Women of Echoes

A Celebration of Women in Music from the Echoes Spectrum for International Women’s Day

Laurie Anderson in Echoes Interview

This Saturday, March 8 is International Women’s Day and as we do each year, we focus this show on the sounds of women musicians.  These days, that doesn’t seem as necessary as it did many years ago.  Even 20 years back, finding enough women musicians creating progressive, ambient and electronic music to fill this show wasn’t easy, but today, women are a big part of Echoes, if not in outright domination of the music you hear.  So this is more a show about celebrating how far we’ve come with women in music.  Today, we’ll hear women artists from pioneers like Laurie Anderson and Kate Bush  to a new generation like Norah Jones and London Grammar.

Frankie Rose Live on Echoes

Laurie Anderson is the Grand Dame of new music. She defined the independent women composer and artist for the late 20^th century with a personal vision that is unparalleled . She’s still creating great music and performance works today although she suffered a terrible loss this past year when her husband, Lou Reed, passed away.  You can hear Anderson’s influence on other contemporary composers like Julia Holter, a musician who probably wouldn’t have been possible without Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman.”

You can hear them all tonight on Women of Echoes.  Playlist here.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Mark McGuire’s Along the Way is our March CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

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Pick Up  TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

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Robert Ashley’s Perfect Life Ends

ROBERT ASHLEY PASSES AT 83

Well, it may not have been so perfect, but Perfect Lives, Private Parts was the name of Robert Ashley’s multi-part meditation on life.  It was loosely called an opera, in the way that his contemporary, Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach was an opera, but less so.  Robert Ashley was ambient before Eno, composed avant-garde opera’s years before Philip Glass and did a form of rapping before rapping.  Check out Perfect Lives, Private Parts: The Bar below.  Ashley is from that post-John Cage generation that included David Behrman, Alvin Lucier and LaMonte Young.  Ashley worked in the regions of the subconscious, those inner murmurings that bubble to the surface between sleep and waking.  Pieces like Automatic Writing created an ambient scrawl of his spoken word, including his uncontrolled murmurings from his Tourette’s Syndrome.  I interviewed Robert Ashley in the late 1980s for the radio series, Totally Wired.  You can hear it here: (Ignore the playlist and address spiel at the end)

Here’s a couple of Ashley’s signature tune.  My favorite remains Perfect Lives, Private Parts: The Bar with it’s psychotic boogie woogie piano from Blue Gene Tyranny and drunken ruminations making brilliant connections.  Unlike a lot of avant-garde composers, Ashley had a wry sense of humor in his work.  Robert Ashley was an American maverick’s who musicians and art cognoscenti knew, but who never rose about the avant-garde surface.  Explore his body of work and you might wonder why.  Robert Ashley had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and died on 3 March at approximately 1:30pm.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Mark McGuire’s Along the Way is our March 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 24 Years Ago Today!

In 1989 the World Wide Web was invented
The Berlin Wall fell.
The Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Denmark legalized civil unions between same-sex couples

They were all ahead of the curve.

And so was Echoes which launched on this day 24 years ago, on October 2, 1989

Today on Echoes, you’ll hear all the music from that very first show, from beginning to end, in sequence.  Has Echoes changed?  Sure.  Has the music lasted? Definitely.

Andreas Vollenweider & John Diliberto on Echoes

Let’s look at some of the artists.  The first track you’ll hear is Tangerine Dream’s “Tiergarten” from their album, Le Parc.  The Dream is still going after all these years.

Swiss harpist Andreas Vollenweider was at his peak in 1989 when we played  Down to the Moon.  He’s appeared on the show many times with interviews and live performances.

Japanese American shakukachi player Masakazu Yoshizawa is one of only two musicians on this list who isn’t still with us.  The other artist who left us is Colin Walcott.  He was the world music soul of the band, Oregon, the gold standard of chamber world fusion.  Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless and Glenn Moore continue the Oregon tradition to this day.

Pat Metheny on Echoes

George Wallace was pretty obscure in 1989 when we played his electronic album, Communion, and he still is although he also continues making music with a 2013 album, Soul Ascending and a reissue of his Sacred Earth recording.

