If this year the single-artist album looks to be on shaky ground — thanks to the EP's rise, the single's continuing dominance and the neither-nor of hip-hop mixtapes and online dance DJ mixes — the officially sanctioned compilation album would seem even wobblier. In the age of Spotify (not to mention the age of iTunes), most listeners make their own multi-artist playlists as a matter of course.
Murphy recently posted a mini-album entitled, The Austin, TX Sessions (1984-1985). These four songs are in a more Pop vein than you have ever heard from him before!
Austin Jimmy Murphy's collection, "A History of Blues," has WON a SAMMY (Syracuse Area Music Award)! Murphy is from Syracuse, NY, and in August 2012 he released this box set of blues that includes four CDs and a 12-page booklet. The SAMMYs are an annual award presentation to local musicians of all genres. Murphy won a SAMMY in 1997 in the category "Best Concert Event or Series" for the New York State Budweiser Blues Festival. The awards are voted on by the people of that region. CONGRATS!
To listen to Mandalit del Barco's appreciation of Jenni Rivera's life and career, as heard on All Things Considered, click the audio link.
Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera died Sunday in an airplane that crashed in the early hours of the morning in Toluca, west of Mexico's capital. The legendary musician, household name and feminist presence in the Latin music scene was 43.
Pianist, classical music scholar and thinker Charles Rosen died in New York yesterday at age 85 following a battle with cancer. A prolific author, essayist and Guggenheim Award winner, Rosen published two staple books on classical music, 1971's The Classical Style and 1995's The Romantic Generation, and was a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.
From 'Morning Edition': Mandalit Del Barco talks with Renee Montagne
The news that no survivors have been found in the wreckage of a small plane in which Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera and six others were traveling before it crashed Sunday in northern Mexico means "the world has lost one very beautiful voice," as E! Online writes.
Diana Newlon leads the OHDELA chorus from her Akron living room.
Credit Molly Bloom / StateImpact Ohio
Three OHDELA students — from left, Hannah Fulks, Erika Blon and Randi Beatty — sing together. The online school's chorus meets for in-person practice once each quarter.
Originally published on Sat December 8, 2012 8:09 am
Diana Newlon sits on her living-room couch leading choir practice. With her laptop balanced on one arm of the sofa, she looks at a screen full of videos of girls singing "Jingle Bell Rock." Each girl is in her own little square, arranged Brady Bunch-style on the screen.
Newlon teaches at the Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy — OHDELA for short — and she's the founder of perhaps the only all-online school choir in the state, or even the nation.
As of this year, the vocal group Anonymous 4 has been introducing modern audiences to medieval music for a quarter century. When the all-female quartet asked David Lang to help mark the occasion by writing them some music, he didn't need any convincing. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer was already a big fan.
Photographer Ken Regan with the Rolling Stones, 1977
Credit Ken Regan / Camera 5
Elvis Presley, early 1960s, with Nancy Sinatra. "I knew I would have to hustle in this competitive business if I wanted to make a name for myself .... But I had to make it to this one: Sgt. Elvis Presley, stationed for two years in Germany, was flying in to meet with the media at Fort Dix, N.J., on the eve of his discharge."
Credit Ken Regan
The Beatles with Ed Sullivan, 1964. "The audience in the 703-seat theater shrieked nonstop. This was at the deafening dawn of Beatlemania. You couldn't hear a thing. Some fans just seemed to be in shock, staring ahead, tears running down their cheeks."
Credit Ken Regan
"When The Beatles returned to America in August, 1965 ... I got one of my favorites. Walking the aisles, one audience member caught my eye: an older man sitting with his fingers plugged in his ears to mute the high-pitched squeals. As I moved in for this terrific shot, I got a closer look and realized I was photographing the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein."
Credit Ken Regan
The Rolling Stones on Saturday Night Live, 1978. Bill Murray blow-drying Ron Wood's hair.
Credit Ken Regan
Sonny and Cher, 1966. "I truly lucked out with the kind of access that almost no longer exists. 'I Got You Babe' had been a number one hit in the summer of 1965, but the sassy, animated couple — Sonny was 34, Cher was 19 — couldn't have been more cooperative, friendly, and open."
Credit Ken Regan
Woodstock, 1969. "Woodstock was not just the mother of all rock festivals, it was a photographer's paradise."
