It’s the final movement of Mahler’s fourth symphony, the last in the composer’s folk poetry-inspired “Wunderhorn” series. By this point, the work—performed this Easter afternoon by the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra under Leon Botstein—has already traveled from the blooming, budlike innocence of the sleighbells that open its first movement and through the devilish “death dance” [...]
My writing has appeared in the Village Voice, the Boston Herald, Jazz Improv, Your Flesh Quarterly, Chronogram, Roll, the best-selling book Doo Wop by Cousin Brucie, and on such websites as All Music.com, All About Jazz.com, and NeWorld Review.com.
Dawn Upshaw: A Higher Voice
June 2010 /
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2010/5/Music/A-Higher-Voice?page=1
The Fugs: Final Frenzy?
April 2010 / Roll magazine
http://www.rollmagazine.com/apr10/articles/music.php
“It’s interesting that we came in during a time of war, with Vietnam, and now we’re going out during a time of war, with Iraq and Afghanistan,” says Ed Sanders when asked about the Fugs’ 45-year career.
Yes, it’s true: After nearly five decades of protest, poetry, and provocation, it seems that rock’s original underground band [...]
Joe Magnarelli: Persistance
April 2010 / CD Liner Notes
There are several indispensable qualities an artist must have if he or she is to survive as a jazz musician. Tone. Technique. Ears. Resourcefulness. Adaptability. Good communication skills. Patience. Confidence. Individuality. Taste. Drive. Soul. But perhaps the most important quality a great jazz musician—or any great artist, really—must have is persistence. Lots of it. Because [...]
Inside the ‘Box of Thrills’: A Brief History of Musette
April 2010 / All About Jazz.com
Watch any old movie that’s set in Paris and the soundtrack is sure to be musette, the charming, accordion-fueled music so identified with the city’s romantic aura. But before it became clichéd Hollywood shorthand for a location change, it was the social music of Paris’ unsavory criminal underclass. Much like American jazz, blues and country, [...]
Handy With a Hook: Marshall Crenshaw
March 2010 / Roll magazine
When it comes to the mysterious art of songwriting, Marshall Crenshaw’s innate genius has been widely and indelibly established since the release of his self-titled debut in 1982. One of power pop’s undisputed cornerstones, Marshall Crenshaw (Warner Bros. Records), with its addictive Top 40 smash “Someday, Someway” (also a hit for Robert Gordon), “There She [...]
Poster Children
"American Artifact" Released on DVD March 27
March 2010 / Chronogram
Promoter Chet Helms, Bill Graham’s chief rival during those heady days of early concerts by the Jefferson Airplane, Santana, the Grateful Dead, and other bands at San Francisco’s Avalon and Fillmore ballrooms, had a revelation after learning that the ornate posters advertising the shows were disappearing as fast as he was putting them up. “People [...]
Pump Audio Keeps the Music the Music Flowing
March 2010 / Roll magazine
http://www.rollmagazine.com/mar10/articles/music.php
It used to be the mark of “selling out,” but in today’s recession-wracked wasteland that stigma is long gone. For indie musicians now, getting a song used in the background of a TV show or commercial is like striking gold, a well-deserved payday after years of flogging away for beer and [...]
CD liner notes: Joe Magnarelli
April 2008 /
There are several indispensable qualities an artist must have if he or she is to survive as a jazz musician. Tone. Technique. Ears. Resourcefulness. Adaptability. Good communication skills. Patience. Confidence. Individuality. Taste. Drive. Soul. But perhaps the most important quality a great jazz musician—or any great artist, really—must have is persistence. Lots of it. Because [...]
Ramble On
Levon Helm
February 2008 / Chronogram
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2008/2/Music/Ramble-On
It’s the smile. That’s what really gets you. Almost as much as the incredible songs. Or the fluid, flawless musicianship. Or even the coarse, honey-ladled grit of the voice. The smile is wide, full, bright. It floods the big, log-walled room with pure, dazzling luminescence, like a signal that the angels are about to appear [...]
