Sam Jackson is a Dublin based pianist, but when I heard “The Gramophone” for the first time on the radio, I mistook it for what could have been a track from an early recording from the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Sam Jackson’s music is of the same calibre. “The feeling I have something to say, the great difficulty […]
Brad Mehldau: River Man
Any version of Nick Drake’s River man will always stop me in my tracks. The unusual time signature and the eerie contemporary classical arrangements to the original song make it such a rich ground for covers. If Norma Waterson’s version introduced me to the song, it is Brad Mehldau’s cover I keep coming back to. […]
Ibrahim Maalouf: Will soon be a woman
Born in Lebanon and now based in France, Ibrahim Maalouf is a young jazz trumpet player whose sound can truly be described as unique. Ibrahim Maalouf plays a “hybrid” trumpet fitted with a fourth valve, allowing him to play the quarter tones specific the Arabic melodic modes and scales. The instrument was designed in the late […]
Gerry Diver: Music for tape loop
Multi-instrumentalist Gerry Diver based the “Speech Project” on several interviews of Irish musicians and singers such as Shane MacGowan, Christy Moore, Damian Dempsey, Martin Hayes and Danny Meehan. It also features archival recordings of Galway accordion player Joe Cooley. The various musical pitches of the musicians’ voices formed the basis for subtle musical arrangements. “Music […]
John Cage: In a landscape
Referring to classical Indian thought and influenced by Gita Sarabhai, the Indian musician he was tutoring in the mid-1940s, John Cage formulated the idea that the purpose of music was to “to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences”. Written as a clear homage to Erik Satie, “In a landscape” […]
About Spellbinding Music
Why is it that a particular piece of music, a tune or a song will move us in such a way that it will stop us in our tracks, send shivers up our spine or give us goose bumps? Spiritual or secular musical traditions such as Sufi music, Gnawa music, plainchant, gospel, blues etc. all […]
