Past Programs
Strings - 2008
Ricky Scaggs and Bruce Hornsby (repeat of 18/1/08)
31/10/2008
On his CD collaboration with Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby retains his own musical identity while playing with Ricky and other leading bluegrass players and takes it somewhere else with his supple piano and the unusual songs he’s written.
There’s one called The Dreaded Spoon about a closet gourmand, and their version of a Rick James song about a groupie, Superfreak, is, well...surprising. The playing is great throughout and Ricky and Bruce harmonise well together. In the process of making the record, Ricky turned Bruce on to old timey musicians Roscoe Holcomb, Doc Boggs and Clarence Ashley, and Bruce turned Ricky on to Bud Powell, Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett.
Teddy Thompson (repeat of 22/8/07)
16/10/2008
Talented singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson’s new CD Upfront and Down Low is mostly an album of classic ’50s and ’60s country songs, made fresh by distinctive string arrangements and Teddy’s perfectly measured vocals.
In what started out as a fun little project rather than an album, Teddy concentrated on getting the maximum feeling and meaning out of the songs before worrying about making it sound like a ‘real’ country record. Robert Kirby, who is renowned for his work with Nick Drake, arranged most of the string parts, while Teddy’s dad, Richard Thompson, provides some guitar twang on three tracks. If you give it a chance, you’ll hear the beauty of a simple country song, thanks to Teddy’s sensitive and unique treatments. Despite being the son of British folk-rock legends, country music is what Teddy was brought up on, the music that’s closest to his heart and the music that speaks to him the most.
Fribo (repeat of 19/9/07)
13/10/2008
Fribo are a unique acoustic group - 3 acoustic musicians from Norway, Scotland and England who met in Edinburgh and who blend the musical styles of their respective countries on their debut CD, The ha’ o Habrahellia.
Singer Anne Sofie Linge Valdal comes from a strong traditional background on the west coast of Norway. Singer/guitarist Ewan MacPherson, one of the first ever graduate students from Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, is a member of Scottish group Malinky and a seasoned sideman. Sarah-Jane Summers, from the Scottish Highlands, plays both Scottish and Norwegian styles on normal and Hardanger Fiddles.
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.
Two-Faced Friday
22/08/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
15/08/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
08/08/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
01/08/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
25/07/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
18/07/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
11/07/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Nicolas Krassik
10/07/2008
Caçuá, a word with Tupi (Indigenous Brazilian Language) origins, is a wicker or vine basket used to carry provisions. It’s also the title of Parisian-born, Rio de Janeiro-based violinist Nicolas Krassik’s fine CD with a choro trio and special guests.
Like a caçuá basket, the album is full of a variety of things - mostly finely performed choro with his band: Nando Duarte on 7-string guitar, João Hermeto on pandeiro (the Brazilian tambourine that plays a much bigger role than our pop and gospel music version), and Fábio Luna on drum kit - but also venturing into samba, baião and xote. 38-year-old Nicolas has only been in Rio since September of 2001, but his affinity with Brazil’s music has made him a mainstay of the city’s musical scene, recording with many leading artists. Caçuá is his second solo CD.
Two-Faced Friday
04/07/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
27/06/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Ian Hardie
23/06/2008
On Westringing, Scottish fiddler/composer and former lawyer Ian Hardie has recorded an all-solo CD of his own compositions, influenced by Appalachian fiddle styles, all in altered tunings.
Ian, a founder member of the seminal Scottish band Jock Tamson’s Bairns, has been deeply involved with the Scottish music revival since the 1970s, contributing many of his own compositions in traditional styles. For many years he combined music with practice as a lawyer, but since 2001 he has been exclusively involved in music and in the enjoyment of life in the Scottish Highlands. In 2003 he participated in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival which featured the music of Scotland and Mali and music of the place where they came together - Appalachia. Exposed to Appalachian old-time fiddle music, he became fascinated in the connections to the repertoire of Scotland and Ireland and followed up with five study and playing trips to the Appalachians. Impressed by the plethora of tunings in this tradition, he played all of Westringing’s (subtitled ‘Scotland Meets Appalachia’) pieces in alternate tunings.
