Past Programs
Brass - 2008
Hans Kennel (repeat of 13/8/07)
21/10/2008
Hans Kennel Mytha is an Alphorn quartet who take the ancient, pre-musically tempered sounds of their alpine instruments into new directions, incorporating jazz, free jazz and reggae.
Hans studied trumpet and played jazz, but as if in a dream he always remembered the sounds of alphorns he heard as a boy in Switzerland. By pure coincidence he had a chance to play an alphorn after he was well-established as a trumpeter. The experience left a deep impression on him and he started to learn the instrument, soon giving up on his attempts to fix the ‘wrong’, untempered notes it naturally creates. Putting together alphorns of different pitches, he first recorded with the group Mytha in 1991, drawing on the still thriving alphorn repertoire, while moving it into very new directions. How it All Started is a compilation of two previous CDs by Hans and his Quartet.
Konsonans Retro (Repeat of 28/5/08)
28/08/2008
Ukrainian musicians Konsonans Retro’s acclaimed debut CD A Podolian Affair brings back to life the Jewish Brass Band music of the area through the collaboration between the musicians of the local Baranovsky family and Berlin-based clarinettist Christian Dawid. They’ve even been called ‘The best Klezmer band in the world.’
Odessa was the only city in which Jews were not governed by a rabbinical council, which meant that they were free to evolve into a secular, civil society which meant tavern-going and music-making. The Ukraine’s large Jewish population influenced the brass band music of that area. The Baranovsky brothers and their cousins play trumpets, accordion, trombone and barabon in the band, having been trained by their elders, Moise and Maria Baranovsky. Vasyl Baranovsky started playing in his father’s orchestra at the age of four, so he remembers many old pieces which are now perhaps only known to him. Christian Dawid, who arranged all the pieces, and London-based drummer Guy Schalom, successfully meld a Western sensibility on to the Baranovskys’ traditionalism.
Konsonans Retro
28/05/2008
Ukrainian musicians Konsonans Retro’s acclaimed debut CD A Podolian Affair brings back to life the Jewish Brass Band music of the area through the collaboration between the musicians of the local Baranovsky family and Berlin-based clarinettist Christian Dawid. They’ve even been called ‘The best Klezmer band in the world.’
Odessa was the only city in which Jews were not governed by a rabbinical council, which meant that they were free to evolve into a secular, civil society which meant tavern-going and music-making. The Ukraine’s large Jewish population influenced the brass band music of that area. The Baranovsky brothers and their cousins play trumpets, accordion, trombone and barabon in the band, having been trained by their elders, Moise and Maria Baranovsky. Vasyl Baranovsky started playing in his father’s orchestra at the age of four, so he remembers many old pieces which are now perhaps only known to him. Christian Dawid, who arranged all the pieces, and London-based drummer Guy Schalom, successfully meld a Western sensibility on to the Baranovskys’ traditionalism.
Shantel
22/05/2008
With his CD Disko Partizani, DJ Shantel has moved beyond producing electronica to producing a mostly acoustic CD featuring great Balkan musicians, trumpeter Marko Markovic, clarinettist Filip Simeonov and accordionist Francois Castiello.
Shantel was first exposed to this music through his mother and her family, who moved from Bucovina (now divided between Ukraine and Romania) to Germany after the Second World War. A trip to his grandmother’s hometown, Czernovitz, the old capital of Bucovina, where he saw Balkan music performed live, transformed his musical world view so he began DJ-ing Electro-Balkan-themed nights which inspired other DJs to turn away from house, techno or breakbeats to embrace this heady new sound. Disko Partizani has beats and programming, but is less electronica-oriented than Shantel’s previous Bucovina Club recordings. With 27 musicians drawn from numerous European countries, it’s an ambitious and lively project.
Funkalleros
01/05/2008
Casserole of Humanity is the name of the new, ebullient, second CD by the Funkalleros, the Fremantle-based Latin music band founded by Argentina-born brothers Abe and German Dunovits.
Abe sings, plays the lutes and wrote the songs, all in Spanish, which relate to politics and his experiences growing up in Argentina and in Madrid. German plays timbales, Panamanian-born Raul Rojas Villa plays congas, bata and other percussion, and a section of trumpet, sax and flute add to the festivities. The all-original song component is unusual for a Latin band, but so are their influences - Freddie King, Funkadelic, The Clash, Manu Chao and flamenco-blues group Pata Negra.
