CDs listened to today:

• Anthony Plog: Concerto For Trumpet, Brass Ensemble, And Percussion
• The Streets: A Grand Don't Come For Free
• The Kooks: Inside In/Inside Out
• Arnold Schoenberg: Suite
• Various Artists: Drum & Bass Sessions, 2, disk 2
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
• Luciano Berio: Rendering per Orchestra
  

CDs listened to today:

• Charlie Parker: The Legendary Dial Masters, disk 2
• Frank Black: Teenager Of The Year
• Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d'Oiseaux, disk 1, (Hakan Austbo, piano)
• Republica: (eponymous)
• Steven Mackey: Tuck And Roll
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
  

CDs listened to today:

• Dave Holland: What Goes Around
• Various Artists: Pop Ambient 2007
• Alvin Etler: Concerto for Violin & Wind Quintet
• Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass: The Brass Is Back
• Duke Ellington: Suite from "The River"
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
• Simon Jeffes: "Still Life" At The Penguin Café
  

I just love urban wildlife.

Riding home tonight, I spotted two beavers in Cherry Creek! I was cycling along the bike path just as the light began to fade and I spotted a creature in the creek. Now any urban resident will think what I thought: "is that a rat?" It was only ten feet away, so I had a good, long look and made sure I wasn't mistaken--the wide, flat tail is kind of a giveaway, no? As I watched the beaver swimming along, I spotted a second one. It's kind of odd, the way animals are adapting to the human environment. I've now seen beavers three times in my life, all within a mile of downtown Denver.

CDs listened to today:

• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20
• Tadeusz Baird: Colas Brugnon - Suite In Old Style
• Dollar Brand/Archie Shepp: Duet
• Metric: Live It Out
• Ludwig van Beethoven: The Symphonies, disk 2 (Herbert von Karajan conducting)
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: Consummation
• Fall Out Boy: From Under the Cork Tree
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
• Steven Winteregg: Visions And Revelations
• William Byrd: Suite
  

CDs listened to today:

• The Vines: Winning Days
• Luciano Berio: Rendering per Orchestra
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Symphony No. 2, "Cello"
• Test Icicles: For Screening Purposes Only
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
  

CDs listened to today:

• Steven Mackey: Tuck And Roll
• Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2 (String Orchestra version)
• Various Artists: Drum & Bass Sessions, 2, disk 1
• The Kooks: Inside In/Inside Out
• Igor Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex
  

CDs listened to today:

• Duke Ellington: Suite from "The River"
• Peter Mennin: Symphony No. 7
• Replacements: Let It Be
• Frank Black: Teenager Of The Year
• Walter Piston: Symphony No. 6
  
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis: Consummation
• Syd Straw: War And Peace
  

CDs listened to today:

• Steven Winteregg: Visions And Revelations
• Donald Erb: Ritual Observances
• Mazzy Star: So Tonight That I Might See
• Various Artists: Pop Ambient 2007
• Charles Ives: Symphony: New England Holidays
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: Consummation
• Charlie Parker: The Legendary Dial Masters, disk 1
  

CDs listened to today:

• Ludwig van Beethoven: The Symphonies, disk 2 (Herbert von Karajan, conducting)
• Faith No More: The Real Thing
• Metric: Live It Out
• Zbigniew Bujarski: Quartet for a House-Warming
• Dave Holland: Seeds Of Time
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: Consummation
  

CDs listened to today:

• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Symphony No. 1 (Three Movements For Orchestra)
• Luciano Berio: Rendering Per Orchestra
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
• Johann Sebastian Bach: The Art Of The Fugue
• Arthur Blythe: Lenox Avenue Breakdown
• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20
• Emma Lou Diemer: Concerto In One Movement For Piano And Orchestra
  

CDs listened to today:

• Arnold Schoenberg: The String Quartets, disk 2
• Various Artists: Digital Empire, disk 2
• Steven Mackey: Tuck And Roll
• Igor Stravinsky: Octet
• The Verve: Urban Hymns
• The Kooks: Inside In/Inside Out
• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20

CDs listened to today:

• The Stone Roses: (eponymous)
• Frank Black: Teenager Of The Year
  

CDs listened to today:

