In terms of wank-out psychedelia, this Buffalo, New York-based jam band is more peyote than purple microdot: organic, smooth, and offering a slightly shorter trip than the Grateful Dead or Phish, or their friend Umphrey’s McGee. After using concert improvisations to flesh out the tunes that run like flowing ribbons through previous albums like Wormwood … Read more
Ever since Wynton Marsalis seized the reins of the JLCO in the early ’90s, both the orchestra and the organization have been hallmarks of supreme scholarship and top-notch quality control in the effort to enshrine jazz as America’s classical music. The only danger was that Marsalis would smother his project with love, favoring hermetically sealed … Read more
Italian conductor Roberto Abbado knows the difference between flair and flash, or sophistication and ostentation. After a series of typically elegant performances with the Minnesota Orchestra earlier this decade, he became an artistic partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra two years ago and ascended the podium for five weeks of solid Beethoven last February … Read more
Jazz pianist Bill Carrothers was born in Minneapolis in 1964 and, even as a tyro getting his artistic bearings, elevated the local jazz scene with his cerebral gravitas (No one, for example, untangled the Gordian knots of altoist Lee Konitz better than Carrothers in concert.) While his best-known disc is probably Duets with drummer Bill … Read more
This program of cutting-edge, contemporary classical music for amplified cello isn’t likely to give Yo-Yo Ma a run for his royalties, but might be the perfect antidote for the benumbing holiday hubbub. Cellist Lauren Radnofsky made her Carnegie Hall debut last year, premiering a Brad Lubman composition. Now she will be conducted by Lubman in … Read more
Nearly five years ago, drummer Matt Wilson brought a quartet into a fledgling, soon-to-be shuttered jazz nook called Brilliant Corners in downtown St. Paul and blew about sixty listeners away with music that blended visceral skronk with the sort of exotically forceful swing that could summon forth dancing elephants. Now former Brilliant Corners proprietor Jeremy … Read more
Tegan and Sara have a quirky combo of high-concept modifiers to grab your attention—they’re lesbian twin sisters from Calgary—but their strengths are much more mundane and potent than that. Their latest, The Con, retains a handcrafted, DIY spirit, but the vocals are less girlish and the arrangements less cheesy than their 2004 breakthrough, So Jealous. … Read more
How many anarchist punk bands from Gainesville, Florida, actually get better with age? The only one that matters thus far certainly has. Worthy heirs to Bad Religion if not The Clash, Against Me! have always curlicued their snarl with a knowing smirk—“Cliché Guevara” is a song title from back in 2003. But this year’s New … Read more
America may have spent decades fighting the evils of communism, but with The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein shows us the scary side of the free market. “Disaster capitalism,” the idea at the center of Klein’s new book, employs a simple yet sinister formula: disaster strikes, the public panics, and the … Read more
At this point Bill Holm probably qualifies as a literary lion. He looks the part, certainly (Garrison Keillor has described him as “the tallest radical humorist in the Midwest”), and has a pretty unconventional lifestyle by Minnesota lit standards. Holm is an outsized personality, yet he’s also something of an outstate recluse and a rambler. … Read more