Mal Webb
15/04/2008
Indefatigable multi-instrumentalist Mal Webb plays all the instruments and sings all the vocal parts on his new CD, a collection of whimsical, verbose, pun-filled songs called Dodgy.
Mal chose the album title because, he says, ‘Mal means dodgy things in most languages.’ There is a song celebrating the figure Pi, one telling a lovelorn person that they have a ‘Contraceptive Personality’, one bemoaning people with ‘designer dogs’, and another containing the line, ‘Let’s shuffle off this coital maul’.
Spanish Harlem Orchestra
03/04/2008
On their new CD, United We Swing, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra continues their infectious new versions of New York old school ‘Salsa Dura’ with a guest appearance by Paul Simon singing Late In the Evening.
The Simon connection isn’t far-fetched as the New York singer/songwriter used Spanish Harlem Orchestra leader and pianist Oscar Hernandez to arrange and produce the music for Simon’s Broadway musical The Capeman. Oscar is the youngest of 11 children whose parents moved from Puerto Rico to the ghetto of the South Bronx in the 1940s. The loss of a brother to a drug overdose convinced Oscar to leave the ghetto and he did this through music, working for Ray Barretto in 1972 and playing with Ruben Blades and many, many others through the years before founding SHO in 2000. United We Swing, the 3rd album, follows the Grammy award-winning Across 110th Street and is mostly the band’s originals - songs that celebrate the rich culture of New York City’s Latino community, especially the interplay between musicians and dancers.
Hot 8 Brass Band
01/04/2008
In the tough neighbourhoods of New Orleans, there is often an anachronistic mix of marching brass bands and the latest R&B and Hip Hop sounds. The Hot 8 Brass Band meld these two styles together into a shambolic celebration.
This group, that plays in second line parades every Sunday hosted by a ‘Social Aid and Pleasure Club’ and in traditional jazz funeral processions, also do a version of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing and incorporate rapping on their CD Rock With the Hot 8 Brass Band. The band’s profile was lifted by an appearance in Spike Lee’s 2006 Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. They have also made the news due to tragic circumstances - the violent shooting deaths of three of their members within a 10-year time span. After the 2006 murder of Hot 8 singer/percussionist Dinerral Shavers, the group www.silenceisviolence.org was founded to address the persistent problem of violent crime in New Orleans.
Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani
10/03/2008
Trumpeter Enrico Rava and Pianist Stefano Bollani’s live CD, The Third Man, reveals the tremendous sense of space and musical empathy the two Italians have for each other.
Whether they’re playing free improvisation, Jobim, Italian song or their own compositions, the two play lyrically but are always open to surprising new directions. The two have played together since the early 1990s, Bollani hailing trumpeter Rava as his mentor, and Rava regarding Bollani as ‘perhaps the most gifted pianist since Art Tatum’. Rava, at 68, looks like a silver-haired quietly wise hippy, while Bollani, at 35 (and with a sideline as a comedic film actor) is full of fidgety energy. Their ‘odd-couple-ness’ works to their advantage to create a ‘Third Man’.
Esma Redzepova (repeat of 30/08/07)
17/01/2008
Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, leading a band drawn from the 47 orphans that she and her husband adopted, Macedonian powerhouse vocalist Esma Redzepova’s latest CD, Gypsy Carpet, is a ride through her life and that of fellow Balkan Roma.
As she sings in her autobiographical song My Golden 50s, ‘My gift from God was a soul as large as a huge mountain. Like bright stars my many children shine, but are now scattered everywhere. Half a century has passed like half a year and I still love to sing for you all.’
Hans Kennel (repeat of 13/8/07)
01/01/2008
Hans Kennel Mytha is an Alphorn quartet who take the ancient, pre-musically tempered sounds of their alpine instruments into new directions, incorporating jazz, free jazz and reggae.
Hans studied trumpet and played jazz, but as if in a dream he always remembered the sounds of alphorns he heard as a boy in Switzerland. By pure coincidence he had a chance to play an alphorn after he was well-established as a trumpeter. The experience left a deep impression on him and he started to learn the instrument, soon giving up on his attempts to fix the ‘wrong’, untempered notes it naturally creates. Putting together alphorns of different pitches, he first recorded with the group Mytha in 1991, drawing on the still thriving alphorn repertoire, while moving it into very new directions. How it All Started is a compilation of two previous CDs by Hans and his Quartet.
