Ades Tevot—Billie Holiday and Tom Waits–Sufjan

Music…………….Today I was in Barnes and Noble in Union Square and Billie Holiday was coming out of the stores music system. Damn! Old microphones. People playing live in the same room. No overdubs. A PERFORMANCE DOCUMENTED. NO FIXES. NO TUNING. NO FLYING AROUND TRACKS! As a music producer I am thrilled technology allows us to tweak tracks and edit and have the tracks be more like clay than law but…………..

You can hear it when it is a performance and not a set of carefully manicured overdubs. Pretty extraordinary. It makes you realize that Sgt. Peppers and Dark Side Of The Moon also ushered in things not always wise, chief among them endless artistic navel gazing. Tom Waits still records pure old school and sometimes self consciously, allowing his bassist to purposely play off mic and out of tune. A little goes a long way but damn, I do love the concept behind that dedication. The recent Tom Waits stuff is so timeless because of this. Ah to write a few arrangements for him. Mmmmmmmmmmmm….. Keeping it off the cuff.

This approach obviously won’t work for big, brand named, glistening Pop music but for the listener inside of us that yearns for a little Bessie Smith, I say “Amen”. Performance!!! Documenting a performance (the FIRST Beatles record and the Sinatra records from the 50′s, all great big band records prior to 1970 etc etc etc.)

Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall, Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall, Miles Davis at The Plugged Nickel. The list goes on and on. And one from the present. Any Keith Jarrett Trio record with Jack DeJohnette and Gary Peacock. LIVE.

The new Thomas Ades record on EMI is fascinating. I do think certain composers become critic’s darlings. John Adams and Magnus Lindberg are two that come to mind recently (both deserving in many ways.) Ades is one of those and the reason is his rigorous mind, intellectual and probing and constantly surprising. He has his own sound world utilizing the same instruments that have been used for 200 years. NOT EASY.

That said, I am not entirely convinced in 50 years his music will be quite as well loved as Britten’s is now. Bottom line though: he is a certified genius. “Tevot” and especially, as I have said before in these blogs, his Violin Concerto called “Concentric Paths” featuring the insanely gifted Anthony Marwood, are both deserving of time spent with the stereo on and your brain on input.

Another record that is so great, and it’s one I just heard, is called “Run Rabbit Run” by the String Quartet OSSO. It is filled with absolutely uncanny arrangements of Sufjan Stevens’s electronica stuff. Nico Muhly does one great one but there are a few others including Year of The Horse arranged by the first Violinist Rob Moose. REMARKABLE use of harmonics and CLEARLY written by a player in the best of senses (Mozart and Britten were Violists). Buy this record. It is the coolest thing I have heard in a while. Love to all. I’ll be back.

Rob