Classic Albums

Digging through the Contemporary Classical bins at the old Tower Records on Broadway in NYC was an endless source of mystery and magic. Sometimes, I would pick a recording based on nothing more than the fact that I didn’t know much, or anything, about it. […]

Conlon Nancarrow was born in Texarkana, Arkansas in 1912, played jazz trumpet as a youngster, studied music with with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Nicolas Slonimsky, joined the communist party, fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and lived out most of his life […]

Saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh’s release with guitarist Greg Tuohey, No Filter, has been getting some serious airtime in Barn of late. Jerome and I recently shared an email exchange wherein I asked Jerome if he would be interested in sharing a few favorite records. Instead, and […]

[I am very pleased to be able to share dCS Classical Choices Curated by Charlotte Gardner. I first came across this wonderful selection of music accompanied by equally wonderful words on the dCS Facebook page. The fine folks at dCS were kind enough to allow […]

I have a thing for Mal Waldron. A special thing. A Mal Waldron kinda thing which you may think would be about his gentle soulful searching side, The Quest, or perhaps his work as accompanist for Billie Holiday during her last years. And I do. […]

Of all the personal discoveries made during my multi-year quest through the Tower Records Contemporary Classical department, two composers stand out from the rest: Morton Feldman and Giacinto Scelsi. If I saw something new from either, it was mine and I’d rush back to my […]

If you enjoyed Schnittke’s wild ride, fasten your seat belts.

In 1587, Johann Spies published a chapbook based on a mythologized and fantastical version of a real man’s life who lived in the early 16th century titled Doctor Faustus. It spread like wildfire throughout Europe. Thomas Mann wrote his novel of the same name, published […]

Back when I lived in NYC, I did not own a TV and the Internet, as we know it, didn’t exist. What ever did I do with all that time?

According to me, The Blues was a musical genre that encompassed many styles of roots music beginning in the late 1800s, ending in the 1950s. Anyone who started playing ‘the blues’ after the 1950s, especially twelve-bar blues and extra-especially if they’re from England, isn’t playing […]