Credit Ken Regan
Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger confer at a benefit played in Tarrytown, N.Y., for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc., 1969. "He's the son of populist folk pioneer Woody Guthrie, but Arlo Guthrie, when he was only twenty-two, had found his own voice with his sardonic, counterculture anthem, 'Alice's Restaurant.' "
Credit Ken Regan
Mick Jagger's 29th birthday party. "At the party I photographed Mick and Keith with Bob Dylan at a time when Dylan sightings were extremely rare. Why was he there? Maybe the folk-rock icon was curious to meet up with rock 'n' roll's greatest icons-in-the-making."
Credit Ken Regan
"Once ... I thought, God, that smells really good, like eggs or something. I went into the kitchen — this was still midday — and there was Keith, standing over a frying pan at the stove, without a shirt on, cooking up some eggs. I had to do a triple take: he never got up much before six or 7 p.m. Thank God I had my camera because this was a one-in-a-million shot."
Credit Ken Regan
Tour of the Americas, on the plane between San Antonio and Kansas City, June 1975, (left to right) Bianca Jagger, Ron Wood, Charlie Watts and Keith Richards.
Credit Ken Regan
"In 1977, Peter Frampton was filling 90,000-seat stadiums as a good-looking songwriter and fluid, blues-rock guitarist who made upbeat lollipop rock. I shot him in several situations ... [including] at a sold-out concert in Philadelphia's JFK Stadium."
Credit Ken Regan
Westbury Music Fair, January 1970, Jim Morrison and The Doors
Credit Ken Regan
Janis Joplin at the Fillmore East, March 1968
Credit Ken Regan
"In 1970, Time sent me down to Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville, for a story on Johnny Cash. I spent a couple of days with Johnny and his wife, June Carter Cash, photographing them at their home. The shoot was both a challenge and a thrill."
Credit Ken Regan
Bob Dylan checking a Halloween mask in the mirror, Plymouth, Mass., Rolling Thunder Revue tour, 1975.
Credit Ken Regan
"Merry players" on the beach, Bob playing trumpet. Thanksgiving, 1975, Sturbridge, Mass.
Credit Ken Regan
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan practicing backstage, Rolling Thunder Revue tour, 1975. "Rolling Thunder was unlike any tour before it or since — an antic, in-the-moment carnival of impromptu happenings starring an ever-shifting cast of offbeat characters. Bob had given me free rein to shoot it all — onstage, backstage, offstage, dressing rooms, parties, trailers, whatever was going on."
Credit Ken Regan
Rolling Thunder Revue tour, Montreal, 1975. ' "What's with the whiteface?" I asked Bob as he was being made up before a show. Nobody could figure that out. He said, "Well, I'm playing these halls and it's really dark. I want the people way in the back to be able to see my eyes." Okay. Whatever."
Credit Ken Regan
Iggy Pop in New York for the Dec. 10, 1984, issue of People magazine. "By the time I shot Iggy for People in late 1984, he had calmed down quite a bit. He was 37, and a cool, terrific, and very amenable subject."
Credit Ken Regan
In the fall of 1977, I did a home take and a People cover (with Mick and Keith) of a very mellow, domesticated Keith Richards with his girlfriend of ten years, Anita Pallenberg, and their eight-year-old son, Marlon."
Mickey Baker, one half of the hit-making duo Mickey and Sylvia in the late '50s and an influential guitarist whose work can be heard on hundreds of records, has died at his home near Toulouse, France.
Originally published on Mon December 3, 2012 10:08 am
Lincoln Center and the New York Phil have confirmed plans for a (long, long overdue) major overhaul of 50-year-old Avery Fisher Hall that "aims to redefine what it means to be a concert hall at a time of challenging orchestra economics and changing audience habits." This will be the third attempt at addressing the venue's acoustical challenges.
The Peony Pavilion is one of China's most famous operas, but uncut performances of this romantic 16th century work can take more than 22 hours. Chinese composer Tan Dun, who's best known for his Academy Award-winning score for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has adapted the work into a compact 75 minutes.
Originally published on Thu November 29, 2012 3:26 am
In an episode from the fifth season of Mad Men the show's main character, advertising executive Don Draper, is asked by his client, the cologne company Chevalier Blanc, to supply a Beatles song for a television commercial. The year is 1966, and the 40-year-old Draper doesn't have his finger on the rapidly rising pulse of popular music. So he calls in a team of younger, hipper copy writers, including his wife Megan.
