The Hang Drum is an instrument that looks like a flying saucer or two woks tuck together. With tuned indentations and/or bumps it makes the warmest most serene sound that’s found a following among world music players, jazz bands and New Age artists.
There are three nights of great Echoes music this week in Philadelphia, when Lanterna, Low Roar and Ozric Tentacles come to town on consecutive nights.
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith was a founding member of the AACM and he brings that sense of jazz freedom and possibilities to bear in a live performance at Philadelphia’s Clef Club with his Golden Quartet.
The Big Ears Festival in Knoxville brought together an array of musicians from the bleeding edge of the avant-garde to the cutting edge of rock and folk. Kronos Quartet presided over this meeting ground of Vanguard music that included Laurie Anderson, Wu Man, Terry Riley, Rhiannon Giddens and much much more.
We hear features from 7 of the performers at Big Ears 2015 including Kronos Quartet, Laurie Anderson, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Max Richter, William Tyler, Silver Apples, and Bill Frisell.
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Daevid Allen was the court jester and master of madness for Gong, the European progressive rock group who formed and 1969. He left the planet on March 13, at 77. He was a scientist of spacerock, evangelist of glissando guitar, one of the earliest loopers and cosmic Dada philosopher.
AACM founder Muhal Richard Abrams was in free flight in 1978 when he recorded his live album, Spiral.
Songs may drive the emotional soul of a film. They might be the element that leaves the most lasting impression, but whether it’s The Rolling Stones or Brian Eno, they still get their acknowledgment last on movie credit rolls.
Congratulations to 2015 Grammy winners from the Echoes side of the music stream. Beck‘s Morning Phase was the number one Echoes CD in 2014. We were as shocked as anybody, except Kanye West, who of course, had to be the MOST shocked, because he’s, you know, fucking Yeezus. He bum rushed the stage during Beck’s…
The New Age Grammy category is always the hardest to figure out. Every year there are obvious choices I think should win. Yet last year, in what had been one of the best collection of nominees in a while with Brian Eno, Kitaro, R. Carlos Nakai and Peter Kater, an unknown and relatively unheard nominee, Laura…