Music and Recording Reviews

Wet Leg: Moisturizer; Matt Berninger: Get Sunk; Ty Segall: Possession.

Mozart: Piano Concertos K.175, 449 & 466, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Freiburger Barockorchester; Bruckner: Symphony 3 (Novak ed., 1873), Anima Eterna Brugge/Pablo Heras-Casado; Qigang Chen: Iris Dévoilée, L'Éloignement, Seattle Symphony/Xian Zhang; Prokofiev: Miniatures, Brian Woods, piano.

Randy Ingram: Sound Within: A Celebration of Bill Evans; Matt Slocum: A Revolving Alliance; Kenny Barron/Ray Drummond/Ben Riley: So Many Lovely Things: Live in Brecon.

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux: Bloodstains & Teardrops
Whiskey Bayou Records WSK 1006 (CD). 2021. Tab Benoit, Rueben Williams, prods.; Steven Stanley, Michael "Boxy" Howell, Benoit, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics ****

The Africans brought to the Americas to be sold into slavery were denied every vestige of their past except their memories. And yet, they preserved their rituals in dances, songs, and stories, playing the sacred rhythms that accompanied those rituals on whatever found objects they could use to fashion beats. The customs of American peoples from various African regions have been traced to specific destinations in colonial outposts in research detailed by scholars such as John Storm Roberts in Black Music of Two Worlds and Ned Sublette in several of his African-diaspora studies.

Kansas City Symphony/Michael Stern One-Movement Symphonies, Sebastian Fagerlund: Nomade • Water Atlas and Andrew Von Oeyen: Bach • Beethoven.

David Bowie: The Width of a Circle, Japanese Breakfast: Jubilee, The Chills: Scatterbrain and Juliana Hatfield: Blood.

Prism IV: Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mahler: Symphony No.4, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė Ex Tenebris Lux and Consolations: Music by Bach, Chopin, Dushkin, Handel, Kreisler, Liszt, Massenet, and others.