Last week I drove several hours north into Wisconsin to observe a band rehearsal for my dissertation research. It was the last of four site visits to see directors who scored highly on my survey on comprehensive musicianship. This means that the director I saw goes way beyond teaching just notes, rhythms, and performance skills. His students truly learn about the emotional content and historical background of every piece they play. It was a great experience, seeing CM in action in a very small, rural high school that has about the same number of students as we do in our band program alone.
What I really want to write about, however, is the audio accompaniment to my travels. I have been downloading podcasts of a great radio show produced by Chicago Public Radio called
Sound Opinions. Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis, the rock music critics from the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, respectively, have a one-hour show every Friday night at 8:00 on WBEZ 91.5FM. It's a mixture of news, reviews, interviews, and... (rats, nothing else rhymes) music history and criticism. Now I'm rarely in my car when the show is live, but you can download every show from their
website or subscribe to their show through iTunes. The episode I was listening to had an extended examination of a classic album by The Clash,
London Calling. They shared wonderful insight into what makes it such a great album, along with stories about how it came to be, including a crazy producer who chased the band around the studio and threw chairs at them. Other episodes included a Best Albums of the 2000s show and an introduction to synth-pop. All very informative, entertaining, and full of great music clips. I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to know about rock history and what's going on in the world of rock today.
In addition to this podcast, I enjoyed two episodes of NPR's
This American Life, and some fine CDs. The first was Ornette Coleman's 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning album,
Sound Grammar. Why this won a Pulitzer, I'm not sure, but it is very approachable, ear-friendly free jazz from the man who coined the term in 1959. I also listened to a CD of Vaughan Williams' orchestral works (can't get enough of RVW) and
Rambling Boy by Charlie Haden. The latter is a curious recording. Haden is an important jazz bassist, but he got his musical start at the age of two on his family's country music radio show. While he went on to other musical pursuits, he never gave up his love of old-time American folk music, and a couple of years ago he recorded this awesome album of classic tunes with his wife, son, triplet daughters, and Jack Black. That sounds odd, but Black is his son-in-law, and thus part of the family band. In addition, he brought in top-shelf country musicians like Ricky Skaggs and Roseanne Cash as well as his good friend, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. If you like good acoustic music, traditional folk stylings, and above all, a huge, warm acoustic bass sound, I recommend you check out
Rambling Boy.
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