latest posts

Skip James: Devil Got My Woman

Skip James: Devil Got My Woman

by | Apr 20, 2016 |

When I was about 20, I became very interested in early American music after being introduced to Alan Lomax. Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He collected thousands of field recordings for The Archive of American Folk song at the Library of Congress. Without the work of Lomax and and his contemporaries, much of the popular music we have today would not have developed.

read more
Ellington: Heaven

Ellington: Heaven

by | Apr 8, 2016 |

I was introduced to it when soprano Candice Hoyes unearthed a whole album’s worth of Ellington rarities for her debut album, On a Turquoise Cloud, in 2015. This track, “Heaven,” is from Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, which the composer called “the most important thing I’ve ever done.” It premiered right here in New York in 1968 at St. John the Divine Church, but no recording of this has surfaced. It’s hard to believe this Harlem gem was little known, but it’s very exciting that a singer of my generation has chosen to interpret it!

read more
Mahler: Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

Mahler: Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

by | Apr 4, 2016 |

…this particular song – it just gives me the chills every time I hear it. It’s the captivating melody, the serenity, the orchestration with the utterly human English horn and the etherial harp, and most of all, it’s the heart-wrenching dissonances. The music alone is enough to break your heart, but Friedrich Rückert’s poem takes it over the edge, and Mahler couldn’t have set it more perfectly.

read more