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Maria Schneider at the Jazz Standard, '09

Maria Schneider’s early set last night at the Jazz Standard—part of her 17-piece Jazz Orchestra’s traditional Thanksgiving-week run—reaffirmed and advanced her position as the preeminent big-band composer of our era.

The time has long passed when she could adequately be pegged as an acolyte of Gil Evans. Though she did come up the ranks as his assistant, and still draws on his stacked, lush harmonies, her sound is distinctly her own. The melodic lines are now more propulsive, the rhythms more varied, the dynamics both brasher and suppler than anything her mentor devised.

Much of…

Dreams

I dreamed that I was back in Puerto Rico with the Vivian Girls. They asked me to work on a new song with them. We decided to set up a rehearsal space at my aunt’s beach house. It was taking us awhile to get the instruments properly set up, and Katy was becoming anxious, but I soothed her nerves with a stunning spread of snacks and candies: finger sandwiches, kiwis, grapes, pomegranates, baskets of popcorn, bowls of pretzels and chips, towers of Twizzlers, tall pyramids of Almond Joy…

I didn’t even know that she liked Almond Joy.

Katy took a handful of popcorn and tossed it…

Talk of the Town

Saturday, December 5, 11am–5pm: Talk of the Town will host an “Audio, Video, & Home Theater Demo Day.” Show highlights will include demonstrations of SIM2’s C3X Lumis Host projector; Marantz’s 9004 Reference Blu-ray player; Totem Acoustics’s Wind Design loudspeakers; Classe’s SSP-800 preamplifier-processor with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA surround decoding; McIntosh’s MA7000 integrated amplifier; and Meridian’s DSP 5200 digital active speakers and Sooloos Music Server System.

Representatives from several companies will be available to answer questions throughout the event.…

Miles of Miles and Ella

I’ve published two music articles elsewhere in the past couple weeks.

One is an article for the Arts & Leisure section of this past Sunday’s New York Times, about a new and startling 4-CD boxed set of previously unreleased Ella Fitzgerald sets, recorded in an L.A. nightclub in 1961 and ’62 (i.e., her peak years), called Twelve Nights in Hollywood (Verve).

The other is a brief review for New York Magazine of an eyebrow-raising 70-CD Miles Davis boxed set called The Complete Columbia Album Collection. That’s 52 albums, plus a previously unissued DVD of the 1967 quintet playing…

An Important Sale

Oh, the aptly named Important Records, one of my favorite sources for outstanding experimental, noise, and otherwise out-there recordings, is having a crazy holiday sale, yo. Check it out: You can buy 44 compact discs for just $44. Or 66 compact discs for just $66. Finally! And your purchase comes with a sweet tote bag. You’ll need it for hauling around all those compact discs.

Vinyl lovers, there’s something for you, too, of course. Important is offering a selection of great, colorful vinyl for just $5 or $10 an album. Dan Friel's exultant Ghost Town for just five dollars…

Fluid Piano

Cool. I’m kinda scared by the possibilities of this thing. Let’s get two: One for Bob Reina and one for Robert Silverman. For more info on the Fluid Piano, visit The Guardian.

By the way, this is just one of the many interesting stories I’ve come across thanks to the Stereophile Twitter page, which now has 67 followers. Whee!

Not Not Fun!

On Friday, I promised myself that I would spend no more money on records until after the New Year. On Saturday, I found myself at Other Music with three LPs in my hands. Gah! I brought them up to the counter, where the cute girl with the black hair was waiting. I felt despicable.

With a heavy heart, I handed my records to the girl.

“Oh,” she exclaimed upon scanning the first LP. And then, “oh,” again, with the second LP. And then, “oh,” once more, with the third LP.

“You win ‘Shopper of the Day,’” she said.

“Are you Karen?” I asked.

“Yes.”

…

In A Strangeland

This is what I want from music:

Yeah, that’s right.

Good thing Talk Normal’s debut LP, Sugarland, is now available. It’s been blasting from my office and through the halls of 261 Madison Avenue since its release. I wonder what the girls from Soap Opera Digest think. The album was recorded by Nicolas Vernhes, at his Rare Book Room studio, so the sound is appropriately powerful and spacious.

I was a bit upset over missing Talk Normal open for Sonic Youth during their recent show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, but no sweat: Talk Normal will be playing this…

Livin' In Paradise

I’d say on average that about 85 percent of the people I ask, hate Christmas music with an undying passion. I am one of a crazed minority who actually like the stuff and have long cultivated a collection of the stuff. Although I usually begin the season with the two volumes of Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits, both of which are now out of print (C’mon Rhino!), but are easily found used on Amazon, my general rule with Christmas music is: the weirder the better. And God knows when it comes to weird, Bob Dylan’s new collection of guttural holiday croakings is truly amazing.

I do…

Even in the Rain

Here’s the video for the Fiery Furnaces’s hit single, “Even in the Rain,” which is possibly my favorite track from the band’s excellently easy-to-listen-to album, I’m Going Away. (It’s not really a “hit.” I just made that up. But it could be, if we lived in a different world.)

I mean, even in the rain, man. That’s a powerful concept. Like this cat won’t even soften up for the time it takes to offer his lady a protective helmet for her delicate head while they ride his hog cross country, in the rain. That hits me right there.

What’s that weird modulation thing that…