Two-Faced Friday
20/06/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Väsen (Originally Broadcast on 12/12/2007)
18/06/2008
Powerful Swedish acoustic group Väsen pay a tongue in cheek tribute to their countryman Carl Linnaeus on their new CD, Linnaeus Väsen.
First they tell us that the great botanist had ‘no ear for music’, then they proceed to imform us that he was probably a fine polska dancer. Basically, they turn Linnaeus’ anniversary into an excuse to source compositions by his contemporaries, relatives and friends. On this album, Väsen expand their nyckelharpa, viola and acoustic guitar lineup by the addition of percussionist André Ferrari.
Two-Faced Friday
30/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
23/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
16/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
09/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
02/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Dáimh
22/04/2008
On their CD Crossing Point, Dáimh (Dah-Eve), a combination of musicians from Cape Breton, Ireland, the West Highlands of Scotland and the USA, play and sing a selection of airs, jigs, reels, strathspeys and songs vigorously, seamlessly uniting their traditions.
With various pipes and whistles, banjo, mandolin, guitar, bodhran and fiddle and a high-energy approach, they put out a full sound, whether the music is Irish, Scottish or even Galician.
Two-Faced Friday
18/04/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
04/04/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
28/03/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
14/03/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
07/03/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
29/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
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.
Two-Faced Friday
22/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
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.
Crooked Still
19/02/2008
Boston group Crooked Still continue to create their unique Bluegrass/Old-Timey sound driven by sawed and plucked double bass and cello on their second CD, Shaken by a Low Sound.
Rushad Eggleston is the cellist, Corey DiMario the bassist, Aoife O’Donovan adds the contrastingly light-toned vocals, and Gregory Liszt’s 4-fingered banjo work completes the group. It was produced by Lee Townsend and recorded in the San Francisco Bay area, with contributions from local musicians. And Rushad Eggleston, also known as ‘Sneegoblin’ (don't ask) makes his vocal debut.
Erik Friedlander
18/02/2008
Block Ice and Propane is cellist Erik Friedlander’s set of 13 solo pieces evoking the summer journeys he took as a child in a camper on a ute, planned around the work of his dad, famed photographer Lee Friedlander.
Erik, his mother, sister and dad would travel all over in the USA in this 1966 pickup truck for months at a time in between Lee’s teaching jobs and photo shoots. Lee’s pieces on plucked and bowed cello (and tuning forks) are amazingly descriptive of his feelings of being on the road - you can imagine the big trucks, the white lines and even his envy of other travellers in sleek Airstreams with (incomprehensibly luxurious) showers and refrigerators. The Friedland family got by on a propane gas stove while blocks of ice, sometimes swiped from motel ice machines, kept their food from going off.
k.d. lang
18/02/2008
k.d. lang’s new CD Watershed is a collection of her songs about love and relationships, but is also ‘about finding peace; being settled with the skeleton of things.’
On the CD, lang found no need to belt. ‘I think that is age and wisdom,’ she said. ‘It’s like a painter discovering earth tones again in a whole new way. Sometimes communicating is about whispering or about simply stating something in a gentle, quiet manner. I love that I’ve uncovered that part of me. I love to sing that way, it feels really good on the throat, it feels very natural.’ Watershed is her first CD of her own songs in 6 years and her first self-produced album.
The SteelDrivers
13/02/2008
When Chris Stapleton sings songs he wrote with Mike Henderson in his raw, soul-drenched voice with an all-acoustic, no-overdubbing group, it’s apparent that the SteelDriver’s self-titled debut CD has carved out a new direction in Bluegrass.
