Yevgeny Sudbin has graced us with thoughtful, sunny readings of the popular Emperor Concerto and the less-often- heard Fourth. He has a pleasant tone, and a transparent, refined approach with more charm and fleetness than ...

Wayne Garcia reviewed Wheeler’s opera The Construction of Boston (Issue 184), noting its remarkable beauty and originality. I’d never heard Wheeler’s music before, but I’m very impressed; his songs are uncluttered, accessible, and witty or ...

For their sixth album, The King Is Dead, the Decemberists set out to record an album that embraced the adage “less is more.” This evolution came as a direct result of the indie folk rockers’ ...

The truism that bands lose their creative spark after a few records doesn’t apply to Over the Rhine. In fact, twenty years into OTR’s recording career The Long Surrender actually ups the ante, with Grammy- ...

As reissues of obscure recordings continue to rain down upon us, one might wonder if there’s anything left worth rediscovering—but the fact that Michael Chapman’s Fully Qualified Survivor is only now being re-released in America ...

Slowly but inexorably, things are going Carrie Rodriguez’s way. The Mexican- American singer-songwriter keeps making fine records, keeps getting great press, and keeps proving herself a distinctive writer and instrumentalist both. With greater recognition looming, ...

The animating conceit of Donna Hughes’s unsettling new album is expressed early on, in the bustling, minor-key bluegrass epistle titled “Nothing Easy,” in which the artist, one of the most compelling songwriters in roots music, ...

For 35 years, this Rhode Island-based band has delivered a tasty gumbo of high-octane jump blues, moving through a series of personnel changes while spawning red-hot blues guitarists (Duke Robillard and Ronnie Earl) and staying ...

Jack White of the White Stripes (and the Raconteurs and Dead Weather) produced this showcase for rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson, a 73-year-old singer who once dated Elvis Presley. Jackson—best known for the rockabilly hits “Fujiyama ...

Joni Mitchell’s career has been filled with startling detours. From the dulcimer- strumming folkie of the Woodstock era, to the jazz-infused, smoky stylist of today, the gifted singer/songwriter has been a bold and restless musical ...

During the triumphant Return To Forever reunion tour of 2008 there was a segment of the show where electric guitar hero Al Di Meola would leave the stage, allowing Chick Corea, bassist Stanley Clarke, and ...

Outside Europe, Giya Kancheli is likely familiar only to classical music followers of conductor Dennis Russel Davies, the Kronos Quartet, violist Kim Kashkashian, and Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer. But closer to his birthplace in Tblisi, ...

Like many great drummers, Scott Amendola puts his percussion at the service of the music first, in support of his fellow players second, and in the spotlight third. The Bay Area-based Amendola, known for his ...

Andrew Hill’s funky yet lyrical piano playing and intricately beautiful compositions seized the attentions of Blue Note’s Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. The pair recorded material for four LPs before the first, Black Fire, was ...

On May 26th, 1942, a teenaged tenor saxophonist from Texas took the featured solo on Lionel Hampton’s recording of a riff tune called “Flying Home,” and planted the seed from which not only a lot ...