Todd Rundgren: Todd

"Most every music fan has a beloved album he or she would love to see performed live in its entirety. Todd Rundgren's fans are just more aggressive about it. A handful of them who run Rundgren Radio, an online talk show geared toward the Rundgren faithful, has branched into promoting concerts: basically hiring the singer and songwriter to perform complete albums from his considerable catalog, including 1973's 'Todd' and 1981's 'Healing' at a show in Hartford tonight. ... Rundgren's records can be complex, and many of the songs never made it into his live sets in the first place. ... Rundgren is by no means wallowing in the past: he continues to release new music, with three LPs and an EP since 2000, and he fronted the New Cars in 2006. All the same, he finds there's a benefit to revisiting the classics. 'First of all, I figured, all right, you guys asked for it, now you're going to have to like it, no matter what I do,' he says, laughing" (Eric R. Danton, "Todd Rundgren Playing 'Todd,' 'Healing' for Fans," Sound Check, 3/25/11).
View catalog record here!

Kurt Elling: The Gate

"Towards the end of his recent Birdland stint ... he delivered a spoken riff that explained, though obliquely, the method behind his divine madness. Beginning by coining a word I loved -- 'prioritagiousness,' I suppose it could be spelled -- he eventually waxed imaginative by chatting about the effects of remaining awake beyond twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-eight hours. He observed that carrying on in that way creates an entirely fresh sense of what constitutes a day. In other words, he's talking about reorienting time, and that, of course, is just what he does with songs. He revises their time signatures, elides them, elongates them, derives incomparable pleasure from ignoring them, suggesting as he does that melodies are blueprints for a different kind of improvisation, for a different kind of deconstruction. ... For the week's gig, Elling included material on current CD release, The Gate -- as in, he points out, the phrase 'swinging on...'" (David Finkle, "Kurt Elling Fools Around with Time at Birdland," Huffington Post, 3/9/11).
View catalog record here!

Bobby Bland: Two Steps from the Blues

"There's a game called Voice of the Century, in which music lovers try to pick the best singer in the history of pop music, regardless of genre. Sam Cooke turns up on many ballots, as does George Jones. Some people hold out for Harry Nilsson or Marion Williams. One of the dark horses in the discussion is Bobby (Blue) Bland, who sang gospel in Memphis before releasing a series of R. & B. singles in the early sixties ('Cry Cry Cry,' 'I Pity the Fool'), many of which were collected on the flawless album 'Two Steps from the Blues.' Bland's best work is canonical for singers like Van Morrison (another perennial Voice of the Century contender), and it's easy to hear why: he was a powerhouse with nuance, a technically superb singer who moved effortlessly between hoarse testifying and angelic melisma, often worrying a line to the point where he engineered a half-dozen twists and turns in a single word" (Ben Greenman, "Critic's Notebook," New Yorker, 1/31/11).
View catalog record here!

Cut/Copy: Zonoscope

"On its third album, Australian electropop band Cut Copy channels its compatriots Men at Work with some of the best '80s new-wave sounds since, well, the actual '80s. The bright, sunny riffs in 'Take Me Over' will serve all your midwinter dancing needs" ("The Short List of Things to Do," Time, 2/14/11).
View catalog record here!

James Moody: 4B

"[T]he essence of Moody and the quartet (pianist Kenny Barron; bassist Todd Coolman; and drummer Lewis Nash) comes through with elan and spirit. ... Billy Strayhorn's 'Take the A Train' leaves the 59th Street station paced by Barron's relaxed stride before Moody bridges the train's acceleration toward 125th Street. Speaking of streets, Moody quotes Monk's '52nd Street Theme' and Barron bounces it around a bit too. Nash makes his skins talk with sonority. Tadd Dameron's 'Hot House' is taken at a much slower tempo than it has been traditionally played from the time in 1945 when introduced by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. ... Then there are two originals from within the group, Coolman's 'O.P. Update' and Barron's 'Nikara's Song.' The first is a tribute to bass giant Oscar Pettiford that Todd based on a version of 'Perdido' in which Duke Ellington featured Oscar on cello. 'I wrote it with the cello in mind,' he says. After Moody and Coolman tandem into the head (Moody has the bridge to himself) 'Cool-Man' plucks the first solo ..." (CD notes by Ira Gitler).
View catalog record here!

