Past Programs
Chamber/Instrumental - 2008
Silk and Bamboo
17/11/2008
Simply titled Traditional Chinese Music , the new CD from UK-based The Silk and Bamboo Ensemble delivers exactly what it promises ... beautifully.
Silk and Bamboo music gets its name from the fact that the instruments use both materials in their construction, and comes from an ancient (8th Century BC) classification of musical instruments according to their construction. This CD features 5 virtuosi on a wide range of instruments including erhu (upright fiddle), pipa (upright lute), guqin (unfretted zither), Guzheng (plucked zither), yangqin (hammered dulcimer), sheng (mouth organ), guanzi (oboe or shawm), dizi and xiao (flutes) and hulusi (gourd-based reed pipe)
Gao Hong (First aired on 2/6/08)
06/10/2008
On Flying Dragon, Chinese-born and trained and USA-based pipa maestro Gao Hong mixes it up very effectively with sitarist Shubhendra Rao, flutist James Newton and shakuhachi player Yoshio Kurahashi in the relisation of her dream of a rainbow coalition of musicians.
Gao was nicknamed ‘the little black kitten’ when she was small because her face was already speckled with soot from the furnace room where she practiced pipa for hours before her fellow musicians woke up. This was when she was with a provincial song and dance troupe in North Central China, which she joined at the age of 12 to help support her family after her father had been blacklisted and sent to the country as part of the Cultural Revolution. It was then that a fortune-teller’s labelling of her as a ‘Flying Dragon’ - one who would be constantly on the move, never settled, first proved itself. At the age of 22, Gao was one of two pipa players to be admitted to China’s premier school of music, the Central Conservatory of music in Beijing. In the mid-90s she moved to the USA, where she has applied her considerable skills on the pipa to expanding its repertoire. On Flying Dragon, she truly reaches out to the disciplines of her collaborators - learning Hindustani scales, instinctively going with James Newton’s free improvisation and subtly teaming with Yoshio’s version of a traditional Japanese folk song.
Quadro Nuevo (First Broadcast on 14/02/2008)
17/09/2008
Multi-instrumentalist quartet Quadro Nuevo’s CD Tango Bitter Sweet is a collection of all-European songs, centred on tango, but ranging out into jazz and swing.
The musicians met for the first time in 1996 on a grey January day in a carpark near Salzburg, commissioned to produce film music for television. The music was never aired, but the group stayed together. With Mulo Francel playing six different woodwinds, mandolin and vibraphone, the group applies a wide palette of songs to this collection of eclectic European songs ranging from Tango’s greatest hit, the Danish Tango Jalousie to Michel Legrande’s The Windmills of Your Mind. Humour and invention are ever-present as they ply the roads between light lounge music and deep tango passion.
Fred Katz (First Broadcast on 25/2/08)
11/09/2008
Today we celebrate Fred Katz’ 89th birthday by featuring the re-release of his amazing 1958 album Folk Songs for Far Out Folk, a recording that gives African, Jewish and American Folk tunes arrangements that presage ‘world music’ by decades.
Raised in a free-thinking family in Brooklyn that held informal salons attended by Tony Bennett among others, Fred studied cello with Pablo Casals and went on to play jazz piano, conduct and arrange an album for Carmen McRae, and play jazz cello in Chico Hamilton’s groundbreaking quartet. The project that became Folk Songs for Far Out Folk was originally intended to be a collaboration with Brigitte Bardot, but the end project is even stranger - Katz’s innovative arrangements for 3 different small ensembles featuring the cream of LA Jazz players (including Paul Horn, Buddy Collette and Johnny T. Williams before he became film composer John Williams) are complex, unusual and hip beyond their time.
Gao Hong
02/06/2008
On Flying Dragon, Chinese-born and trained and USA-based pipa maestro Gao Hong mixes it up very effectively with sitarist Shubhendra Rao, flutist James Newton and shakuhachi player Yoshio Kurahashi in the relisation of her dream of a rainbow coalition of musicians.
