التصنيف: My back pages
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Concert review: Irving Stone Memorial Concert, July 5, 2003
I recall writing this review, which predates this blog by just over two years, but I don't remember for what outlet I wrote it. I located it today on a whim – after posting the image you see above on Twitter – on Acoustic Levitation, an online journal edited and published by Steve Koenig, a…
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Brian Chase: On Drums, Drones, and the Dream House.
Brian ChasePhotograph courtesy Terrorbird Originally published on National Sawdust Log, April 13, 2018 Drummer Brian Chase is best known as a member of the vital indie-rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but that only reveals the tip of the iceberg where his creative life is concerned. A longtime participant in New York City’s busy underground-music scene,…
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Sarah Hennies: The Art of Exposing Hidden Possibilities.
Photograph: Walter Wlodarczyk Originally published on National Sawdust Log, Nov. 29, 2017 Even for an artist as versatile and unpredictable as Sarah Hennies—a percussionist, improviser, and composer originally from Louisville, Kentucky, and now based in Ithaca, New York—her newest work represents a substantial achievement. Contralto, an hour-long work for vocalists on video with strings and…
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Album review: Elliott Sharp – The Velocity of Hue
Elliott SharpThe Velocity of Hue(Emanem) Time Out New York, January 1-8, 2004 Many words have been used to describe the distinctive oeuvre of downtown guitarist-composer Elliott Sharp. Gentle and soothing, however, aren't among them. That's not to say that there isn't any subtlety in the pummeling calculus-core onslaught of Sharp's late, lamented band, Carbon, on…
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Tony Malaby at the Internet Café (Village Voice R.I.P.).
I wrote for the Village Voice only one time, very early in my professional career, at the tail end of the full-time jazz journalism stage that preceded my return to classical music after around five years of estrangement. The article was published Feb. 27, 2001, or so the website tells me. That I never returned to…
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How I became a professional journalist (hint: you’re looking at it).
A thread from Twitter, begun as a simple response to someone else's tweet on Thursday… Jobs I did before full-time professional* journalism: BabysitterFloor cleaning/maintenanceBusboyDishwasherKitchen prepRecord store clerkRadio program hostPublicist (* but also wrote for my college paper and freelanced for alt-weeklies mag long before that…) https://t.co/WrBpsT9mXm — Steve Smith (@nightafternight) July 12, 2018 After which…
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Interview: Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree (Time Out New York, Sept. 20, 2010)
Porcupine Tree; photograph by Diana Nitschke Interview: Steven Wilson of Porcupine TreeThe Volume blogTime Out New YorkSept. 20, 2010(link) Founded in England at the onset of the 1990s, Porcupine Tree was originally passed off as a "forgotten" old-school prog-rock band. But yarn-spinning ceded to singer, guitarist and bandleader Steven Wilson's knack for reconciling vintage influences…
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Album review: Vanessa Rossetto, erased de kooning + rocinante
Vanessa Rossetto (Image: Matthew Revert) Vanessa Rossettoerased de kooning + rocinanteBandcamp; DL only Originally published by National Sawdust Log, May 5, 2017 Everything that’s erased leaves its trace of its passage behind: a point as familiar to the manuscript recyclers of antiquity for whom the term palimpsest was coined to modern-day digital data-recovery sleuths. We learn…
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Illuminating Downtown’s Dark Years.
Charles Gayle in 'Rising Tones Cross' JazzizJuly 1999 The early 1980s were a period of transition for the avant-garde fringe in New York. The loft scene – the days in which Ornette Coleman's hom on Prince Street and Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea provided workshops for experimenters to develop their art –was drawing to a close,…