I’m a casual enthusiast of both classical music (especially Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy) and jazz (including David Sanborn, Larry Carlton, Al di Meola, Miles Davis). After much listening, though, to my ears classical music often begins to feel dry, stark, two-dimensional. Similarly, some jazz can begin to feel disorganized and schizo.

What I like about Loussier’s interpretations is that he seems to find a creative sweet-spot between the two, where sweet and sour mix into something truly savory. It feels like perfect background music while I’m working or writing: organized, playful, multifaceted.

I stumbled on his music while browsing the Telarc music label’s catalog of Bach recordings. I know their recordings tend to be of audiophile quality, with balance and richness. I was hoping to find some sort of light Bach anthology, and struck gold when I found their link to a page describing Loussier’s album “The Best of Play Bach.”

It sounds like his first experimentation with jazz-classical fusion started with Bach, and went something like this:

Truth be told, it has always seemed to me that jazz music flows naturally from Bach’s music, so much so that I sometimes wonder if the old master from Leipzig had not, through some inspired intuition, anticipated the rhythms that were to come from the new world. Six years later, while a student at the Conservatory, I began to work on my first jazz improvisations of Bach’s music. No, not during school of course, but at lunch time, at the cafeteria, when my friends would ask me.

That’s when I discovered a totally different musical approach: varied, with broad perspectives, open to all influences, sounds and techniques. In one word, freedom. I soon left the Conservatory to go find inspiration in less academic locales, first in Cuba and then in Turkey, after a prescribed tour in Algeria as a private first class in the mountain light infantry.

Upon my return to Paris, these exotic rhythms still fresh in my mind, a question I had never bothered to answer all those years suddenly became unavoidable: what kind of career, which path to choose? Classical music? Too classical. Pop music? Not classical enough. Jazz? Come on! I’m not from New Orleans. So?

So, that’s the question I was brainstorming with Marcel Stellman and Max de Rieux one evening in 1959 at the Decca Paris studios. It was late, and we still didn’t have an answer when I sat down at the piano, for no reason other than to distract myself from a conversation that was dragging on. Marcel jumped off his seat: ‘What’s that?’ ‘Well, it’s Bach…my way,’ I said. Marcel glanced at Max and, two weeks later, I recorded the first Play Bach with Christian Garros and Pierre Michelot. My career as an ‘unclassifiable’ musician was launched. Keep reading…

Check out the preview clips of his interpretations of Bach, Debussy, and Chopin. I’d love to hear what you think.

Tried to embed it here, but it mucked up my blog.

The holidays can be an awkward time, sometimes, figuring out what to do for whom. But once in a while you see someone hit the ball so far out of the park, you remember why it’s worth trying in the first place.

On that note, Los Angeles composer Mike Shapiro just made my evening by sending out this little ditty, which he wrote himself, in lieu of sending cards.

Somebody buy that boy an eggnog.

Tonight, while working, I’ve really enjoyed listening to their albums Street Gospels and Sounding a Mosaic.

Rhythmic, upbeat, groovy. Not normally a reggae kind of guy, but their music is catchy.

The song “When the Night Feels My Song” (from Mosaic) is a good one to sample, to get a feel for their music. …Although I think I like Gospels slightly better, as a collection of songs. So try “Midnight Rockers” off that album, instead.

I have (and love) We the Living‘s album Heights of the Heavens — which gets a strong 4 out of 5 stars, in my book — and would enjoy seeing them record more acoustic pieces.

Roney and his band-mates are huge fans of Atlas Shrugged, incidentally.

I discovered her two albums Twentythree (2005) and Hello (2008) a few days ago, and I can’t stop listening.

Highly, highly recommended.

She’s a bit more country than Sarah, and a bit less hokey-folksy than Norah Jones. But she gives great melody with a terrific voice. (Oops, did I just say that?) She actually does a dead-ringer for Norah in the song “Blindfold.”

If you do give her a listen, I would enjoy hearing what you think.