Gao was nicknamed ‘the little black kitten’ when she was small because her face was already speckled with soot from the furnace room where she practiced pipa for hours before her fellow musicians woke up. This was when she was with a provincial song and dance troupe in North Central China, which she joined at the age of 12 to help support her family after her father had been blacklisted and sent to the country as part of the Cultural Revolution. It was then that a fortune-teller’s labelling of her as a ‘Flying Dragon’ - one who would be constantly on the move, never settled, first proved itself. At the age of 22, Gao was one of two pipa players to be admitted to China’s premier school of music, the Central Conservatory of music in Beijing. In the mid-90s she moved to the USA, where she has applied her considerable skills on the pipa to expanding its repertoire. On lying Dragon, she truly reaches out to the disciplines of her collaborators - learning Hindustani scales, instinctively going with James Newton’s free improvisation and subtly teaming with Yoshio’s version of a traditional Japanese folk song.
Paco Peña
03/03/2008
Almost 40 years after he first performed at Wigmore Hall, Paco Peña returned there in December of 2006 to play a concert of solo flamenco guitar that affirmed his musical mastery.
Paco’s glorious technique and ability to get to the heart of a piece are evident in this concert in which he covers a wide range of flamenco styles from its beginning with the reflective sounds of a Granaína to its close with an explosive, festive Bulerías.
Petri Hakala
26/02/2008
On Trad., Finnish musician Petri Hakala explores a range of traditional Finnish fiddle tunes on guitars and mandolins.
Chosen over a long time span during which Petri taught at the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department and at various folk music camps, this collection of polskas, minuets, marches, shottishes and waltzes mirrors his development as a musician and reflects the influences of various other string instrument traditions, including North American folk ones.
Fred Katz
25/02/2008
Today we celebrate Fred Katz’ 89th birthday by featuring the re-release of his amazing 1958 album Folk Songs for Far Out Folk, a recording that gives African, Jewish and American Folk tunes arrangements that presage ‘world music’ by decades.
Raised in a free-thinking family in Brooklyn that held informal salons attended by Tony Bennett among others, Fred studied cello with Pablo Casals and went on to play jazz piano, conduct and arrange an album for Carmen McRae, and play jazz cello in Chico Hamilton’s groundbreaking quartet. The project that became Folk Songs for Far Out Folk was originally intended to be a collaboration with Brigitte Bardot, but the end project is even stranger - Katz’s innovative arrangements for 3 different small ensembles featuring the cream of LA Jazz players (including Paul Horn, Buddy Collette and Johnny T. Williams before he became film composer John Williams) are complex, unusual and hip beyond their time.
Marco Pereira and Hamilton de Holanda
21/02/2008
Luz da Cordas (Light of the Strings) is the debut CD from Brazilian virtuosi, mandolinist Hamilton de Holanda and guitarist Marco Pereira.
Hamilton is the younger of the two and hails from Brasilia. Marco has had extensive training in classical guitar including five years in France, but his Brazilian groove is very deep, given extra fire by his great technique. The two met at a music festival in 1988. They were sitting in the change rooms before their respective stage appearances and started jamming, which led to a spontaneous joint performance on stage that thrilled all concerned.
Quadro Nuevo
14/02/2008
Multi-instrumentalist quartet Quadro Nuevo’s CD Tango Bitter Sweet is a collection of all-European songs, centred on tango, but ranging out into jazz and swing.
The musicians met for the first time in 1996 on a grey January day in a carpark near Salzburg, commissioned to produce film music for television. The music was never aired, but the group stayed together. With Mulo Francel playing six different woodwinds, mandolin and vibraphone, the group applies a wide palette of songs to this collection of eclectic European songs ranging from Tango’s greatest hit, the Danish Tango Jalousie to Michel Legrande’s The Windmills of Your Mind. Humour and invention are ever-present as they ply the roads between light lounge music and deep tango passion.
Michèle Claude and Ensemble Aromates
04/02/2008
On their new CD, Rayon de Lune, French percussionist Michèle Claude and Ensemble Aromates explore the links between European Early Music and Arabic Classical Music from Spain.
Modern harmony is fused with 12 Arabic classical muwahsha songs in this CD that celebrates the meeting place of Arabic and European civilisation. As Michèle says, ‘Andalusian music is the music of the Gypsies, of the Arab countries from North Africa to the Middle East, of the Jews and even, in some cases, of the New World. Many people from the Mediterranean area find their roots in and draw their inspiration from Andalusia - a symbol of tolerance, refinement, learning and culture.’
