Past Programs
Chamber - 2008
Aruna Sairam
11/08/2008
On her CD Divine Inspiration, frill-free, wide-ranged and distinctively-toned popular Carnatic singer Aruna Sairam explores the songs of 9 poets from different eras and regions in India, all belonging to the Bhakti movement.
The songsters’ different backgrounds give the album lots of variation in language, structure, mood and texture but, although they speak in many tongues, they unite in their denunciations of paying heed to the distinctions of caste, creed, gender and narrow-minded rituals of worship. Aruna is adept at singing the language of love, floating above a pleasing churn of South Indian percussion and violin.
CD of the Week - Eliza Carthy
04/08/2008
Eliza Carthy’s new CD, Dreams of Breathing Underwater, uses her extensive knowledge of English folk and reconstructs it into an edgy, post-rock collection of her songs which bristle with magical realism.
The daughter of English folk doyens Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, Eliza’s fiddling is impeccable, as is her sense of how much to sing or write into a song. The production is big, mixing melodeons and fiddles with strings and brass, and the songs have an elusive quality that demands your participation. As Tom Waits has refashioned American music into his crooked frame, Eliza does the same with English music, with more than a touch of English Music Hall mixing strangely with her acerbic vocal delivery.
CD of the Week - Raphael Imbert
19/05/2008
On Bach/Coltrane, French saxophonist, composer and student of sacred music Raphael Imbert explores the connections between the spiritual music of Johann Sebastian Bach and John Coltrane, playing with a church organist and a string quartet.
Working on his premise that Coltrane is the only true mystic in the history of jazz, Raphael improvises on some of his lesser known compositions - Crescent, Song of Praise, The Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost and Reverend King, and also on Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. Recorded in a church with a bassist, percussionist, counter tenor Gérard Lesne, the Quatuor Manfred String Quartet and organist André Rossi, it ranges from the quietly devotional to the ecstatically exuberant.