For Mike Henderson, the group brings together the two sides of his musical personality - the bluegrass mandolinist and the hard-rocking blues slide guitarist. Mike and Chris had been writing songs together for a while and Mike, in the mood to play some bluegrass, thought, ‘Here are some songs we could do.’ They recruited excellent fiddler/vocalist Tammy Rogers, banjo man Richard Bailey and bassist Mike Fleming, to put together a repertoire for a once a week gig in Nashville - but the chemistry indicated that they had the potential to do much more than that. They cut their CD in one big room, doing no overdubs, but simply starting a tune over if a mistake was made. It’s an album of strong original songs, great playing and the outside-the-mould, silk to sandpaper tones of Chris’ soulful vocals.
Nicolas Krassik
12/02/2008
French violinist Nicolas Krassik not only found musical inspiration in Rio, but he became one of the city’s most sought after musicians.
Nicolas started classical studies at the age of 5, studied for 14 years, graduated from the conservatory in classical music, and studied jazz for another year, going on to play with French jazz greats Michel Petrucciani and Didier Lockwood. His passion for Brazilian music inspired him to move to the Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood of Lapa in 2001 where he went to Samba and Choro shows and jam sessions in his music-rich locality. He quickly integrated into the Rio scene - his CD Na Lapa is a collection of choros with guest appearances by esteemed Brazilian musician Hamilton de Holanda, João Bosco, Yamandu Costa and Carlos Malta.
Two-Faced Friday
08/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
01/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Pin Rada
30/01/2008
The Melbourne/Istanbul Sessions is Melbourne multi-instrumentalist/producer Pin Rada’s unique vision of a unification of Turkish and Australian music and more.
Pin studied wind and bowed instruments in Greece, India and Turkey, played didjeridoo with Istanbul musicians, and collaborates in Australia with musicians from India, Turkey, Morocco, Mozambique Indonesia and Sudan. He has created a music without boundaries that puts together Turkish, Indian, Brazilian, Armenian and Western instruments in a hypnotic blend.
Ricky Scaggs and Bruce Hornsby (repeat of 8/8/07)
18/01/2008
On his CD collaboration with Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby retains his own musical identity while playing with Ricky and other leading bluegrass players and takes it somewhere else with his supple piano and the unusual songs he’s written.
There’s one called The Dreaded Spoon about a closet gourmand, and their version of a Rick James song about a groupie, Superfreak, is, well...surprising. The playing is great throughout and Ricky and Bruce harmonise well together. In the process of making the record, Ricky turned Bruce on to old timey musicians Roscoe Holcomb, Doc Boggs and Clarence Ashley, and Bruce turned Ricky on to Bud Powell, Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett.
Teddy Thompson (repeat of 22/8/07)
10/01/2008
Talented singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson’s new CD Upfront and Down Low is mostly an album of classic ’50s and ’60s country songs, made fresh by distinctive string arrangements and Teddy’s perfectly measured vocals.
In what started out as a fun little project rather than an album, Teddy concentrated on getting the maximum feeling and meaning out of the songs before worrying about making it sound like a ‘real’ country record. Robert Kirby, who is renowned for his work with Nick Drake, arranged most of the string parts, while Teddy’s dad, Richard Thompson, provides some guitar twang on three tracks. If you give it a chance, you’ll hear the beauty of a simple country song, thanks to Teddy’s sensitive and unique treatments. Despite being the son of British folk-rock legends, country music is what Teddy was brought up on, the music that’s closest to his heart and the music that speaks to him the most.
Fribo (repeat of 19/9/07)
07/01/2008
Fribo are a unique acoustic group - 3 acoustic musicians from Norway, Scotland and England who met in Edinburgh and who blend the musical styles of their respective countries on their debut CD, The ha’ o Habrahellia.
Singer Anne Sofie Linge Valdal comes from a strong traditional background on the west coast of Norway. Singer/guitarist Ewan MacPherson, one of the first ever graduate students from Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, is a member of Scottish group Malinky and a seasoned sideman. Sarah-Jane Summers, from the Scottish Highlands, plays both Scottish and Norwegian styles on normal and Hardanger Fiddles.
