Dmitri Atapine encouraged an audience of 200 to renounce the term “new music” during his introduction of Garibaldi Trio’s recital at the 1900 Building on Thursday, January 30. The co-Artistic Director of The Friends of Chamber Music noted that all music was once new. Besides, he said, what’s new today inevitably grows old.

Musical semantics don’t interest me as much as experiencing fresh sounds. The evening reminded me that institutional suppression of progressive music is just as pervasive in the classical realm as it is in jazz.

I was both ashamed and angry as I experienced works by Stephen Chatman, Lowell Liebermann and Dobrinka Tabakove for the first time. Thanks to my fixation with ECM Records, I’d previously encountered Jörg Widmann’s outlandish Fünf Bruchstücke for clarinet and piano.

Rendered by the charismatic trio of clarinetist José Franch-Ballester, pianist David Fung and violist Marina Thibeault, all four pieces resounded like indispensable components of the classical repertoire. The discounted ticket I purchased on a whim for $10 two months ago revealed previously concealed universes.

William Brownlee

January 27, 2025

Concert Review: Traxman at miniBar

William Brownlee

January 27, 2025

Many of my friends and associates in Kansas City are suffused with joy by an annual tribute to David Bowie. Their exaltation gladdens me. I sensed the communal ecstasy while taking in a couple minutes of a livestream of a sold out show at recordBar on Saturday, January 25.

After hitting a jazz gig, I paid $25 to enter recordBar’s small sister venue miniBar that night to catch Chicago footwork pioneer Traxman’s final North American show prior to his European tour.

About three dozen people danced to the innovator’s electronic beats. Mesmerized, I doubled my daily step count without realizing I’d been moving. I knew Bowie- an artist famously loath to repeat himself- was with me in spirit.

William Brownlee

January 23, 2025

Album Review: James McVinnie- Dreamcatcher

William Brownlee

January 23, 2025

I occasionally use archival Sviatoslav Richter recordings as references to evaluate the interpretations of the classical pianists of today. In addition to admiring Richter’s no-nonsense approach, I’m morbidly intrigued by the ill-timed coughing and squeaking of chairs of sickly and uncomfortable Russians through the muffled audio of the Soviet-era documents. Dreamcatcher, the new solo album by keyboardist James McVinnie, comes from a universe Richter almost certainly couldn’t have imagined. In addition to the transgressive piano and organ works of living composers including Meredith Monk and Nico Muhly, Dreamcatcher is notable for excruciatingly intense sound fields that are damaging to both my playback mechanisms and my mind. When I wrote about my recent fixation on the sounds of organs last month, I had no idea I’d soon find it necessary to wrap my head around landscapes like this. It’s entirely possible I’ll come to reject these inside-the-instrument recordings, but until then, I can’t stop listening.

William Brownlee

January 20, 2025

Flute Faction

William Brownlee

January 20, 2025

Original image of Emmanual Pahud, Ellen Sommer and Grace Farney by There Stands the Glass.

I learn more at musicians’ master classes than I do from conventional performances of classical music. Emmanuel Pahud’s tutoring at Helzberg Hall on Saturday, January 18, was no exception. The preeminent classical flutist’s commentary about sheet music discrepancies, composers’ intentions and musical interactions provided new insights. The Swiss star’s critiques of four locally based flutists sounded surprisingly undiplomatic to members of the audience of several hundred who hadn’t taken in his clinics online. Acknowledging that his words were occasionally “harsh,” Pahud respected the intrepid flutists by treating them as peers. Unsurprisingly, occasional demonstrations of Pahud’s golden flute were breathtaking.

William Brownlee

January 16, 2025

All My Children

William Brownlee

January 16, 2025

My life partner jokes that I have dozens of children besides our biological offspring. I maintain paternal associations with dozens of people born decades after me. Three such youths are the members of Blackstarkids. My status as a day-one advocate of the Kansas City band led to our ongoing association.

Ty Faizon issued Mango Marai & The Saturn Star four weeks ago. The mixtape has three primary themes: drugs (I don’t approve), self-defensive justifications (Ty shouldn’t worry about what other people think) and music obsessiveness (my favorite element). It’s my kind of mess.

I love Ty’s flow, emo-esque sincerity and production. He and I esteem the sonic worlds created by Q-Tip, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. The distinctive presence of TheBabeGabe is also welcome. Gabe’s new single "PSA" lives at the intersection of jazz, punk and hip-hop. It sounds like home.

William Brownlee

January 7, 2025

Album Review: Bad Bunny- Debí Tirar Más Fotos

William Brownlee

January 7, 2025

A winter storm deposited a foot of snow on the Kansas City area over the weekend. Trapped inside their homes with little better to do, neighbors monitored my progress as I shoveled on Monday, January 6. My driveway never seemed so long.

