Music
BAM Next Wave, Part II
By George GrellaWe live in a post–Bang on a Can musical world.
Put a Yodel in Your Soul
By Jose PaduaWhen I was a child and first heard yodeling, all I knew was that it did something to me, and that what it did to me was strange, mysterious, and maybe even (if I were wont to use such terms back then) spiritual and profound.
Musical Dissonance, Cognitive Strain
By David St.-LascauxAfter brash beginnings as a precocious student, Sergei Prokofiev left Russia shortly after the revolution for America. Bad timing and too-ambitious projects there forced him to depart, luckless, for Paris, where he fared better.
Outtakes
By Steve DalachinskyAfter Henry Rollins’s “lecture” at Joe’s Pub about his life, travels, how we should promote peace and be nice to each other, how he’d mellowed with age and loved us all, why it’s important that the right guy got re-elected, how he boldly went around Haiti after the earthquake giving kids soccer balls, and how at 51 he was most likely the oldest person in the room, I asked him to sign a CD that included two of my friends.
Natural Elements
By Richard KlinKeyboardist Jamie Saft, drummer Craig Santiago, and bassist Brad Jones make up the New Zion Trio. The ensemble can be best understood as a substantive, far-ranging conversation: Each participant has a full voice, each listens, and together all participants shape and guide the flow of ideas.
In Conversation
MOHSEN NAMJOO with Shoja Azari
On the occasion of the musician/composer’s forthcoming live performance with his ensemble at N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center in Manhattan on February 10, 2013, Mohsen Namjoo paid a visit to the Rail’s advisory board member Shoja Azari’s SoHo loft to talk about his passion for traditional and modern music, informed by his social/political upbringing in Iran, which ultimately led to the synthesis of his music, and more.
Exit the Maestro
By Alessandro CassinOn this cold, sunny, and sad late January morning, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris stopped breathing, after months of struggle with lung cancer.