Amazon makes it easy to sample all her songs, but a good one to start with is “Always Feel This Way” from the album Twentythree.

Tristan Prettyman

I’m not the biggest fan of Guns ‘n Roses, but I do love this song (Sweet Child of Mine)…and I am a huge fan of acoustic guitar. This rendition by Trace Bundy is very soulful.

Some key points:

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians.

And from later in the article:

In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. It was communal and often utilitarian. You couldn’t take it home, copy it, sell it as a commodity (except as sheet music, but that’s not music), or even hear it again. Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone — a memory.

Read the whole thing.

Her genre isn’t really my genre, but I can sure hear the talent.

I had a similar reaction to the videos of Arnel Pineda: What is it about seeing such a big voice come out of such a small body? And their guilelessness. Complete unpretentiousness.

Talk about mudita! Seeing Pempengco’s reaction to Ellen and the crowd, after her first performance, brought tears to my eyes.

I stand in awe.

Hat-tip to C4Chaos for his post “Journey Welcomes Arnel Pineda with Open Arms,” with this fascinating backstory about why guitarist Schon is swooning over a Filipino singer:

Filipinos are hopeless romantics who love music. That’s why ballads are big hits in the Philippines. Journey [was] one of the biggest bands in the Philippines when I was growing up. I remember listening to Journey songs on the radio, in restaurants, in buses, tricycles, and jeepneys. I bet people could still hear Journey songs playing in the background if they take a bus from Alabang to Lawton. Journey songs are that ubiquitous.

That’s why when I’ve heard that Journey’s new lead singer is a Filipino, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to give it a shout out. Hataw!

Here’s the inspiring background story: Arnel Pineda is the lead singer of the band called THE ZOO. They do Journey cover songs in their gigs and have their videos posted on Youtube. One day Journey’s guitarist Neal Schon was on the look out for a new lead singer. In a Blabbermouth article, Schon said:

“I was frustrated about not having a singer, so I went on YouTube for a couple of days and just sat on it for hours. I was starting to think I was never going to find anybody. But then I found THE ZOO and I watched a bunch of different video clips that they had posted. After watching the videos over and over again, I had to walk away from the computer and let what I heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true. I thought, ‘he can’t be that good.’ But he is that good, he’s the real deal and so tremendously talented. Arnel doesn’t sound synthetic and he’s not emulating anyone. I tried to get a hold of him through YouTube and I finally heard from him that night, but it took some convincing to get him to believe that it really was me and not an imposter.”

As an aside, I’d love to know how Schon finally convinced him.

Don’t miss the YouTube videos of Arnel Pineda singing the Journey hits “Open Arms” and “Don’t Stop Believing.” The guy certainly has a great voice, and does an incredible Steve Perry. I got chills listening to his version of “Faithfully” above.

Of course, if the band is going to really thrive in its new incarnation, Pineda needs to be able help write great new music, as well. Can he? I haven’t listened much to The Zoo’s original songs on YouTube because the sound quality hurts pretty bad; I find it more distracting for new songs than for familiar tunes.

Here’s more from the Blabbermouth article cited above:

“Arnel brings a soulful and passionate voice to JOURNEY,” continues keyboardist Jonathan Cain. “His personality is very well-suited to our music. He’s a sincere, authentic person with a great smile and a big heart. I think fans are really going to love him. With Arnel’s soaring tenor, JOURNEY returns to our heritage sound.”

Schon agrees, “We feel reborn. I think there’s a lot of chemistry between the five of us. At first we were going to go into the studio and just write four songs, but now it’s escalated to a lot of great new and diverse material. The stuff sounds tremendous. Everyone’s so stoked about it. We feel very fortunate to have found Arnel.”

I believe it. In the “Don’t Stop Believing” video beneath the article, I see a guileless sincerity in Pineda’s face that really fits with Journey’s soul as a band.

It will certainly be interesting to see what they’ve come up with. I wish them the best of luck. It would be fantastic to see Journey have a second run of success.