Between the debilitating cold and a thin layer of ice, success didn’t seem probable. What doubters couldn’t know is that I was powered by the album Bad Bunny released a few hours earlier.

Debí Tirar Más Fotos is a 62-minute survey of the past fifty years of Puerto Rican music. While it’s still loaded with the gaudy decadence associated with Bad Bunny, Debí Tirar Más Fotos is the most sophisticated album yet from my 2020 Artist of the Year. For every allusion to contemporary pop there’s a reference to vintage Fania Records.

I managed to clear a thirty-foot path from my garage to the street during the first two plays of Debí Tirar Más Fotos. An impressed neighbor sent a congratulatory text as I thawed out during the third of what’s certain to be dozens of rotations of Debí Tirar Más Fotos in 2025.

William Brownlee

January 3, 2025

Concert Review: Kristina Reiko Cooper and the Kinnor Philharmonic at White Theatre

William Brownlee

January 3, 2025

I often joke that disruptive people fiddling with paper at worship services and concerts sound as if they’re practicing origami. I suppressed a smile when I turned to see who was incessantly crinkling a program at White Theatre on New Year’s Day. A kid was actually engaged in an elaborate origami project.

Nevertheless, I glared at the noisemaker until his mother made him cut it out. I didn’t want anything impinging on my appreciation of cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper’s extraordinary playing on Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s dramatic “Fantasy for Cello & Orchestra” with the Kinnor Philharmonic. Having paid $19 for the concert, I intended to get my money’s worth.

The disruption by the crafty kid was merely a preview of the casual audience behavior. Many members of the audience of about 400 behaved as if the event was an outdoor picnic. A Tootie-worthy outburst compelled Cooper to momentarily pause during reading of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme.”

Yet Susan Goldenberg’s invocation of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning after intermission helped me take the tantrum in stride. By the time a rendition of "Hatikvah" concluded the concert, I’d resolved to be more patient with inevitable irritants in the new year.

William Brownlee

January 2, 2025

Album Review: ØKSE- ØKSE

William Brownlee

January 2, 2025

I took only occasional peeks at The Free Jazz Collective in 2024. That’s gonna change. I was simultaneously intrigued and alarmed when the site’s editors named the self-titled release by ØKSE its 2024 album of the year on New Year’s Day. I’d been unfamiliar with the Norwegian band. What a terrible oversight! ØKSE has much the same intent as Sunny Five’s Candid, the skronky missive that’s my favorite jazz album of 2024. The avant-garde all-stars in Sunny Five create a rarified form of punk-jazz. Rather than punk, ØKSE melds underground hip-hop with American improvised music. In addition to their impeccable artistic merit, both albums robustly disprove the fallacious notion that the entirety of the jazz realm has become tired, tame and trifling. Candid and ØKSE are as vital as any music released in 2024.

William Brownlee

December 31, 2024

Bibliomania: My Year in Books

William Brownlee

December 31, 2024

Used books apparently aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. I took advantage of the pricing anomaly in 2024 by purchasing hundreds of undervalued books at thrift shops and library sales in 2024. Diligent bargain hunting put me well on my way to assembling one of the finest general-interest libraries in my zip code. Yet I own only half the 111 books I read in 2024. Because purchases made during my scavenger hunts are on a best-title-available status, I’m still dependent on library loans. My intellectual improvement regimen is rigorous regardless of the source. I balanced weighty non-fiction studies with literary classics by Baldwin, Balzac, Conrad, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Ibsen, Machiavelli, Maugham, Raleigh and Wharton. Even so, I’m not too proud to admit my affection for lightweight fare such as popular histories written by Erik Larson and Candice Millard. A sampling of my year in books follows.

Favorite book: Sophocles- The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus (fifth century B.C.)

Most entertaining book: Giovanni Boccaccio- The Decameron (1353)

Most impactful book: George Antonius- The Arab Awakening (1946)

Most relevant book: Walter Isaacson- Elon Musk (2023)

Nicest surprise: Thomas More- Utopia (1516)

Biggest disappointment: Ann Patchett- Tom Lake (2023)

Best spiritual book: C.S. Lewis- The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Best music book: Robyn Hitchcock- 1967 (2024)

Best short story collection: Flannery O'Connor- A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955)

Best poetry collection: Rainer Maria Rilke- Poems from the Book of Hours (1941)

Best audiobook: Elizabeth Strout- Olive Kitteridge (2008)

Most disturbing book: Gabriel García Márquez- One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)

Longest book: Henry Fielding- The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1749, 1,000 pages)

Most ambitious project: beginning Will Durant’s 11-volume The Story of Civilization series

I conducted the same exercise in 2023 and 2022.