And speaking of ahead of the curve, Pat Metheny has always been in his own orbit. He was the first interview run on Echoes.  He’s been a perennial on Echoes playlists and still continues to surprise.  His 2013 Tap album will be near the top of my best CDs of 2013.

Three of what we considered to be the California electronic quartet appeared in this Echoes. Michael Stearns was one of the leading lights of new electronic music in 1989 with expansive recordings Like Planetary Unfolding and Encounter.  His Floating Whispers album was one of his prettiest and most melodic.  Steve Roach was something of a protege of Stearns for a moment and Stearns played on at least one of Roach’s albums..  He wasn’t actually played on the first show, but Roach wrote the theme song we used back then.  There was a stretch into the early 21 century when Roach always had an album in rotation on Echoes. We’ll hear from one of the classics from the year before Echoes launched, Dreamtime Return.  Robert Rich was often mentioned in the same breadth as Roach and they recorded two albums together.  Rich went on to develop his own rhythmically propulsive, melodically sinuous, organically woven music and that sound really began with his album Rainforest, which was also released in 1989. All three played the Ambicon Festival this past summer. (The 4th member of this quartet was Kevin Braheny).

Michael Stearns

Robert Rich Recording for Echoes in his studio.

John Diliberto & Steve Roach

 

Jonn Serrie is often considered part of that group of 1980s space/New Age/electronic artists. He was plugged into the electronic zeitgeist in 1989.  His second album,  Flightpath was released that year and it remains my favorite of his.  He’s also still recording and released a nice album called Sunday Morning Peace in 2011.

The other John & Vangelis

And all of those musicians bowed at the feet of Vangelis.  He was one of the reasons we created Echoes.  His mix of classical orchestration, choral voices and wild space synthesizer provided music of one of the most varied careers that includes film scores and his massive orchestral-choral work, Mythodea.   Mask remains one of his most dynamic albums.

Progressive Rock is in the Echoes DNA and you hear it with King Crimson’s “Sheltering Sky” one of the most timeless pieces recorded by this long-lived, continually shifting band.  And in 2013, Robert Fripp has announced a new edition of the group.

Will Ackerman & John Diliberto

Would their be Echoes without Will Ackerman and Windham Hill Records.  I’m not so sure.  He launched the finger-style revolution taking it out of the folk domain of Leo Kottke and John Fahey and into the popular consciousness.  Ackerman is still at it.  He won his first Grammy in 2004 and continues to make music and produce notable artists like Jeff Oster and Todd Boston. We’ll hear something from Ackerman’s album of duets, Past Light.

Philip Glass’s minimalism was a big part of Echoes early on and Glass is ever-prolific, releasing several new albums a year.   1000 Airplanes on the Roof is one of his lesser known works, but it’s epic.  Singer Meredith Monk emerged form the same downtown New York scene as Glass, creating a music that tapped into primal spirits.  And she’s still doing it.  Dolmen Music remains my favorite album from her.

Roger Eno in Clerestory

Probably the most influential album we played 24 years ago was Peter Gabriel’s Passion, his score to the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ.  Who knew in 1989 that this album would influence so many musicians, virtually creating the techno-tribal and world fusion genres.

Patrick O’Hearn’s Eldorado was also released in 1989.  It’s a brilliant recording of electronic world fusion with O’Hearn using Middle Eastern modalities and musicians on several tracks, presaging the whole Persian fusion movement of artists like Vas, Niyaz, Axiom of Choice, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Transglobal Underground and more.

And speaking of world fusion, there was Yas-Kaz, a Japanese multi-instrumentalist who put out some beautiful recordings in the 1980s.  Steve Roach created a collection from them called Darkness in Dreams on the Celestial Harmonies label.

Peter Buffett’s The Waiting is one of the more quintessentially New Age albums here, while Roger Eno’s Between Tides was one of the early signpost albums of ambient chamber music.  Erik Wollo was among the first of the onslaught of wonderful Norwegian electronic musicians and he has been a continuous presence on Echoes.  Traces is from 1985 and it holds up so well that Spotted Peccary re-released it in 2012.

I think the best thing I can say about this playlist is, as much as Echoes has changed, there is nothing on here that I wouldn’t play on the show today.