Abigail Washburn: City of Refuge

"Abigail Washburn (born November 10, 1979 in Evanston, Illinois, USA) is an American clawhammer banjo player and singer. ... In Tennessee, she met KC Groves, one of the founding members of the band Uncle Earl and she went on to spend five years touring with the band. The 'all G'earl' group has released two records on the Rounder Records record label, She Waits for the Night (2005) and Waterloo, TN (2007), which was produced by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. ... Her first solo album, Song of the Traveling Daughter, was produced by Béla Fleck and features Ben Sollee, a cellist, and Jordan McConnell, guitarist for the Canadian traditional and soul music fusion band The Duhks. Two songs were recorded in the Mandarin Chinese language, which she learned while living in China. In 2005, Washburn returned to China with a group called the Sparrow Quartet. ... In early 2010, Washburn began recording her second solo album with producer Tucker Martine and collaborator Kai Welch" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

The Black Keys: Brothers

Includes "Tighten Up," winner of the 2010 Grammy for best rock performance by a duo or group with vocals.
View catalog record here!

Boris Godounov (excerpts; live recording with Chaliapin)

"Some kind person has posted on youtube the greatest vocal recording of all time. This is Fyodor Chaliapin singing Anton Rubinstein's "Persian Love Song" in 1931 - when Chaliapin was already 58 years old. ... Here is an artist - admired by Stanislavsky as an exemplary actor -- who transformed everything he touched. ... To savor his Boris, forget the studio recordings. The version to hear is the one recorded live at Covent Garden in 1928. Last fall, lecturing for the NEA Music Critics Institute, I had occasion to compare Chaliapin (in Russian) and Hans Hotter (in German) as the dying tsar. We spent 15 or 20 minutes listening - repeatedly -- to these artists sing two lines: 'Farewell my son, I am dying' and 'Forgive me.' Both readings - one as a crazed Slav, the other a noble Wotan -- beggared description. Hotter became an opera singer upon encountering Chaliapin in Prague. Singing actors" (Joseph Horowitz, "The Greatest Vocal Recording of All Time, Etc.," The Unanswered Question, 1/6/11).
View catalog record here!

John Legend and the Roots: Wake Up!

"This album was conceived in the heat of the summer of 2008 in the middle of a passionate election campaign — a campaign that represented change & hope and awakened a new generation of activists who had never been inspired before. We live in a time of seemingly unlimited possibility and groundbreaking historic change, yet we're also in the midst of a deep recession and war. Poverty and disillusionment still afflict a large portion of humankind. This intense brew of possibility & persistent poverty, optimism & despair, activism & unrest, and global connectedness & intractable global conflicts is the reason WAKE UP! exists. I asked The Roots to join me in producing this album because they're one of the best bands in the business. I've wanted to work with them since I went to college in Philly. ... It's a blend of soul, hip hop, funk, gospel and reggae which draws inspiration from a previous era of socially-relevant music — the soul songs of the 1960's and '70's" (CD notes by John Legend).
View catalog record here!

An Horse: Walls

"If you had asked Kate Cooper or Damon Cox where their musical conversations would lead them when they were still employees at a record store in Brisbane, Australia, they wouldn't have come close to guessing the truth. After months of speculative chat, the pair — she on vocals and guitar, he on drums — finally pooled their musical talents in 2007, cribbing the name that Cooper had already used for sporadic solo gigs. (An Horse came from an argument Cooper had with her sister about grammar.) By the following year, the local buzz had spread far beyond the confines of their home country. The duo's opening slots for Tegan and Sara's American tour and Death Cab for Cutie's Australian circuit generated great anticipation for their 2009 debut album, Rearrange Beds; the resultant reviews kicked them into a completely different dimension. Luckily, they weren't pressured by either external or internal expectations when they began work on their sophomore album, the soon-to-be-released Walls" (Brian Baker, "An Horse You Rode In On," New Haven Advocate, 3/24/11).
View catalog record here!

Brad Mehldau: Live in Marciac

"Brad Mehldau (born August 23, 1970) is an American jazz pianist ... born ... in Jacksonville, Florida. His family moved to Connecticut where Mehldau spent most of his childhood and high school. He attended William H. Hall High School in West Hartford and participated in Hall's prestigious jazz program. While a sophomore in high school, he won Berklee College's Best All-Around Musician Award. Mehldau moved to New York in 1988 to study jazz at The New School, studying under Fred Hersch, Junior Mance and Kenny Werner, and also playing with Jimmy Cobb. He went on to play as sideman with a variety of musicians, most importantly with the Joshua Redman quartet, before forming his own trio in 1994, with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy, and later Jeff Ballard, who succeeded Rossy in 2005. In addition to his trio work, Mehldau collaborated with guitarist Pat Metheny, releasing two albums with him and embarking on a worldwide tour along with Grenadier and Ballard" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

