Month: June 2009

NEARfest 09 Part 4-The Rest

NEARFEST 09-The Rest: Oblivion Sun, DFA, Trettioåriga Kriget, Beardfish Echoes‘ John Diliberto wraps up his Nearfest 09 Reviews In what turned out to be a very good Nearfest, I’ve already covered my favorite acts.  You can read about Gong and PFM, Steve Hillage and  Van Der Graaf Generator, and my faves of the festival, Cabeza…

NEARFEST 09 Pt.2: Gong and PFM

Someone is dancing in pajama robes and a wizards hat.  It must be Daevid Allen and Gong. In this second part of the Echoes Nearfest 2009 review it’s the Old Guard Part Two. Gong is the rock mirror image of the Sun Ra Arkestra.  Like Sun Ra, Gong is  a free-wheeling eclectic band that wraps…

Echo Location: Matthew Schoening’s Looped Cellos

http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20090624.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSEchoes finds a  lapsed classical cellist who is looped. You can hear an audio version of this blog with Matthew Schoening‘s music here. Just like Nathaniel Ayres, the homeless cellist at the center of the film, The Soloist,  Matthew Schoening was a cellist, in Los Angeles, without a…

Ali Akbar Khan Plucks His Last String

Echoes remembers Ali Akbar Khan (April 14,1922-June 19, 2009) Ali Akbar Khan is one of the only Indian musicians whose name is spoken in the same breathe as Ravi Shankar.  He plays the Indian stringed instrument called the sarod and since his American debut in 1955 playing duets with classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, he’s been…

Charlie Mariano-From Bop to Fusion to India to Gone

Saxophonist Charlie Mariano passed at  86 on June 16, 2009 Charlie Mariano was a second tier bop saxophonist with a biting, post-Charlie Parker sound who later showed the influence of John Coltrane and became enthralled with eastern music.   In addition to his saxophones, he started  playing an obscure, oboe-like instrument from India called the nagaswarum. …

Echo Location: John Luther Adams

http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20090617.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS Echoes from the Alaskan Tundra: John Luther Adams You can hear an audio version of this blog with music here Imagine a place where music changes according to time of day, geomagnetic activity, aurora shimmers,  the path of the sun and moon through the sky and seismic…