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I’m going to be covering the last three days of the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, Tuesday through Thursday. With James Levine’s sudden withdrawal from the festival due to illness, a number of conductors have been deputized to carry on. Among those pinch-hitting: Stefan Asbury, Oliver Knussen, Jeffrey Milarsky, Erik Nielsen, Ryan Wigglesworth, and Shi-Yeon Hong. I’m particularly excited to hear Knussen’s interpretations of Three Illusions, the Boston Concerto, and the Horn Concerto on Thursday. I was disappointed to miss the premiere of Soundfields on Sunday: did any S21 readers attend? If so, share details!

In a throwback to travelling during graduate student days, I’ll be staying at Econo Lodge (http://www.econolodge.com/?sid=hJodg.g8eYmgAu5g.46); perhaps channeling that era, my inner miser was dismayed that the rate went up $20 overnight before I’d had a chance to book a room. Still, it’s a better deal than most accommodations in Lennox during the summer.

Charles Ives

Songs 1

Various Artists

Naxos 8.559269

A baker’s dozen of (mostly) young singers affiliated with the Yale School of Music perform 29 of the 114 songs by Charles Ives in this first volume of Naxos Records’ Ives Songs series. The quality of the pianists – Eric Trudel, J.J. Penna, Laura Garritson, and Douglas Dickson – is excellent throughout. As one might expect with any sizable group of emerging vocalists, no matter how distinguished, some of the singers “get” Ives better than others. The composer’s vocal music presents significant challenges; his songs mix the cultivated and vernacular traditions in such a way that they require thoughtful interpretations and flexible delivery. If some of the Yalies occasionally sound a bit too “well-mannered” for Ives’s colloquial incorporations, they make up for it with fine musical preparation.

Some highlights: Robert Gardner is a wonderfully boisterous carnival barker in “Circus Band” and displays supple piano singing in “the Cage.” Mezzo Leah Wool supplies generous tone and sensitive phrasing “Afterglow.” Tenor Kenneth Tarver gives a lovely lyrical cast to the sentimental, relatively early “At Parting.” I tend to doubt that Ives would have imagined countertenors singing many of his songs; but male alto Ian Howell’s presence underscores the wide-range of potential interpreters of Ives’s substantial oeuvre. Indeed, it is a repertoire worthy of every young singer’s attention. I look forward to Naxos’s Volume 2.

Malcolm Middleton

Sleight of Heart

Full Time Hobby (www.fulltimehobby.co.uk)

Formerly a member of Arab Strap, Scottish alt-folk singer/songwriter Malcolm Middleton is known for excellent compositions married with a slightly dystopian worldview. His fourth solo CD, Sleight of Heart, seems to be an attempt to find a way out of the darkness. There are songs about working towards sobriety (“A Week Off”), battling depression (“Follow Robin Down”), and the challenges of maintaining a loving relationship (“Hey You”).

Although the album’s lyrics tend to signal a rather grownup rebirth, Middleton’s music has lost none of its earlier vitality. Acoustic arrangements, abetted by violinist Jenny Reeve, double-bassist Stevie Jones, drummer Paul Savage, and pianist Barry Burns, feature the songwriter’s mordantly witty, heavily accented singing and incisive guitar playing. The whole band coalesces into a fine performing unit; but Burns, in particular, deserves special mention. The pianist adds sparkling textures and punctuates thematic material on “Week Off” and “Just like Anything.” Another highlight is when Reeve sings support vocals; in a full blown duet, she blends seamlessly with Middleton on “Follow Robin Down.”

Sleight of Heart doesn’t pretend that adversity can be banished altogether, but here we see an appealing side to Middleton’s artistry: he lights candles instead of cursing the darkness.    

Bluebird Cafe

I visited Nashville for the first time this past weekend for a bit of vacation. My hosts, the Mitchells, got us tickets to a terrific gig Saturday night at the Bluebird Cafe (http://www.bluebirdcafe.com): a singer-songwriter roundtable, where three of Nashville’s finest traded old and new songs.

Thom Schuyler (http://www.thomschuyler.com) contributed beautiful ballads such as “Sixteenth Avenue,” an appreciation of Nashville musicians, devotional songs, and wryly humorous interludes, including a vehemently anti-SUV “Hummer Song.”

Fred Knobloch (http://www.jfredknobloch.com) played suave lead guitar throughout and shared blues-inflected originals such as the show-closing standout “Feels Like Mississippi.” The trio was abetted by harmonica player Jelly Roll Morton, who supplied an impressively versatile array of solos.
 

