02023-05-25 | Daily Music Tip
I love this album cover. The photograph shows Ralph Towner, 82 years of age, playing guitar. He wears loose black clothing and sits on a piano bench, perhaps. The album is called At First Light. Solo guitar recordings. Towner sounds great. I first listened to Ralph Towner in the 70’s: Solstice, from 1975, followed by Sargasso Sea, with John Abercrombie, in 1976. I don’t love the music but I love that it exists, if that makes sense. I have to be in the right mood to listen to it. To hear Towner play guitar like that at age 82 is very inspiring.
LINK to the album on Apple Music but I am sure it can be found on every streaming service.
Here is another great image – LINK.
02023-04-18 | Daily Music Tip
Ahmad Jamal died on Sunday, aged 92. In the late Fifties his group worked as the house trio at Chicago’s Pershing Hotel and, in 1958, released the live album, Ahmad Jamal Trio At the Pershing: But Not for Me, which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. DMT37 is the song Poinciana from that recording. Such a great vibe!!
02023-04-13 | Daily Music Tip
Nostalgia, from the album Brilliant Trees, by David Sylvian. A wonderfully melancholic, perhaps even maudlin, track. I hear an electric guitar plugged directly into the console (no amp), something Holger Czukay often did. The voice at the beginning would have come from Holger’s dictaphone, as he recorded lots of such snippets from AM radio around the world.
You might also enjoy Plight & Premonition Flux & Mutability, two albums Sylvian and Czukay recorded together, released on one CD in 2018.
02023-02-07 | Daily Music Tip, Music
This is a playlist that combines two albums, The Wind by Balmorhea, and Player, Piano by Daniel Lanois. The texture of the music is similar enough to create a good flow. I didn’t sequence the playlist as I enjuoyed listening in shuffle mode. It was perfect for the flight from Albuquerque to Burbank yesterday afternoon. Balmorhea was new for me. I had not heard of them and enjoyed their album very much, especially this track: The Myth. Sounds like half speed guitar… of course I would love it.
02023-02-04 | Daily Music Tip
The whole album Player, Piano is very nice. Most of it has no pulsing rhtyhm like the above. The music has a dose of melancholy, but I happen to love that.
02022-12-31 | Daily Music Tip, Music
Yo-Yo Ma plays Ennio Morricone – Link to album on Apple Music.
What a great way to end the year! Listen to this music, created by a group of hus in a hall somewhere in Rome. This is what we can accomplish. We can create beauty, we can work together for a common goal. Morricone orchestrated, conducted, and produced the album. The orchestra is the Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta (Wikipedia), which Morricone uses a lot. Plus Yo-Yo Ma, of course.