• Duke Ellington: Suite From "The River"
• Allan Pettersson: Symphony No. 8

CDs listened to today:

• Steven Winteregg: Visions And Revelations
• Charles Ives: Symphony No. 4 (Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting)
• Various Artists: Pop Ambient 2007
• Johan de Meij: T-bone Concerto
• The Replacements: All Shook Down
• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20
  

CDs listened to today:

• Extreme: Pornograffiti
• Emma Lou Diemer: Concerto In One Movement For Piano And Orchestra
• Dave Holland: The Razor's Edge
• Metric: Live It Out
• Donald Erb: Concerto For Violin
• Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 20
  
• John Mayer: Heavier Things
  

CDs listened to today:

• Luciano Berio: Rendering Per Orchestra
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
• Jan Bach: Laudes
• Blur: Parklife
• Test Icicles: For Screening Purposes Only
• Ludwig van Beethoven: The Symphonies, disk 1 (Herbert von Karajan, conducting)
  

I've long complained about the television coverage of the Tour de France.

But this isn't the day to complain, but appreciate it. You see, Sunday and Monday, the Tour covered roads in the Pyrenees that I actually know! It was really exciting to know that I'd ridden nearly all of the course the last couple of days--perhaps when the riders stopped in Bagneres de Bigorre, some of them even stayed in the hotel where I stayed (it's a near certainty that some stayed at the hotel in Pau where I spent three nights).

CDs listened to today:

• Igor Stravinsky: Apollo
• Velocity Girl: ¡Simpatico!
• Steven Mackey: Tuck And Roll
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto For Trombone
• Deerhoof: The Runners Four
• The Kooks: Inside In/Inside Out

CDs listened to today:

• Vincent Persichetti: Parable For Band
• Stereolab: Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements
• Duke Ellington: Suite From "The River"
• Arnold Schoenberg: The String Quartets, disk 1
• Various Artists: Digital Empire, disk 1
• Frank Black: Teenager Of The Year
  

CDs listened to today:

• Outkast: The Love Below/Speakerboxxx, disk 2
• Steven Winteregg: Visions And Revelations
• William Thomas McKinley: Piano Concerto No. 2
• Vernon Reid: Mistaken Identity
• Various Artists: Pop Ambient 2007

My view of cycling has evolved over the last few years.

Perhaps I should just say that my taste for the sport has changed slightly. I was talking with my mechanic at the bike shop (yes, there's a guy I think of as "my mechanic", like a Ferrari owner) and we were talking about how a bike ride requires a certain amount of preparation: special shorts and jersey, special shoes and socks, helmet and glasses, decisions about water and food.

The whole rigmarole has not been as welcome to me in the last few years, and I find myself using the cheap little mountain bike I've decked out for urban riding more and more. I replaced the suspension fork with a rigid fork, replaced the knobby tires with heavy-duty slicks, added fenders and a rack--voilà! An urban assault bicycle! And it's cheap enough that I won't be terribly upset when–not if–it gets stolen.

Using it means that I can slap on a helmet, maybe clip the pants legs, and go!

CDs listened to today:

• Antonin Dvorak: Concerto For Cello
• Dave Matthews Band: Under The Table And Dreaming
• Metric: Live It Out
• Charles Ives: Symphony No. 4 (Seiji Ozawa conducting)
• Outkast: The Love Below/Speakerboxxx, disk 1
  

CDs listened to today:

• Ludwig van Beethoven: Triple Concerto For Violin, Cello, And Piano
• Everclear: So Much For The Afterglow
• Test Icicles: For Screening Purposes Only
• Havergal Brian: Symphony No. 1
• Dave Holland: Conference Of The Birds
• Emma Lou Diemer: Concerto In One Movement For Piano And Orchestra
  

CDs listened to today:

• Steven Mackey: Tuck And Roll
• The Kooks: Inside In/Inside Out
• Luciano Berio: Rendering Per Orchestra
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
• Jan Bach: Concert Variations
• Blur: Leisure
• Paula Diehl: Right Of Way

CDs listened to today:

• Richard Strauss: Sonatinen
• Suzanne Vega: Days Of Open Hand
• Frank Black: Teenager Of The Year
• Marilyn J. Ziffrin: Symphony for Voice and Orchestra

CDs listened to today:

• Vincent Persichetti: Concerto For Piano And Orchestra
• Steely Dan: Two Against Nature
• Various Artists: Pop Ambient 2007
• Arnold Schoenberg: Serenade
• Various Artists: Dance! Cadence!
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
• Duke Ellington: Suite From "The River"

It's time to talk about the pop music spotlight!