Bluebird Cafe has Writers Nights as well – an auditioned showcase for emerging singer-songwriters to perform their songs for a discriminating (and sometimes talent-scouting) audience. http://www.ticketsnashville.com/WebSales/Pages/TicketSearchCriteria.aspx?epguid=bf039d52-a988-4642-9759-921d19ffac66&
 

Free Kitten

Inherit

Ecstatic Peace E#22C

Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon has been collaborating with singer/guitarist Julia Cafritz and the Boredoms’ drummer Yoshimi since the early 90s in the band Free Kitten. More than many garden variety side projects, Free Kitten proved to be a formidable force on the alt-rock scene in its own right. Inherit, the band’s first CD in eleven years, is their best work to date.

Gordon and Cafritz are an incendiary pair of leaders, exuding tremendous charisma on pithy No Wave anthems such as “Roughshod” and “Help Me.” Long form compositions “Erected Girl” and “Free Kitten on the Mountain” and “Monster Eye” display the band’s experimental proclivities and noise-rock roots (one wonders if the latter cut is a reference to the band in Jonathan Lethem’s recent novel You Don’t Love Me Yet). J Mascis, of Dinosaur Jr. fame, adds to the howl of guitars on “Surfs Up.”  Primitivist guitar riffs, Gordon’s visceral singing, and Yoshimi’s free-improv pummeling on “Sway” bring Inherit to an adventurous close.  

Karen Johns & Company
Star and Season
Ptarmigan Music/Jazz
www.karenjohns.com

Karen Johns has been all over the map, living everywhere from Canada, Alaska, and Seattle to her current abode in Hunstville, Alabama. Johns’ latest CD, Star and Season, is her seventh recorded collaboration with her husband, guitarist James Johns. Musically, it is a well-travelled journey that reflects the couples’ rambles across North America, mixing jazz and theater standards as well as originals in a mélange that incorporates contemporary pop, cabaret songs, and swing-era arrangements.
Some of the strongest performances are on Karen Johns’ originals, including the hot big band number “Carry Me Away,” a peppy update on Andrews Sisters’ style girl-group vocals in a virtual sense; with Johns overdubbed.  Another original, “Angels in the Snow,” co-authored with the band’s pianist Kevin Sanders, is a pleasing adult contemporary ballad that features James Johns as a duet vocalist.
Of the cover songs, the best, perhaps for sentimental (geographic) reasons, is a touching reading of “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Although her renditions of chestnuts such as “Night and Day” and “Autumn Leaves” are serviceable, Karen Johns seems less relaxed; and I was surprised that some glaring missed notes were allowed into the final edit of the Cole Porter song. On balance, I’d prefer an entire CD of her fetching originals.
 

Princeton

Bloomsbury EP

Striking Peasant Recordings

www.princeton-band.com

What’s in a name? Jesse Kivel, Matthew Kivel, and Ben Usen don’t live anywhere near Princeton, New Jersey; the trio hail from Los Angeles, California, where they’ve been making music together for over a decade. Bloomsbury, their second recording, is a lovely EP of chamber pop songs. On the sessions for these tracks, the band enlisted the aid of eight additional musicians, who contribute a range of classical instruments from English horn to cello. Princeton employs these augmented forces elegantly.

“The Waves” combines Sixties soundtrack mainstays such as a tuneful, slowly arcing strings, vivacious bongo drums, and dulcet flutes with folk-pop guitars. “Ms. Bentwich” evinces Anglophilic charms, perhaps engendered by the Kivel brothers’ collegiate stint in London, while “Leonard Woolf” channels the wistfully sung melodic charm of early Belle and Sebastian.  The EP closes with “Eminent Victorians,” a peppy, pitched percussion filled sing along. Bloomsbury is bursting with talent.

Los Lonely Boys

Forgiven

Epic Records (www.epicrecords.com)

Forgiven, the latest CD from Los Lonely Boys, relies on a straightforward formula: mainstream rock with a Tejano twist. In today’s pop marketplace, with its profusion of styles and recent emphasis on “indie” aesthetics, MOR rock records are becoming something of a rarity. Elder statesman such as Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana are still able to mount chart-topping recordings, based more on the reputation of their past work than on recent music-making. But the Garza brothers are able to find new vitality in a genre that might otherwise seem to be on its last legs. Their work emphasizes emotive and excellent part-singing and liberal doses of guitar solos by Henry Garza, a fine electric player whose style is reminiscent of the aforementioned Clapton and Santana, with liberal doses of Jeff Beck and bluesman Robert Cray as well. A stirring rendition of Steve Winwood’s “I’m a Man,” with zesty bongos from guest percussionist Steve Jordan, underscores Los Lonely Boys’ approach on Forgiven: celebrating their predecessors while pointing to a way forward for those who like their rock ‘n roll in a traditional vein.