So enjoy this flashback to the beginning tonight on Echoes.  Thanks to all the radio stations who have run the show, whether they are original stations like WXPN, Philadelphia, or newcomers like WDET, Detroit.   And a special thanks to all of you who have been with us on the journey, whether you were there in 1989 or just discovered us tonight.

See tonight’s playlist here.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Support Echoes by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.  We can only continue another 24 years with help from listeners like you.

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 donationsare 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!

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.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00BIUOH1O/echoes

Ludovico Einaudi Live on Echoes

Hear Ludovico Einaudi live on Echoes tonight.

Acclaimed Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi comes to Echoes with his electro-acoustic ensemble and plays the sometimes haunting, sometimes exuberant themes of his latest album, In A Time Lapse.

Below, watch Ludovico Einaudi’s live performance of “Divenire” from his 2008 CD, Divenire.

Read a review of Ludovico Einaudi’s In A Time Lapse, Echoes March CD of the Month. 

“For In a Time Lapse Ludovico Einaudi has pulled out all the stops, synthesizing a 21^st century classicism that is all-embracing in its musical influences, and all-enveloping in its emotional sweep.”

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Find your local Echoes station or streaming options here.

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!

HAP-HAP-HAP-HAP-PY-PY-PY-PY Birthday Philip Glass

Philip Glass turns 75

Do you remember the first time you heard Philip Glass?  It’s something that’s pretty hard to forget.  For me it was Music with Changing Parts, a double LP released on the Chatham Square label in 1973.   I heard it in 1974 at WXPN where it was on the essential listening list put together by Emmett Ryan and Pat Sherbourne.   Nearly 40 years later, this would still be diving into the deep end listening.   The relentless arpeggios and cycles played on Farfisa organs, saxophones and voice would lead me to call Glass the heavy metal of minimalism.  This was Glass at his strict minimalist best.  To the uninitiated, it was a wall of unchanging noise, but deep listening revealed a wealth of changes and detail.  The repetition itself became something of a sonic mandala, taking you deeper in although it wasn’t nearly as repetitive as some would have you believe.  In concert, watching the musicians keeping up with the dervish pace, it was exhilarating to hear.

This video of a live performance from 1982 samples the Glass oeuvre from the strict minimalism of Music in Similar Motion to the more lyrical side he revealed on the album, Glassworks, with “Facade.”

Over the years, the melodies became more expansive, elements of straight classical music emerged, especially in his symphonies.  The operas actually became operatic after Einstein on the Beach and the sound Glass created became imitated and adapted throughout music from rock to electronic to classical. His trilogy of films with Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi ,  revealed an emotional and evocative core to his music that Hollywood has been ripping off ever since.

At 75, Glass is still churning out works, often pillaging his own materiel, reinventing it for new efforts.  He’s just released his 9th Symphony on iTunes.

Happy Birthday Philip Glass who turns 75 today, January 31.

John Diliberto ((( echoes ))) 

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Echo Location: Jon Hassell Drops His Clothes

Jon Hassell returns with first US tour in 20 years and new CD

You can hear an audio version of this blog, with music.

Listen to records by Björk, Baaba Maal, Talking Heads, Ani DiFranco, Ry Cooder, or  K.D. Lang,  and you’ll hear the trumpet of Jon Hassell.  It’s not always that obvious and often doesn’t even sound like a trumpet, but Jon Hassell has been quietly impacting music since he began working with minimalist icons Lamonte Young and Terry Riley in the 1960s.  The Memphis-born trumpeter played on the 1968 recording of Riley’s seminal minimalist masterpiece, In C.

But it’s not as a sideman that Hassell has reshaped the music horizon. His 1980’s albums like Fourth World Volume One, Possible Musics, recorded in collaboration with Brian Eno, sent musicians like Peter Gabriel and film composer Mark Isham, off into ethno exotica territories, mixing technology and global music, improvisation and digital composition.   Hassell had many names for his sound, among them, Fourth World Music.

Jon Hassell: Let’s say there was a computer profile of an average man in the world.  Put all the physiognomy all the skin color all the everything together and what would you come out with.  You’d come out with a citizen of the world.  And what I wanted to do was a make a music that had that kind of universal appeal.

After more than four decades,  Jon Hassell continues to create a sound that’s beyond categories, shaping new music directions. Among musicians, Jon Hassell is a legend. Synthesist Steve Roach.

