-minute free-for-all was the most exciting performance I’ve heard in 2022.  Hunched over the piano and panting heavily, Trifonov lurched as if he was enduring electrical shocks during a rendering of Karol Szymanowski’s discordant Sonata No. 3, Op. 36.

Trifonov then teased out unexpectedly jarring aspects of Claude Debussy’s Pour le piano L. 95.  Even better was a riotous interpretation of Sergei Prokofiev’s avant-garde Sarcasms, Op 17.  The pianist’s revelatory approach implied the three composers anticipated the subsequent innovations of Pierre Boulez, John Cage and Cecil Taylor.

I correctly anticipated the second half of the concert- Johannes Brahms’ Piano Sonata No. 3- would be a letdown.  My indifference to Brahms remains intact even though Trifonov invested everything he had into the work.  As he sweat profusely while abusing a piano bench, I contemplated my good fortune to be seated 20 feet from one of the world’s foremost musicians.