Morning Teleportation: Expanding Anyway

"Euphoria and transformation run through Morning Teleportation’s debut album, 'Expanding Anyway' (Glacial Pace), which puts neat, strategic structure behind its giddy psychedelic cheer. The band is from Portland, Ore., and Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse produced the album and joins in now and then. The music plunges into 1960s sounds: fuzzed-out blues-rock, folk-rock picking, spy-movie horns, communal sing-alongs. And Tiger Merritt, the band’s whooping, quavering, slurring lead singer, doesn’t shy away from lyrics full of dreams, love and 'cosmic mystery.' Yet Morning Teleportation never allows itself to slip into the aimless jamming that is psychedelia’s pitfall. Its songs are taut, quick-changing suites, heading from one skein of intricately tangled guitars to the next as if all that compositional planning were just happy serendipity" (Jon Pareles, "Playlist," New York Times, 3/20/11).
View catalog record here!

Sway Machinery: House of Friendly Ghosts, Vol. 1

"JL: The 'ghosts' are supposed to be the spirits of ancestors I am invoking with my music. The hope is that I will be able to draw strength from them to create something new and beautiful. MR: Your debut album, Hidden Melodies Revealed, seemed more aligned with the Cantorial tradition than ... House Of Friendly Ghosts. Is this a natural evolution of the band's music or was it intentional? JL: I feel like it is a natural evolution. The new record continues to draw on Cantorial music: there are many musical allusions and borrowings from the tradition. ... And clearly, we followed even more intensely with the African inspiration which was already a major force in the music of The Sway Machinery. MR: A song like 'Skin To Skin' can be interpreted many ways, and with its world flavor, it seems to have global implications. Can you go into the story behind the song? JL: Any way you can interpret it would probably be at least partially right" (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with The Sway Machinery's Jeremiah Lockwood," Huffington Post, 3/9/11).
View catalog record here!

Stryper: The Covering

"Even in their mid- to late-eighties heyday, the Christian rockers in Stryper walked a difficult path. They had to balance the hedonistic ways of their hair-metal brethren with the devout tenets of their faith while not being taken all that seriously. Still, the Orange County quartet managed to sell a surprising number of albums, including 1986’s 'To Hell with the Devil.' But Stryper’s mixture of pop metal and piety (the band members were known for flinging miniature Bibles into the crowd) didn’t prove to be a viable gimmick. Like so many of their secular peers, Stryper was flattened by nineties grunge, and the band splintered, only to reconvene in 2005. Stryper’s third album since then, 'The Covering,' features material by such artists as Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest" ("Night Life," New Yorker, 3/28/11).
View catalog record here!

Ehud Asherie: Welcome to New York

"Young jazz musicians often try to become their idols. In the early Thirties, Ben Webster got so caught up in trying to sound like Coleman Hawkins that his friend Clyde Hart had to remind him that (in Emerson's words) imitation is suicide. Ehud Asherie knows better. Ask him nicely, and he'll play Fats Waller's trademark walking-down-the-stairs treble passage perfectly, but he is no musical forger or impersonator. He has his own voice — no, voices — deep and satisfying. His playing draws on the nuances and gestures of his great forebears — to honor them but, more importantly, to create something new. On the street where he lives, the Stride masters and the bebop innovators hang out together, and no one says that there is only one way to play. Ehud began by listening to a Monk album he found in his parents' attic and then 'moved backward' to the intricacies of swing piano, but he will tell you that playing Harlem Strut is not any easier than Un Poco Loco, just different. And, as he says, 'What could be hipper than Art Tatum?'" (CD notes by Michael Steinman).
View catalog record here!

DeVotchKa: 100 Lovers

"DeVotchKa, a Denver-based chamber-rock group with an affinity for Gypsy music, performs songs from its appealing new record, '100 Lovers.' Led by the singer, guitarist, and trumpeter Nick Urata, the group uses a wide array of instruments (sousaphone, accordion, bouzouki, theremin) to make a hybrid of rock and world music that’s neither cursory nor voyeuristic. Urata’s unaffected voice, which has a hint of Rocky Mountain loneliness in it, gives the group’s sound roots, whether they’re playing a raucous midway tune or a spaghetti-Western ballad" ("Night Life," New Yorker, 3/28/11).
View catalog record here!