There are nine debuts on my little pop music playlist this week, so let's get started!

• Flo Rida opens with "Elevator", a follow-up to his monster hit, "Low". It highlights some pretty lame, off-key singing and a pretty standard Timbaland groove. It's pretty disappointing and is probably a truer indication of Flo Rida's talents than the infectious "Low".
• In some ways, UK hip-hop artist Ironik's new track, "Stay With Me", reminds me of Kanye West with a sped-up singer ornamenting a sugary production (although lacking some of Mr. West's grit). It's a pleasant meander, beautifully produced.
• And the odd new single this week is Kid Rock's "All Summer Long". It's as if everything about this track is borrowed--even the title (A Beach Boys reference? Not clever!). The verse opens over the piano loops borrowed from one seventies hit (Warren Zevon's "Werewolves Of London") and closes over another's guitar loops (Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama"). Those are two irresistibly catchy tracks to use, and the sing-songy, undistinguished melody is flooded in sentimentality, but may I ask? Why is this debuting in the BBC charts rather than the USA? This thing is so American, it's battered in cornmeal and deep-fried.
• On BBC, we also hear Glasvegas performing a curious imitation legendary producer Phil Spector's "wall of sound". "Geraldine" isn't much of a song, but how odd.
• DJ Khaled assembles an all-star guest list for "Out Here Grinding". Set over a fluid groove that sounds perfect for MCs to produce fluid rhymes, it delivers on the promise quickly and consistently. Both Plies and Young Jeezy sparkle here although I gather we aren't hearing Lil Wayne, which would have been too much happiness.
• Speaking of Lil Wayne, he's got his own joint in the US pop charts: "A Milli". It's so nice to hear such a strong, eccentric personality getting some exposure and it really leavens my playlist with something different when Lil Wayne shows up. "A Milli" is based on a slow, synthetic bass-note rhythm, while Wayne pinches and grinds his voice in a barely rhythmic lark. Nice!
• And on a final note, what kind of pop music makes me pine for the personality of Lil Wayne? This week's example is The Lost Trailers' "Holler Back", a massively insincere ode to redneck sensibility that's so polished and over-produced, it's literally painful to hear. I'd rather watch an hour of American Idol.
  

CDs listened to today:

• Steven Winteregg: Visions And Revelations
  

And we're busily reviewing CDs today.

OK, not "we" and really only one album: The Runners Four by Deerhoof. Hailing from San Francisco, Deerhoof fits into my usual prejudices when it comes to "arty" pop music (in this usage, "pop" really means "not classical"). And what I like is an act that's willing to understand that they aren't a classical group, so they shouldn't look to match that genre's polish, precision, or elegance. What I'm looking for if you're going to go around breaking the rules of pop music is something unruly, maybe a little chaos or noise, but mostly, I'm put off by the faintest whiff of the intellectualism of classical music. It usually leads to the melding of the worst of both worlds: the stuffy, airlessness of classical, yet with a total lack of understanding regarding subtlety or structure.

Deerhoof is a quartet that more-or-less fits into the mold we've seen in rock and roll since before the Beatles: two guitars, drums, and bass (with some keyboards here and there, the musicians sometimes swap roles). The most prominent feature of the band's sound is singer Satomi Matsuzaki, who uses a childlike, no-vibrato delivery to ornament a fairly rambunctious act with simple melodies that seem more like nursery songs--if it weren't for the clunking, grinding guitars and drums. She often sounds like a small girl making up private songs on the spot ("come, come see the duck!" she repeatedly chirps in one track), straining her high-pitched voice in a naïve, un-schooled way. The rhythm tandem eschews the usual rock music four-beat patterns (boom-chuck-boom-chuck) in many songs, cranking out steady or broken rhythms with little apparent precision that mask some pretty subtle manipulations of time. The harmonies are odd: not noisy, not consonant, giving little sense of progression despite the simplified melodies.