"When did music become so important?" he asks her.
There's really been nothing like Trapped in the Closet ever before.
R&B star R. Kelly has been making (and remaking) a series of short music videos that tell a flamboyant narrative in less-than-five-minute installments. The first batch of several dozen appeared online in 2005. Now, there's a total of 40 "chapters" that aired last Friday on IFC, with the latest ones being released online one at a time for the next week.
After years of waiting, the Kennedy Center has a new symphonic organ replacing its old Filene organ. The $2 million project will culminate in the organ's debut on Nov. 27. William Neil (left), the National Symphony Orchestra organist, speaks with NSO Assistant Conductor Ankush Kumar Bahl (center) during the organ's test with the orchestra on Oct. 18.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
The organ console and concert hall as seen through the pipes of the organ chamber set behind the orchestra. The new organ boasts 1,000 more pipes than the previous one — nearly 5,000 pipes in total.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Jacquelin Rochette, artistic director of Casavant Bros., gives a tour of the labyrinthine organ chamber. The Montreal-based company was founded in 1879 and specializes in building, renovating and installing pipe organs.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Pipes inside the organ chamber range from five-eighths of an inch to 32 feet long, with varying shapes and diameters. Each pipe is meticulously tuned to create the organ's unique tonality.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
The cluster of pipes in the center are the only ones that remain from the old Filene Great Organ, installed in 1972.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Weiler pulls on the "Filene" stop, named after Catherine Filene Shouse, the donor of the first Kennedy Center organ dismantled earlier this year. The wooden console has 103 stops, which are responsible for balancing the treble and bass — the lows and highs of each pipe.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Bahl (left) speaks with Neil (center) and Weiler about the organ's test performance with the orchestra on Oct. 18. After six weeks of toning and tuning, the team just needed to make a few final refinements. "We had to tone it down today. We heard too much organ," said Weiler. "It's much easier to make an organ softer than louder, but the power is there."
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
A concert hall organ has to have the right balance — powerful enough to be heard over the orchestra and chorus, but blending in like any another instrument.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Rochette stands along a narrow passageway deep inside the organ chamber.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
After years of waiting, the Kennedy Center has a new symphonic organ replacing its old organ installed in 1972. The $2 million project will culminate in the organ's debut on Nov. 27. William Neil (left), the National Symphony Orchestra organist, speaks with NSO Assistant Conductor Ankush Kumar Bahl (center) during the organ's test with the orchestra on Oct. 18.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Neil plays the organ while organ consultant Jeff Weiler pushes and pulls stops during the test. Building the organ took nearly two years, plus more than three months for installation.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
The new organ was tested with the orchestra on Oct. 18.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Organ consultant Jeff Weiler (left) and Casavant artistic director Jacquelin Rochette oversaw the tremendous task of building, installing and voicing the Kennedy Center's new organ.
It was almost spooky. Each night after 11 p.m., when nothing was stirring in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, two men would enter. One would sit at the organ, playing a key or series of keys, and the other would crawl around inside the organ pipes, 40 feet off the floor. The process went on for months.
It was the all but final phase of installing a new organ for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. And on Nov. 27, the organ makes its formal debut.
Have you ever wondered whether music conductors actually influence their orchestras?
They seem important. After all, they're standing in the middle of the stage and waving their hands. But the musicians all have scores before them that tell them what to play. If you took the conductor away, could the orchestra manage on its own?
Originally published on Tue November 27, 2012 9:07 am
It's beginning to look a lot like craziness — end-of-the-year craziness, to be precise. Now that Gray Thursday has officially reduced Thanksgiving to carbo-loading for the holiday shopping marathon, many people's winter holidays have become little more than a massive spinout.
Originally published on Mon November 26, 2012 3:29 pm
Andrew W.K., whom NPR Music described as the "long-haired, wild-eyed, keyboard-pounding, sublimely over-the-top party-rocker," won't be taking his party to Bahrain.
At least not on the government's dime.The State Department has rescinded its invitation, stopped the music if you will, just as word started to spread that the U.S. Embassy in Manama had invited W.K. to perform.