Steve Roach: With Jon Hassell he’s absolutely the musicians musician.  The innovations he’s brought through have filtered through a lot of people’s work.

Composer Jeff Rona has played with Hassell and now works in films, including projects with Lisa Gerrard.

Jeff Rona: He’s beyond the original guy.  Everyone else who is original still got it from Jon as far I’m concerned.

But Brian Eno admits, he’s not made the transition to popular icon.

Brian Eno: I’m sort of an evangelist for his music.  I really think it’s important music, and beautiful music too.  And I always wish that people would listen to it more.

Jon Hassell’s latest album is called Last Night the Moon Came Dropping It’s Clothes in the Street,  a title taken from a 13th century poem by Rumi.    Mixing laptops, layered compositions,, and live sound processing, it often sounds like Miles Davis meeting Arvo Pärt, tuning in signals from space.  You can hear Hassell referencing Miles Davis’s spaciest piece, “He Loved Him Madly,” throughout the album.

His band on the album is a mix of old and new.  Bassist Peter Freeman, and sampler artist Dino J.A. Deane have been with him for years.  New comers include the between worlds violinist, Kheir Eddine M’Kachiche, who’s solos seem to reach for the sky while Hassell trawls the calm at the center.  Even more than Hassell’s previous albums, Last Night exists in a netherworld of swampy atmosphere’s and mysterious touches as music is resampled, looped and processed, creating odd rustlings, subtle rattles and subliminal pulses.  It’s the music of unsettled dreams and foreign terrain.

Jon Hassell is currently making his first North American tour in 20 years.  Tour dates include New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.  This has been an echo location, soundings for new music.  Echo Locations are run Wednesday mornings about 9:30 AM on WXPN, 88.5, Philadelphia.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Thoughts in Sound: Cage, Eno, Jarrett, Riley

Thoughts in Sound from musicians at the bleeding edges of music including John Cage, Brian Eno, Terry Riley and Keith Jarrett.

You can also hear an Audio Version of this blog, with music.

Every musician plays notes, but some of them think about the nature of sound a lot more than others. For them, music isn’t just a conveyor of melody and rhythm, but a pathway into sound itself. No one captured the meaning of sound better than avant-garde iconoclast, John Cage. John Cage died 1992, but in the spring of 1987, he was still enjoying the sounds of the city permeating his Chelsea home.

John Cage: I have a friend, Paul Zukofsky, the violinist, who used to come and stay where I lived in New York when I left and when Merce Cunningham left because it was so quiet but he no longer comes because this is so noisy. For me it’s a great pleasure though, to hear all the sounds. I find it very, just plain musical.

John Cage finds his concepts reborn in the work of ambient music pioneer and pop music producer, Brian Eno.

Brian Eno: Music has become part of the tapestry of your life like lighting is or like the environmental sound that you here anyways…. Anyway I was excited by the idea of making music that acknowledged that and said “Here’s a music that is especially for that. Here’s a music that is intended to merge into the environment. “

Eno’s concepts were inspired by Cage and by minimalist composers who wanted to bring out sonic details and focus through repetition.                                                                                   
Terry Riley: Tape loop creates a stasis in the sound and you can watch something as if it were stopped in a camera frame and it repeats over and over again. And You start to notice the real deep details that can draw the mind in   also.

Surprisingly, pianist Keith Jarrett, who is anti-electronic, and far from minimalist, still reflects a similar desire to get to the essence of sound.
Keith Jarrett: As long ago as when I was at Slugs with Charles Lloyd I had this feeling that I might quit music because all I had to play was one note, you know, and that recurs in different guises now and then. But what it suggests is that I don’t really need all that big an instrument to justify what I want to hear.

Keith Jarrett, Terry Riley, Brian Eno and John Cage. They are musicians who have gone into the microcosms of sound, often returning to produce some of the most influential, and even popular music of the last 50 years. They are among ten artists we’ll hear next week on a special Echoes series called Thoughts in Sound. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.

You can also hear an Audio Version of this blog, with music.

Thoughts in Sound is a series we produced through a grant from the Public Radio Exchange.  It includes interviews with Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, LaMonte Young, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams and Keith Jarrett.  You can read a more extensive article about this and hear each complete 5 minute audio piece here.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))