Album of the Day 6/19/11

Every day, our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Sunday’s album is #590:

Jean Shepard – Best By Request

Along with Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard was one of the few women who achieved genuine stardom in Nashville in the 1950s. This 1970 compilation of mostly 1950s hits often plays up the bad-girl persona she cultivated, with considerable relish – it may seem tame now, but it wasn’t then. Backed tersely and inspiredly by some of the era’s top honkytonk players, she can be coy one moment, vengeful the next, as I Learned It All from You, I’d Rather Die Young and Why Did You Wait. Uncharacteristically, her biggest hit was the considerably less downbeat A Satisfied Mind, since covered by a million country artists. Under Suspicion and Don’t Fall In Love with a Married Man are typically characteristic themes for her, and she nails them. She’s still around and well-loved for her sardonic sense of humor on frequent CMT appearances. Here’s a random torrent via El Rancho 1.

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Let the Brooklyn Philharmonic Take Over New York City Parks Concerts in 2011!

[Repost from the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Since the NY Philharmonic won’t be doing its series of summer orchestral concerts in public parks this year, the Brooklyn Phil is offering to step in and fill the breach. And why not? By the way – let’s not rush to judgment concerning the reasons behind this summer’s cancellations: word on the street is that the decision to pull the plug did not originate with the orchestra]

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

June 14, 2011

Dear Mr. Mayor:

Since our cousin, the New York Philharmonic, has other activities that don’t allow them to continue the tradition of free concerts in the parks this summer, we’d be happy to step in and play for free for the people of New York City in their place. We’d very much like to help New Yorkers properly celebrate this summer’s warm evenings.

Having served New York City in both music performance and education for over 150 years, the Brooklyn Phil can certainly manage some rousing Sousa in Central Park and deliver terrific Prokofiev to Prospect Park. Even more, we’d love to get the people of New York City involved in picking what they’d like to hear – so we could easily set up an informal poll on our website (bphil.org) to let the listeners choose their favorites.

Of course, our players (like the New York Philharmonic’s) are union musicians, so we’ll need to work out a way to pay them fairly. But other than covering the actual cost of the performances, we’re not looking to make any profit. Perhaps Target or the MetLife Foundation would be willing to sponsor these concerts for us as they had been planning to do for the New York Philharmonic? Or maybe someone else would help out? We’re eager to discuss possibilities with you.

We love the idea of New Yorkers sitting on blankets, enjoying food and wine while listening to great music under the stars, and we’d be thrilled to give our City the gift of music this summer. I think we could do this if we put our heads together quickly.

Yours truly,

Alan Pierson
Artistic Director
Brooklyn Philharmonic

Loga Ramin Torkian’s Mehraab Puts a New Spin on Classical Persian Music

Mehraab, the title of Iranian composer/multi-instrumentalist Loga Ramin Torkian’s new album, means “shrine” in Persian. It’s an enormously successful attempt to play classical Iranian instrumental music through the swirling, hypnotic prism of dreampop and shoegaze rock. Musically, this most closely resembles Copal’s haunting Middle Eastern string-band dancefloor instrumentals; sonically, it’s remarkably similar to Huun Huur Tu’s landmark 2008 electroacoustic Eternal collaboration with producer Carmen Rizzo. Torkian takes care to mention in the liner notes that the electronics here are limited to how the instruments are processed, without any computerized backing tracks. Since all the instruments here are acoustic, the efx add welcome layers of sustain and reverb. Sometimes a riff becomes a loop; occasionally, the timbres are processed to oscillate or change shape as they move through the mix, dub style. Torkian plays a museum’s worth of stringed instruments, including but not limited to guitar, sax, baglama, viola da gamba and rabab, accompanied by Khosro Ansari on vocals (singing in Farsi) and a small army of percussionists including Omer Avci, Zia Tabassian, Mohammed Mohsen Zadeh, Azam Ali and her bandmate Andre Harutounyan.

The songs are dreamy, windswept and often haunting. The opening instrumental, Gaven (The Wild Deer) works an apprehensive descending progression in the Arabic hijaz mode, lutes and strings over reverberating layers of percussion and an astringent viola da gamba passage. Az Pardeh (Through the Wall) contrasts a matter-of-fact lead vocal with a somewhat anguished, hypnotic drone playing tensely against a central note, in a stately 6/8 rhythm. Golzare Ashegh (Garden of Love) establishes a sense of longing with its austere arrangement and dreamlike ambience; Chashme Jadu (Your Bewitching Eyes) is absolutely bewitching, in a creepy way, ominous astringent atmospherics over echoey clip-clop percussion.

With its subtle oscillations working against a distant, reverberating loop, the title track brings to mind a Daniel Lanois production, a simple, memorable, ringing motif circling through the mix. It’s the first part of what’s essentially a suite, segueing into Parva (Compassion) with its dub echoes and trancelike flute. Souz-El-Del (The Burning Heart) is the most rhythmically tricky piece here, a forest of lutes and what sounds like a kamancheh (spiked fiddle) doubling the dark levantine melody – it’s an absolutely gorgeous, sweepingly majestic, haunting song. They go out with a tersely wary, cello-like string theme. Simply one of the year’s most captivating and haunting albums.