Duets for Extended Chapman Stick & Guitar with Tom Griesbraber & Bert Lams on Echoes

Tom Griesgraber & Ber Lams in Echoes Living Room

Bert Lams & Tom Griesgraber play Live tonight on Echoes.

Bert Lams &Tom Griesgraber are both post-progressive rock veterans.  Bert Lams is the best known as part of the California Guitar Trio. Tom Griesgraber is lesser known with one previous album out, but he’s been creating progressive music for Chapman Stick for many years now.  The two got together to create an album of duets that turned into a conceptual CD called Unnamed Lands.  It’s an imaginary trip to the American west in Conestoga wagons.  Their wagon train pulled into the Echoes living Room this year and they played a beautiful set for us live.  Hear it tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Hammock’s Oblivion Hymns is our January   CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR PICK UP

TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Echoes Top 25 for December 2013

Here’s the last Top 25 list for 2013.  And like our 25 Essential Echoes CDs and The Best of Echoes Listener Poll, it reveals just what a great year 2013 was.  There are seven Echoes CD of the Month picks on it including December’s selection, David Helpling & Jon Jenkins’ Found.  That’s unusual, but that’s because of the Best of show and the 12 CDs of the Month for 2013 show.  But there’s a couple of CDs there that easily could’ve been CDs of the month, notably, Jeff Johnson, Brian Dunnings & Wendy Goodwin’s Winterfold, a wonderful album of atmospheric winter pastorals, Bombay Dub Orchestra’s Tales from the Grand Bazaar, a CD that get’s into a serene, ambient chamber music sound but with eastern edges and subtle dub grooves, and Azam Ali & Loga Ramin Torkian’s Lamentation of Swans, a deep dive into Persian atmospheres with a lush merging of extoci strings, throbbing percussion and synthesizer atmosphere’s all topped by the sensual wordless vocals of Azam Ali.  And next Month’s CD of teh Month is here as well, Hammock’s Oblivion Hymns. Here‘s the list.

ECHOES TOP 25 FOR DECEMBER 2013

1. David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – Found (Spotted Peccary)
2. Moby – Innocents (Mute)
3. Jeff Johnson Brian Dunning & Wendy Goodwin – Winterfold (Ark Records)
4. Olivier Libaux – Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age (Music for Music Lovers)
5. Tonight Sky – Tonight Sky (Tonight Sky)
6. Moya Brennan – An Irish Christmas (BFO Records)
7. Ólafur Arnalds – For Now I Am Winter (Mercury Classics)
8. Tom Griesgraber and Bert Lams – Unnamed Lands (Inner Knot)
9. Divine Matrix – Hydrosphere (AD Music)
10. Akara – The World Beyond (Merkaba Music)
11. Euphoria – E4 (Instrumental) (Euphoria)
12. Hammock – Oblivion Hymns (Hammock Music)
13. Bombay Dub Orchestra – Tales from the Grand Bazaar (Six Degrees)
14. Ulrich Schnauss – A Long Way to Fall (Ulrich Schnauss)
15. Brad Hoyt – Far Away from Every Day (Harp Guitar Music)
16. Juliette Commagere – Human (Aeronaut Records)
17. Ludovico Einaudi – In a Time Lapse (Ponderosa Music & Art)
18. Azam Ali and Loga R Torkian – Lamentation of Swans (Terrestrial Lane Productions)
19. Mary Fahl – Love & Gravity (Mary Fahl)
20. Eklipse – Electric Air (The End)
21. Frankie Rose – Herein Wild (Fat Possum Records)
22. Lotte Kestner – The Bluebird of Happiness (Saint Marie)
23. The Piano Guys – A Family Christmas (Portrait)
24. Courtney Barnett – A Sea of Split Peas (House Anxiety)
25. Grails – Black Tar Prophecies Vols 4-6 (Temporary Residence)

See 25 Essential Echoes CDs and The Best of Echoes Listener Poll

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

GIVE THE GIFT OF THE ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club now and you can put David Helping and Jon Jenkins’ Found under somebodies Christmas tree.  It’s our December  CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR

GIVE THEM THE GIFT OF TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Duets for Extended Chapman Stick & Guitar with Tom Griesbraber & Bert Lams on Echoes

Tom Griesgraber & Ber Lams in Echoes Living Room

Bert Lams & Tom Griesgraber play Live tonight on Echoes.

