November 2009
8 posts
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To illustrate a point...
I’ve updated my review of Medeski, Martin and Wood at MASS MoCA last Thursday with photos from the show by Will Szal. Check them out!
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The New Yorker talks to Lauren
Q&A on The New Yorker.com with Lauren Ambrose about her newly formed band The Leisure Class. They make their on-the-radar debut Sunday at Joe’s Pub. My review of their warm-up gig at a bar in Housatonic Wednesday night quickly became the most-viewed post here on Found Sounds And Such…, beating out former champ “Macbeth in the Red Room,” a review of Sleep No More at...
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ARTICLE: "Audience Jumps To Trio's Grooves"...
“Each band member lept nimbly from instrument to instrument, influence to influence, mood to mood. Yet John Medeski stood out as a mad wizard of sorts, alternating among a Hammond B3 organ, Moog synthesizer, Wurlitzer electric piano, melodica and an acoustic Steinway—often playing two or three at once. It was in service of a performance that ranged from radical to reassuring, with...
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ARTICLE: "The Goldilocks Effect" (Luke Doucet)
Photo by Ogden Gigli of Luke Doucet performing at Mission Bar and Tapas
“It wasn’t a bad idea to reconfigure Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire”—an ominous mumble about sexual obsession and seething guilt—into a country music arrangement, but Doucet’s vanilla vocals drained the song of any heat.”
My review of Luke Doucet’s solo show at...
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ARTICLE: "Medeski, Martin and Wood: After 18...
“It ends up in the jazz department because it’s instrumental music,” barnstorming keyboard wizard John Medeski says in a telephone interview from Woodstock, New York. “But is Kenny G jazz? Good God, help us. You can say it’s about the instrumentation: jazz is instrumental music with horns, some harmonic instrument, drums and bass. But where does that put Cecil Taylor, or Albert Ayler?...
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Lauren Ambrose, you're not bringing me down
(Grainy iPhone photos by me)
I can’t believe I missed her Juliet and her Ophelia in the Park. Something about watching Lauren Ambrose rule the room with a microphone in hand tonight—proving not merely a capable but indeed a fully convincing frontwoman for a hot jazz band—finally brought home for me my folly in missing her universally acclaimed turns as those iconic Shakespearean heroines...
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ARTICLE: "Searing Talent Rises Above Rough Edges"...
“The constant throughout was Jones’ eloquent power, be it her stab-you-in-the-heart vocals or the depth of her material, which was shown well in a series of relatively stripped-down arrangements. Yet at times it felt like band practice, with Jones frequently instructing a band member to sing or not sing, or change the tempo, or lay back.”
Here’s my review of Rickie Lee...
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Rickie Lee Jones on Hillary Clinton and health...