I think the biggest concern with an act like this is that they work within a limited emotional range, courtesy a singer who shows little sign of wider talent (she's not going to wail like a banshee). They make up for it with smarts and fun, but you might begin to crave some contrast and catharsis in larger doses than available here.

9 out of 10

CDs listened to today:

• Charles Ives: Symphony No. 3 (Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting)
• The Orb: Orblivion
• Metric: Live It Out
• Nicholas Maw: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
• The Refreshments: Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy
  

CDs listened to today:

• Billie Holiday: The Quintessential Hillie Holiday, Volume 8
• Test Icicles: For Screening Purposes Only
• Pascal Dusapin: Time Zones (Quartet II)
• Material Issue: International Pop Overthrow
• Emma Lou Diemer: Concerto In One Movement For Piano
  

Let's see if I post a tasteful video today.

My last video post was funny, sexy, and more than a little tacky. So now how about we go back to high school when we were the smart kids who loved to make fun of the popular, pretty kids? My pal L has this quoted on her facebook page:



CDs listened to today:

• Deerhoof: The Runners Four
• Ludwig Van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
• Bill Evans: Bill Evans Trio With Orchestra
• Paula Diehl: Right Of Way
• Henry Brant: Pathways To Security
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
  

I'm overdue for a CD review today.

So let's talk about Franz Schubert's Piano Quintet In A, "The Trout". There are two works on the disk, the second being Thomas Adès' Piano Quintet. If you've glanced at my listening journal much, you may not be surprised to learn that the reason I bought this disk was for Mr. Adès' work and not the much better-known Schubert quintet! This is perhaps more obvious when I reveal that the Arditti Quartet plays the shorter piece and in my world, they can do no wrong.

The Schubert "Trout" quintet is probably the best-known work for this particular chamber configuration (the four major stringed instruments plus piano), and in some ways, I suppose you could say it's really the fundamental work of the genre. I don't know that we would really have any other works to hear for piano quintet without it. Still, the most striking thing about the "Trout" quintet is really how much Franz Schubert sought to emulate the textures of a larger ensemble. He frequently masses the strings to give them bulk, while asking the piano to either oppose, comment, or maybe ornament. Even when the strings pause, the piano writing is rich and a bit florid, thickening with rippling arpeggios in the opening movement. It's as if he had a restless left hand that needed constant activity.

Still, that fidgety left hand allows some space here and there, and the middle scherzo (the work has five movements) benefits greatly from the concentration of the left hand's energies in concert with the right. While you might think that a scherzo would be the contrast movement, perky where the second, slow movement is lugubrious, the truth is that the entire "Trout" quintet is kinda caffeinated and bubbly (perhaps explaining the works' enduring popularity). It's all sunny, cheery tunes and bouncy rhythms from beginning to end, exuding the kind of charms we're accustomed to hearing in Mozart. Like Mozart, you will also note a fair amount of elegance in the "Trout" (the odd, rumbling bass note aside), and this is amplified by the occasionally fussy playing of the members of the Belcea Quartet--an odd contrast to the pianism of Mr. Adès himself, who is a bit more straightforward.

Mr. Adés also anchors the ensemble for his own piano quintet, where, at times, I found myself wishing for a pianist with a stronger personality to balance the forceful character of the Arditti Quartet's reliably brilliant musicianship. Mr. Adès emphasizes a kind of episodic storminess in his writing and this work is no exception. With such sensational, sensitive partners here, it can be breathtaking, although a bit pointless at times and his longer phrases are usually softer things that have a tendency to feel meandering--especially in contrast to the clear melodism of the other work on the disk.

7 out of 10

CDs listened to today:

• Steven Mackey: Tuck And Roll
• The Kooks: Inside In/Inside Out
• Luciano Berio: Rendering Per Orchestra
• Grazyna Bacewicz: Symphony No. 3
• The Blow: Paper Television
• Sam Phillips: Don't Do Anything
  

CDs listened to today:

• Various Artists: World Domination
• Duke Ellington: Suite From "The River"
• Iannis Xenakis: Pléiades
• The Earlies: These Were The Earlies
• Frank Black: Teenager Of The Year
• Luciano Berio: Rendering Per Orchestra