Bert Lams &Tom Griesgraber are both post-progressive rock veterans.  Bert Lams is the best known as part of the California Guitar Trio. Tom Griesgraber is lesser known with one previous album out, but he’s been creating progressive music for Chapman Stick for many years now.  The two got together to create an album of duets that turned into a conceptual CD called Unnamed Lands.  It’s an imaginary trip to the American west in Conestoga wagons.  Their wagon train pulled into the Echoes living Room this year and they played a beautiful set for us live.  Hear it tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

GIVE THE GIFT OF THE ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club now and you can put David Helping and Jon Jenkins’ Found under somebodies Christmas tree.  It’s our December  CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR

GIVE THEM THE GIFT OF TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Tom Griesgraber & Bert Lams Happy Trails Echoes Podcast

Bert Lams & Tom Griesgraber talk about their concept album, Unnamed Lands in the Echoes Podcast.

Bert Lams &Tom Griesgraber are both post-progressive rock veterans.  Bert Lams is the best known as part of the California Guitar Trio. Tom Griesgraber is lesser known with one previous album out, but he’s been creating progressive music for Chapman Stick for many years now.  The two got together to create an album of duets that turned into a conceptual CD called Unnamed Lands.  It’s an imaginary trip to the American west in Conestoga wagons.  I hit the trail with Bert Lams and Tom Griesgraber in the Echoes Podcast.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB SPECIAL

New members of the Echoes CD of the Month Club will get Moby’s Innocents album, our November CD of the Month and a BONUS CD of Bombay Dub Orchestra’s Tales from the Grand Bazaar.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.  You’ll also get the new Echoes CD, Transmissions: The Echoes Living Room Concerts V19, You can do it all right here. You

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio.

Westward Ho! with Tom Griesgraber & Bert Lams

Bert Lams & Tom Griesgraber talk about their concept album, Unnamed Lands tonight on Echoes.

Bert Lams &Tom Griesgraber are both post-progressive rock veterans.  Bert Lams is the best known as part of the California Guitar Trio. Tom Griesgraber is lesser known with one previous album out, but he’s been creating progressive music for Chapman Stick for many years now.  The two got together to create an album of duets that turned into a conceptual CD called Unnamed Lands.  It’s an imaginary trip to the American west in Conestoga wagons.  I hit the trail with Bert Lams and Tom Griesgraber.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Hammock’s Oblivion Hymns is our January   CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR

Pick Up  TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

 

Sticks & Strings-Greisgraber & Lams Live on Echoes

Hear Chapman Stick Player Tom Greisgraber & Guitarist Bert Lams Live on Echoes Tonight

Tom Griesgraber & Bert Lams on Echoes

We know Bert Lams as one head in the three-headed, six-armed monster of the California Guitar Trio.  Tom Griesgraber plays the Chapman Stick, enhancing his two-handed tapping with atmospheric effects.   They come in to the Echoes Living Room to play music from their album, Unnamed Lands.

Hear them tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.   CD of the Month Club members will be getting Akara’s The World Beyond.  Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and see what you’ve been missing.

Support Echoes by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Think of the great artists you love on Echoes. Think of the informative interviews and exclusive live performances. Then, think of a world without Echoes. You can make sure that never happens by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Echoes is a non-profit 501(c3) organization just like your local public radio station. And all donations are tax deductible. You can support Echoes with a monthly donation that will barely disturb your credit card.

Join the Echoes Sound Circle and keep the soundscapes of Echoes flowing!

Echo Location: Tangled up in Strings-California Guitar Trio & David Pritchard

The California Guitar Trio and David Pritchard are acoustic fingerstyle players who aren’t taking the lonley solo route. 

You can also hear an Audio version of this Echo Location, with music.

If you think one acoustic guitar is good, there are some musicians who think 2, 3 or 4 is even better. The California Guitar Trio has embraced this concept. As the name suggests, there are three of them, Paul Richards, Bert Lams and Hideyo Moriya, but despite the name, none of them live in California. They’re graduates of Robert Fripp’s League of Crafty Guitarists and for seventeen years they’ve been making music that sounds like one musician, with 30 fingers. Their new album is a CD of cover tunes called Echoes.

They cover Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Lynard Skynard‘s “Freebird” (probably in response to smart-assed requests from the audience), and something from a guy named Ludwig Van Beethoven.
CGT write some beautiful original tunes, but they’ve always done a lot of covers in their music, creating unlikely adaptations like this for their 3 guitars. They expand a little bit with a few other musicians and really stand out on remakes of Pink Floyd‘s “Echoes” and Mike Oldfield‘s “Tubular Bells.”
CGT haven’t been acoustic purists for a while. They amp up their acoustics so they sound like
electrics at times and aren’t wary of using some electronic processing and a few other musicians to obtain the sound they want.
Unlike the California Guitar Trio, David Pritchard actually lives in the Golden State. He started doing the multiple guitar thing just before CGT in 1990 with his album, Air Patterns. Sometimes he plays one guitar. Sometimes he plays five. He’s a jazz guitarist with classical chops composing a lush minimalist music for multiple guitar players, although sometimes they are all named David Pritchard.

On the title track to his new album, Vertical Eden, he overdubs himself playing 5 acoustic guitars. But he brings in four other guitarists when he plays live. Like the California Guitar Trio, he’s expanded his palette on CD with other musicians, but multiple guitars, contrapuntal arrangements and what Guitar Player magazine once called “arpeggios from hell,” remain the cornerstone of his music.
You can get tangled up in strings with David Pritchard’s Vertical Eden and the California Guitar Trio’s Echoes.

You can also hear an Audio version of this Echo Location, soundings for new music.

John Diliberto July, 2008
(((echoes)))

Ambient Chamber Music Reigns on Echoes Top 25 for June

Ambient Chamber music dominates top airplay at Echoes in June.
We’ve been tracking ambient chamber music since the beginning of Echoes when it was mostly Tim Story, David Darling and Kevin Keller, but the subgenre has exploded, in an ambient chamber music way, that is, gently and without many people noticing, partly because it falls in between genres from the ambient chamber world music of Biomusique and Jami Sieber to the Euro-minimalist classical of Ludovico Einaudi and Ronn McFarlane to the folk chamber music of William Ackerman and Gerry O’Beirne. Nine of the Top 10 albums fall into the category and 14 of the Top 25.  When I hear 20-somthing bands like Balmorhea citing 50-something composers like Ludovico Einaudi or the venerable Arvo Part, that tells me that something is happening.  This is another ebb and flow in the evolution of Echoes which has seen influxes of Celtic, space music, electronica and world fusion over the years.  There’s still plenty of electronica, world fusion and unclassifiable music that makes up the Echoes soundscape. Here’s the Top 25 with a few links to reviews.

ECHOES TOP 25 FOR JUNE

1 – Biomusique – The 10000 Steps  <Listen>
2 – Jami Sieber – Unspoken  <Listen>
3 – William Ackerman – Meditations
4 – Ronn McFarlane – Indigo Road
5 – Fernwood – Almeria
6 – California Guitar Trio – Echoes
7 – Ludovico Einaudi – Divenire
8 – Niyaz – Nine Heavens
9 – Eldad Lidor – Closer
10 – Gerry O’Beirne – The Bog Bodies and Other Stories <Listen>
11 – Qntal – Translucida
12 – Ahn Trio – Lullaby For My Favorite Insomniac <Listen>
13 – Don Peyote – Peyote Dreaming
14 – Richard Bone – Short Waves
15 – Christopher Young – Sleepwalking
16 – v/a – Future Memories (v/a)
17 – Lisa Lynne & Aryeh Frankfurter – Two Worlds One
18 – Robert Rich & Ian Boddy – React
19 – The Orb – The Dream  <Listen>
 20 – Michel Banabila – Traces
21 – Bill Frisell – History Mystery
22 – Deobrat Mishra & David Michael – Himilayan Crossroad
23 – Kevin Bartlett – Glow in the Dark
24 – David Arkenstone – Echoes of Light and Shadow
25 – Rudy Perrone – The Language of Spirits